so the other day I'm makin some beer and I thought... hey, why not use this grain for flavoring a corn mash? and an experiment started.
So, I took a few kilos of crystal grains, malt (some used, some fresh) and about 10 k of corn and threw it into a pot. Mashed it with some amylase... smelled great. had about 3/4 of a keg full, mostly corn... pitched a lot of bakers yeast on top and let it go for a few days. Ran about 25 liter of liquid into the still, it was thick with lots of sediment and even some small pieces of grain in it. still ran up to about 88 before anything started to run.. ran it to about 92 degrees and quit, just playin round after all. The distillate was cloudy, a little oily on top, but had a pretty good corn whiskey smell. I threw a spoonfull of baking soda on top of each liter jar of distillate and set it in the closet. after a few days It cleared with a blue precipitate. The last jar has the precipitate on the top?? with the oil.
Anyone care to interpret some of what I'm seeing? sorry, I didn't take any hydrometer readings, but the mash was thick! Any thoughts are appreciated.
I believe it is to convert ethyl acetate. Search this forum, you'll find more.. I don't know much chemistry... My questions are: why is some of the blue crystal floating and some sinking? I do have an all copper still.
Is it common to have a cloudy distillate after a stripping run? could that have come from distilling a thick sediment filled mash?
Is copper carbonate a problem? How does that come up as a precipitate?
Internet says its used as a fungicide and can cause nausea and vomiting if ingested.
Ingestion of large quantities of copper salts has caused dizziness, vomiting, cramps, coma and death. Symptoms attributed to damage of the central nervous system, liver and kidneys have been observed.
Doesn't sound like something you would want in there
Light travels faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
Uh, yeah, doesn't sound too tasty... It makes me wonder how much copper I get making vodkas and rums? I don't understand how it came up in this distillate. My first guess is that it may have something to do with ph. Just as a side question, I have a copper condenser and still, I didn't use a vinegar wash to clean everything before this run, it looked pretty good after the last use... does anyone else ever see a color change on their copper condensor after a run?
by the way, I picked up a good tip recently... if you mix vinegar with a little flour to thicken it up to a thin syrup consistency, it makes cleaning copper much easier...
After a run my condenser coil is usually gleaming and shiney like it was the day I made it. I give it a good rinse and dry it before putting it away and usually it still looks shiney the next run, but it depends how long. If I go a month between runs it starts to get dull looking and needs cleaning. Same goes for the whole still which is all copper. I guess this is due to humidity. The only thing that does get somewhat grungey after a session is the copper packing.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer.
There's another possibility - I've been playing with bicarb having looked it up in the guide.
Depends on how blue it is but adding bicarbonate to your spirit locks out the volatile acids as their sodium salt - these aren't very soluble in spirit and make a haze which looks bluish in the right light.
Either way you've precipitated it out and you're presumably doing another run with that spirit so it won't be a problem.
I never clean the outside of my coil - I'm a lazy sod. I might wipe down the outlet but the only bit I worry about is the inside. Unless the damned parrots being trying to bathe in the condenser bucket.
If I leave it dusty and manky it can sit in the attic and I can say 'what that? no, it was here when I moved in. What is it?' with absolute plausibility.
The blue may be CuSO4 copper sulfate. if you handel wet cuso4 it will stain your skin, and if you apply it to fungus based foot rot it will clear that right up . Disolved in h2o and high proof ethanol, it should be a great anti-fungal agent, but i wouldnt take it internally without re-distilling it out (if you can)
The blue may be CuSO4 copper sulfate. if you handel wet cuso4 it will stain your skin, and if you apply it to fungus based foot rot it will clear that right up . Disolved in h2o and high proof ethanol, it should be a great anti-fungal agent, but i wouldnt take it internally without re-distilling it out (if you can)
Actually it was for my prized livestock.And it dried the nasty foot rot right up. And seeing that there was bicarb soda involved in the spirit ,i think the copper sulfate is a different animal but copper does tend to favor blues and greens with it's salts.
