My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

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Chauncey
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My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

Ok so...

Running my rig, which after construction was cleaned with a water run, water vinegar, then sac alcohol, that's had several good runs of whiskey thru it...

I came out with a strange metallic taste in my distillate.

I had vinegar soaked the packing and cleaned any oxides out of the column(it blued up in storage) and after I did a run
..

Everything has a metallic weird taste. I'm thinking it was old packing that I didn't clean well enough... But any other thoughts are welcome. I'm running it fully detuned right now with wash from the same fermentation to see if it was the packing...but any ideas or experience related to this would be useful. I've read all the threads I could find on metallic taste but it was all aluminum pots poor cleaning etc etc.

Thoughts? If these wines come out ok I'ma try to rerun the metal shit though I have some oaking to see if that helps... Though then oak has not done much on it.


The last charge sat in the boiler for a week after racking but stainless kegs shouldn't react with a wash right?

If not the packing then maybe some of the blue was still up in there? But the distillate wasn't blue...

Eh anyway let me know what you may think.
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Chauncey
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

Update. No metal flavor in the distillate this time. So it was either packing, reaction from sitting, or some other mysterious thing that's gone...
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Single Malt Yinzer »

I've had similar experiences post cleaning. I've switched to a quick PBW cleaning, rinse, Citric wash until the copper shines up, rinse. Seems to work the trick without the metallic taste. I forget home much citric to water I use. it's a small amount per liter. if you search you should find a reasonable ratio. Just don't let it go too long. One it brightens up rinse it.
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

post cleaning seems to be my number one culprit.
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by zed255 »

Unless the patina is blue or green I generally just rinse and don't do any aggressive cleaning. I only ever got a metallic taste after serious cleaning so I now work to minimize the need for any aggressive cleaning.

Biggest thing I find is making sure things dry quickly and rinse / neutralize acids if any contact the parts (a puked wash is acidic). The usual brown patina on copper is not a problem.
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by still_stirrin »

Allmyexsliveinhell wrote:... came out with a strange metallic taste in my distillate...Thoughts?...The last charge sat in the boiler for a week after racking...???
I think that is your culprit. We don’t know what the wash was, but I’d guess it was a sugar wash and had a low pH (quite acidic). As a result, with time and exposure to air it will oxidize which can produce metal oxides, especially if you added yeast nutrients to the ferment (as you do in a sugar wash).

This is my hypothesis...with the limited details you’ve provided.

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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

Zed: there was some time between the cleaning and the run, about 24 hours. it was white vinegar brushed with a keg brush then flushed with water. set everything up and had to leave. i normally only clean with a water flush after the run but in a few weeks storage i got the oxide blue/green so i used a vinegar soak followed by a water flush. never had any blue green buildup on my interior except a few minor incidents and always just scrubbed out with water.

SS: it was a UJSSM style sour mash with Corn Oats and Barley as the grain. several gens old too it was just a COB AG the first time around which was...fuck...months ago...probably 10 gens deep.

definitely really acidic. thats why i thought it could have reacted with the metal.

and yeah WHO DAT BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

also

do you guys think the distillate from the metal run is worth re running or should i toss it? im a waste not want not guy but id rather not waste the propane cuz i want it fo sho! lol
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by OtisT »

I don’t know what you will get, but personally I would try re-running it just to see if I could salvage some good ethanol. You’ll either get good ethanol or learn a lesson about cleaning.

I recently cleaned my condensers and column. With oil buildup and some pukes the smell after my typical light scrub and rinse/dry just got to be too much for me. I did not go all the way to shinny metal, but got close in some spots. I was also fearful of what the cleaning would do to the taste of my next run so I ran a small wash of heads feints mixed with water for 30 minutes to flush things out. Not sure if it was necessary to prevent a problem, but the spirit run I did after that came out fine.

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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

ok so i turned some into apple pie and it helped, but i could still detect that taste. So i re ran everything, the white, apple pie, and oaked metally spirit. made a pretty good tasting appley low wines, no metal flavor. strained and squeezed my remaining bit of grain, got like 2.5 gallons of wash out of that. I combined that with the feints from the last run as well as the appley low wines, and ran it. diluted with 2 gallons of water so total about a 6 gallon charge. made a real nice half gallon of hearts. because of the 2 gallons of water the average ABV was pretty low, 120 ish. diluted it down to 90 and have a good clean sipping liquor. and this will be the end of like 15 or so gens of sour mashing, as i got rid of all the backset to start fresh. got a 50lb sack of cracked corn and a shit load of liquid enzymes, gonna do some all corn now. may go get some malted corn from the brew store in a bit but i have to take the trolley there...yall think id look weird on a new orleans streetcar with a 50lb sack of malted corn? nah probably not, ive seen weirder. it is NOLA afterall.

peace

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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

oh in the initial rerun i added in like 3.5 gallons of wash i had sitting aside. so that was a kinda "1.5 stripping run" so to speak. then adding those low wines to the wash i strained from the grain bed making a 1.5 spirit run too.

whatever you call a combination of wines and wash pot stilled, ive heard 1.5 alot

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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by ydoih8u »

I wouldn't drink the metal tasting spirit without re-running.
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

ydoih8u wrote:I wouldn't drink the metal tasting spirit without re-running.

yeah i re ran it. believe it was the packing to start.
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by ydoih8u »

Haha, I just wanted to make sure you were not trying to power through it. Drinking metals probably isn't ideal for your health.
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Re: My first serious issue with off flavored distillate

Post by Chauncey »

yeah if you read the posts(2) prior to yours there is an explanation

also i found listening to metal is also bad for my health.
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