AirStill - Can I distill twice for the same Alcohol percentage?

[dustytrash]

I have an AirStill. Following the instructions I've distilled 4L @ 18% to get a 720ML product @ 60%.

I've done this 4 times, each time discarding the fore-shot & the tails. However on my last run my distiller puked a little and I now have some cloudiness in my finished product. I also see a little tiny piece of debris. I'd like to distill again for a clear & clean product, but I don't want a higher percentage. I want lower, or equal.

The instructions say I can distill again for a product of 90% (Which leads me to believe it's safe to distill a 60% product), so am I safe to distill again and collect everything? Can I add some water, distill again to get a lower percentage?

[cayars]

Add 2 parts distilled water to 1 part spirit to knock it down to around 20% and run it again. That should put you back in the 60% range after it runs and will be cleaned up.

However, note you'll loose flavor by doing this.

You didn't say what type of product you were trying to make so this is just generic advice for a cleanup but not specifically how I'd handle it as it depends on what you were making.

[dustytrash]

Thanks for the advice, I may do that. As stupid as it sounds I don't care about taste too much as I'm still in the learning phase

I am distilling an all grain mash for whiskey

[NZChris]

Knocking it down to 20% is a bad idea, especially with something as small as an air still. There is no advantage to diluting this lot down below 40%.

[dustytrash]

Why is knocking it down a bad idea? Are you suggested I distill with no water added and collect everything to get the same % result?

[cayars]

NZChris is right for a whiskey or flavorful spirt it's not the best way and this is what I alluded to. It would help non flavored spirits like a neutral/vodka but has the opposite affect on whiskey.

By diluting and running again at best you'll get a light whiskey vs something with full flavor. The reason I said down to 20% was because of what you said that you would prefer it to come up at 60% or less after rerunning it. I picked 20% because it's right there near your initial 18% you mentioned so running anything higher than that will give you a result higher than 60%. Make sense?

[dustytrash]

Yes that makes sense, thanks for the explanation. Is it a good idea to re-distill the full amount, no water/liquid added and collect everything to hopefully receive my same 60% result?

[Fiddleford]

Last I was here you generally distill twice anyway, once for stripping and again for spirit, otherwise the product will be a little shit tasting, how are you getting such a high ABV at ferment. I don't think you will get much of a flavor out of your product anyway, I'm not saying you wont get any but you want have much.

On another note I would would advise against distilling anything over 40% and to proof it down with backings.

[cayars]

He's using an Air Still, sort of like the coffee pots of stills.


There basic instructions call for 1.98 gallons of water with 4.9 pounds of sugar and uses Turbo Yeast so it's going to be 15% or so.
https://www.homebrewery.com/image/data/ ... 15_Web.pdf

[Saltbush Bill]

I've distilled 4L @ 18% to get a 720ML product @ 60%

Seems to me that you have distilled a wash that was 18% to begin with.
Thats not a great idea in its self. High abv washes using turbo yeasts will always end up in a crap outcome.
Next time you would be better to start with one of the tried and proven recipes available from this or another forum.
They are lower abv , cheaper to make and will result in much better quality booze.
Turbo yeast is recommended to you by the shop owner because he gets to extract the maximum in $$$$$$ from your pocket that way.
There is no money for him in bread yeast from the supermarket. If you dont want to use bakers yeast try ec1118 its a good yeast for neutrals .....100% better than turdbo yeast.
Its considered on most forums that putting anything over 40% in any still boiler is an unwise idea and the practice is actively discouraged.

[dustytrash]

Will definitely be using bakers yeast in the future, unfortunately I bought the distiller & "whiskey yeast" before I knew about these fourms

[dustytrash]

I used purely milled grains for my mash - what I have now isn't terrible, but I may dillute down since as users mentioned here it's not very tasteful anyway

[cayars]

Turbo yeast is made from Saccharomyces cerevisiae which is the same yeast in EC1118. It essentially champagne yeast with same high ABV tolerance but includes minerals and nutrients mixed in.

