Hello, I'm new to the forum. first post. My still is 22 court pressure cooker, 1 galon thumper (old pickle jar that is), and a copper worm. All my copper is 3/8" (not so much for design, but more cause that's what I had at the time).
Ok so I ran my first mash a few weeks ago. 5lbs corn meal, 5 gallons of water 5lbs sugar 1 pack of fleishmans rapid rise yeast. It ran fine, yielded about 1 1/2 quarts of pretty good shine. So I added sugar and yeast back to the mash, and yielded about a quart and a half of really impressive shine, the end product was over 160 proof. Yet again I added about a gallon and a half of water, yeast, and this time I used sugar made from sugar beets, well it yielded about 2 quarts of shine that is over 160 proof, and it taste suprisingly good, untill after you swallow, then the after taste knocks you down. It's got a really bitter aftertaste. The liquor smells really good, (same slight corn smell), it's just the after taste... Ugh...
So my question has a few parts to it. Could it be beet sugar that is making the after taste? Or could it just be its time for a new mash? It distilled really well, started spilling into the thumper about 150 degrees (give or take) i shut it down at about 195 degrees (give or take) I guess I could have distilled to much into the tails?? But it didn't smell any different and my proof was about the same.
On a different note, I did a search on Google about distilling with beet sugar, and found that a lot of commercial Russian vodka distributors use beet sugar. Has anyone out there ever drank any authentic Russian vodka?? I wonder if it has any bit of a bitter aftertaste? Thanks in advance.
Beet sugar
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