Putting older posts here. Going to try to keep the novice forum pruned about 90 days work. The 'good' old stuff is going to be put into appropriate forums.
I have a few liters of neutral spirit that I would like to filter and im ready for my 1st try....I read the Gert Strand book and I just wanna make sure I understood what I read....
I have the kit that came from brewhaus....
1)boil and clean 4-5 times etc...
2)put the filters at the end and fill tube with warm water
3)Fill tube with the carbon
4)Pour more water through the tube and wait till all the water comes out
5)and now I pour my spirit and let it go....
After pouring my spirit....can I let it work alone or must I keep an eye on it.....
Also read that I should not do this in a cold place correct??
firefly wrote:I have a few liters of neutral spirit that I would like to filter and im ready for my 1st try....I read the Gert Strand book and I just wanna make sure I understood what I read....
I have the kit that came from brewhaus....
1)boil and clean 4-5 times etc...
2)put the filters at the end and fill tube with warm water
3)Fill tube with the carbon
4)Pour more water through the tube and wait till all the water comes out
5)and now I pour my spirit and let it go....
After pouring my spirit....can I let it work alone or must I keep an eye on it.....
Also read that I should not do this in a cold place correct??
.
1- Maybe the first time you get the carbon, I think 4-5X is excessive. I'd say 3x max the first time. I only ever do it once or twice in between runs. And by clean I assume you mean put it in the oven.
2-The filters go at the bottom of the tube and there should be a piece of plastic with holes in it that goes on top of the filter paper. Then you screw that bottom piece in.
3-Yep
4-Yeah fill up the funnel with water at least once, if the carbons already wet thats in the tube (kind of a pain to get in this way) then one 5L funnels worth should do you. If the carbons dry I would run at least 2 5L funnels full of water through.
5- Pour the spirit in while theres still a bit of water visable in the funnel, you dont want any air gaps. you will get some dilution but when your tasting the water/vodka cut off your going to take about 500ML of weak vodka out, just redistill it.
6- Make sure you flush out with 2L of water, same deal your going to get very watery vodka at the end, save and redistill.
AfricaUnite, thanks....wasn't sure if I had to let all the water out before pouring in the spirit.....thanks cause I was just about to do it the wrong way.....cheers
Do I understand right, you're using carbon-filled, plastic containers for this? Or am I reading incorrectly? I'm a bit nervous lately when I see the name Gert Strand.
If only the best birds sang, the woods would be silent.
Uncle Jesse wrote:I don't know, I've never used carbon before as I've never made neutral spirits.
Chemist is the one to ask. As he's stated, some plastics rated for alcohol in the U.S. won't handle higher proof alcohol very well.
The "instructions" about carbon filtering are not for high proof. Most instructions I have seen, start out by watering the booze down to 80 proof or so. I think at that level, there are probably more plastics that are ethanol tolerant. However, since I am pretty much ignorant on the chemical composition of plastics, I would not know which of the plastics would be safe for cool 40% and which would still be unsafe.
NOTE from the brewhaus page, even the funnel is plastic. I find the DIY method to be better solution, than the commerial prefab stuff. With DIY, you can control what you have. You could easily build a carbon filtering system out of 2" copper. I myself would rather just do a better job of distilling, and scrap the carbon filtering altogether.
...Thanks Husker...as a noob...I gotta learn the hard and $$$$expensive way$$$$.....I just bought the whole kit......and was ready to go....
I hope they wouldnt sell something that was unsafe.....and my spirit is 40% so I guess I should be ok...
P.S: In my part of town...we calculate alcohol as a %
As I can see, people down south refer to it as "proof"
Is there a conversion chart on the mother site cause I dont get this "proof" calculations
Uncle Jesse wrote:Just thinking it's possible that in the EU when they say "chemical resistant" they really mean it.
You could be right there. I think in AU this might also be the case. Again, what the contraption is designed to do is to have 40% ABV "cool" booze flow through it. Thus, it would be closer to a container to "store" finished booze in.
Plastics which could handle long term storage, would probably work just about the same for this filter. However, like i mentioned, I myself do not know what would be "safe" and what would not be safe as far as plastics go, so I simply do not use any of them anywhere. Possibly overcautious, but then I do not have to wonder just what I am drinking.
Never seen beverage spirits sold in plastic in Australia. It is all glass as far as I know.
The Chemist's view on this is:
SOME plastics are okay to store LOW PROOF alcohol in (polycarbonates only, please--unless you really CAN afford PTFE)--NO PLASTIC is good for hot or high proof alcohol.
Don't do it. Don't argue. Or at least don't blame ME if there's ever a problem.
why not just add the carbon to a glass carboy and let spirit set on it and then siphon off after settling for some time .... that way no plastic comes in contact with it ..
homedistiller.org mentions using plastics in the polishing neutral spirits section.
"Materials
1 x 500mm long 50mm diameter upvc pipe
1 x 50mm end cap
1 x 50mm threaded adapter
1 x 50mm threaded end cap with O ring
1 x poly pipe barbed adapter (see drawing/see text)
1 x Caulking gun glue tube nozzle
1 x Aquarium air tap
1 x 1 meter+ of silicon aquarium air hose
"
I used to use this setup and still have it in my shed, it produced the cleanest neutral spirit for me. Ive tried the carbon in gallon jugs and that cleans it up to a point (and certainly good enough for mixed drinks) but I havent been able to get it as clean as using a tower.
I agree with AfricaUnite, I guess the way i look at it is if sitting in a glass jug with carbon wont fix it then what do i have anyways , time to rerun in my book..
...Thanks Husker...as a noob...I gotta learn the hard and $$$$expensive way$$$$.....I just bought the whole kit......and was ready to go....