Turbo yeast gets a bad rap because people do crazy high ferments with it because they can and things turn out poorly. Do a ferment of the same ABV such as 8 to 10% potential using both Turbo and EC1118 with nutrients added and doubt you'll know the difference. Same with an 16 to 18% ABV using both of them.

But why when you can add only the amount of nutrients you need? Neither is good for rums, whiskey or flavorful spirits.

Both bakers yeast and distillers yeast can be had for cheap in 1 pound bricks and work just fine on sugar washes.

Honestly the best choice for a sugar wash would come down to the temperature in the room more than anything else. If cold use a champagne yeast while warm use distillers or bread yeast. Given a choice between the two, use what's cheaper but keep ABV down to 10% or so for less "off flavors".

[Fiddleford]

If I may suggest dusty spend a while reading in the novice part of the forum, till your eyes bleed, alot of questions we all ask have already been answered hundred times over. I can say it pays to take your time to read and ask questions when needed.

I dont mean to be to presumptuous but there is still some reading for you to be done.

[NZChris]

I used purely milled grains for my mash - what I have now isn't terrible, but I may dillute down since as users mentioned here it's not very tasteful anyway

Why didn't you mention that wee detail when you asked your question? There is a lot of difference between how to run a flavored spirit and how to run a sugar wash neutral. If you want a good answer, you have to tell your audience what they need to know. if you don't, you'll get random answers based on guesses as to what you might be doing.

[dustytrash]

As for reading the novice forms, I can agree, but ive read A LOT of "dont use turbo yeast", "don't use AirStills". I'm not going to discredit this advice, however I have an airstill and ive used turbo yeast, I'd like to ensure I'm still being safe (even thought im not doing the best/most logic distill)

[dustytrash]

@NZCgris I agree and don't have a reason. I didn't think to include that info. I'll update my post

[NZChris]

Any advice here for fermenting and for running small pot stills is applicable to Airstills. If you do your homework before you put your ferment down, you shouldn't have too many problems. If there is a problem with small stills, it's that it is easy to fall into the greed trap and try to push the limits of abv, to the detriment of flavor.

A problem with forums, is that you will find more than one opinion on any subject that isn't obviously black and white, plus, unfortunately, you will get posters who will argue that too and there are no garbage men throwing out the trash, so be careful and don't choose an option just because it sounds nice or it's convenient.

[cayars]

As for reading the novice forms, I can agree, but ive read A LOT of "dont use turbo yeast", "don't use AirStills". I'm not going to discredit this advice, however I have an airstill and ive used turbo yeast, I'd like to ensure I'm still being safe (even thought im not doing the best/most logic distill)

Moving forward just pick up a pound of bakers or distillers yeast. You can often find bricks at BJs, Sams, Costco, Restaurant Supply stores, Big supermarkets and online. Bakers yeast will work with grains (whiskey) or sugar (Rums) ferments and it's cheap and readily available. You can always find it in smaller amounts (packets or jars) at the grocery store.

One of the biggest problems with small stills like an AirStill is trying to make cuts between heads/hearts and hearts/tails. You will need to do this 2 times per run. So a person running 10 gallons of low wines (ran once) with a keg (15.5 gallon) size still will make 2 total cuts. A person running 10 gallons with a 5 gallon still will load about 3.33 gallons for 3 spirit runs and have 2 cuts per batch or 6 total cuts. With an air still you would likely need to make 15 runs to process this same 10 gallons of low wines each with 2 cuts for a total of 30 cuts.

2 cuts
6 cuts
30 cuts
With the 30 cuts you're almost always changing jars to get this cutover point and it's going to be very hard to get "hearts" or center cuts (good stuff) and you'll constantly be getting part heads and part tails mixed in.

With the 6 cut run there will be many quart size jars for each cut making the selection of "cuts" easier as there is more room for error. It gets easier because when you know your still you can use 1/4 or 1/2 jars around your cutover points to make selection later easier.

With the 2 cut run on the bigger still is down right easy compared to the other two because only 2 cut over points need to be done after the run is over. Margin for error is much greater and each jar will progress from heads to hearts to tails much slower. Your center jars will be almost all hearts with very little heads or tails mixed in making selection easy.

Does that help to understand why small stills are not popular around here for general use? In a nutshell the bigger the still the easier it is to process large amounts of low wines and get a cleaner product that is easier as well.

[NZChris]

I do run some small stills and don't have any of the problems that posters without small still experience imagine that there is and post on this forum. For a small still, I strip the same way I do for a large still and for the spirit run, collect in the same number of jars for choosing my cut as I do if I'm using a large still.

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=13261

[cayars]

You just can't get as "pure" a hearts cut running many small runs vs 1 large run, just the way things are.
It's not a matter of operator skill but of physics as you just don't have enough alcohol in a small still to stretch out the hearts run to make cuts easy.

[NZChris]

Having spirit run several flavored batches in mini stills smaller than an Airstill, I don't believe that, Carlo. Mini stills don't do weird stuff like smear more unless the operator is foolish enough to run it too hard and the cuts don't appear at different places in the distillation than they do when run in a large still.

There is nothing "pure" about a flavored run anyway. It's the impurities that make whiskey whiskey and rum rum, etc..

[cayars]

If you have 15 of these run

Your jar 10 -12 will have more heads/tails in it than one long run will have in the center section.

On the one long run each jar will be able to be 15 times (or more) larger. Instead of having jars 10-12 "center hearts" you will have 45 of them. The jars in front and behind the center hearts jars will trail off 15 times slower as well making cuts much easier to make. There is far more room for error and much less dramatic change per jar. On a small run, one jar will easily likely have 1/2 heads, 1/2 tails (law of averages) and same with tails section where it will have 1/2 hearts, 1/2 tails. So two jars are likely "contaminated" on every run which is 30 jars like this mixed heavily. Doesn't happen on big runs like that as the separation is far less changing from jar to jar using the same size jars as on the smaller still.

[NZChris]

Filling the same size cut jar for small stills as you do for large ones is just silly. It is very easy to calculate how much to collect in each jar for any sized run to get your desired number of jars to choose your cuts from.

[cayars]

Your missing the point Chris. Regardless of how you collect, on a bigger still the heads to hearts will be drawn out, the hearts will last a long time followed by tails. Only 2 cuts are needed with many, many jars between theses cuts.

This gives a lot of headroom for making your cuts. You can take "pure" hearts or get a bit of tails and heads.

Just as you said, you can calculate and know roughly where your cut points will be so on a big still you could collect in 1/2 gallon containers but switch to 1/2 pint jars when you approach your cut point territory giving you really fine grain control later when you make the cuts and blends.

[NZChris]

Your missing the point Chris. Regardless of how you collect, on a bigger still the heads to hearts will be drawn out, the hearts will last a long time followed by tails.

Why? The only reason I know of is if the still is run too fast. You can do the same with a large still if you want to and have enough power.

Only 2 cuts are needed with many, many jars between theses cuts.

This gives a lot of headroom for making your cuts. You can take "pure" hearts or get a bit of tails and heads.
Just as you said, you can calculate and know roughly where your cut points will be so on a big still you could collect in 1/2 gallon containers but switch to 1/2 pint jars when you approach your cut point territory giving you really fine grain control later when you make the cuts and blends.

That is what I do, but this is a thread for a beginner. The smallest spirit run I've done was collected in 50ml increments and I had no more problems choosing the heart cut than I have when filling 500ml jars with my large still. Problems with getting a decent heart cut out of a small still are all imaginary. The only problem is that it's the same amount of work for a small amount of product, which doesn't matter if it's only an experimental run for a new product or a rare or expensive ingredient.