New distiller - advice on getting a neutral from air still

[sparky marky]

hello everyone! this is my first post/topic.

i have been fermenting beer, cider and fruit wines for a while now and in a moment of madness in my local brew shop without doing any research i purchased a stil spirits air still and some turbo yeast and carbon filters. i know these have a bad rep on this board so please dont flame me! i simply didnt know any better!

after finding this board and doing some reading i realize a reflux still is probably the best option for me, but i am in a country where distilling alcohol is frowned upon so getting hold of a proper pot or reflux still might be tricky/expensive so for now i am gonna stick with my air still, try to get the best out of it , and if anyone asks il tell them i only distill tap water because i like how it tastes

This will most likely be my first and last turbo wash but i want to get the best out of it if you guys can help me a little! it is just finishing fermenting and will probably be clear and settled in a few more days, but yesterday i got impatient and wanted to test out my new still so i dug out some apple wine from the garage from last year that went a bit wrong and i didnt fancy drinking it so thought it would be a good way to test my still. It was pale, very clear and about 12-13% alcohol so i tossed it into the still and switched it on, threw away the first 50ml because it smelled and tasted like crap! then i kept the next 600ml, tasting it every 100mls and decided this was the point where i was probably hitting the "tails"

So... i got 600mls of 60% alcohol that i was fairly happy with, it was clear, alcoholic, tasted mildly fruity and was surprisingly smooth (much better than the failed wine it had previously been!). Overall it was a good learning experience .

Now, what should i do to get a good NEUTRAL spirit from my turbo wash? people on this board seem to hate the stuff and get bad smells and tastes from it...

here is what i was thinking of doing to it:

-let it sit for a good few days so all the carbon and yeast can sink away then rack it off
-let it sit for a few more days before racking again through filter paper on "distillation day"
-i have 24 litres of wash and a 4 litre still so i have to run it 5 times and was thinking of collecting 1 litre of hearts and tails from each run.
-then il take this spirit (which i am guessing will be at about 55%) and dilute it to 40% and run it through the still for a second time to clean it up further.

that last step is where i get myself confused... if i run 4 litres of a 40% spirit through my air still how much should i get out the other end and how strong will it be? im guessing it will be significantly higher than the first time (80 - 85% maybe?) how much liquid should i collect? should i just taste it as it comes and make a guess? what do you guys think? of course i will carbon filter it a couple of times once i have distilled for a second time to clean it up further.

[plonker]

Hi SM,
Im no airstill expert, but FWIW,

-let it sit for a good few days so all the carbon and yeast can sink away then rack it off
-let it sit for a few more days before racking again through filter paper on "distillation day"
-i have 24 litres of wash and a 4 litre still so i have to run it 5 times and was thinking of collecting 1 litre of hearts and tails from each run.
-then il take this spirit (which i am guessing will be at about 55%) and dilute it to 40% and run it through the still for a second time to clean it up further.

that last step is where i get myself confused... if i run 4 litres of a 40% spirit through my air still how much should i get out the other end and how strong will it be? im guessing it will be significantly higher than the first time (80 - 85% maybe?) how much liquid should i collect? should i just taste it as it comes and make a guess? what do you guys think? of course i will carbon filter it a couple of times once i have distilled for a second time to clean it up further.[/b]

Your plan sounds good, your second run should be way higher, 80-60%. Carbon will really help with turbo's. You should get some good neutral from this. sounds like you have been reading the site..

From what I can tell, turbo's are ale yeasts selected for alcohol tolerance. Their taste, production of nasty off tastes and flocculation (how well they clear) are irrelevant. So you get yeast that can run high abv% but taste bad and are cloudy (which also tastes bad)..

When you are ready to upgrade let us know..

[CletusDwight]

One of my first attempts was a turbo/sugar.

Total disaster

Something must have been wrong with the pH and I got blue ammonia-smelling spirit coming over.
(Its some sort of ammonium complex formed from urea -I forget the details)
There's a lot of info on this problem on the site and how to avoid it. I just thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't seen it.

I'll never use a turbo again that's for sure

[Photonic]

Hi,

Another air-still newbie here.

One thing to remember about the airstill is that it is a pot still (when I got mine I had no idea about the different kinds), so you will not obtain a true neutral.

If you get alcohol out at 60% abv, then the other 40% isn't just water - some of it will be other alcohols and some will be flavouring compounds.
I've found that using a turbo yeast with my airstill gives me a spirit that smells "creamy" (if that makes sense).

This really confused me for a while.

It wasn't until I smelled some of the cleared wash that I realised why - the wash smells creamy too (albeit with a sharper smell too).

So expect some of the smell/flavour to carry over to your spirit.


Double distilling did help me to get a cleaner spirit with my airstill and it sounds like your plan will help you do just that. One other thing that I did on my last run was to filter the wash as you suggested with a coffee filter, but I also put a piece of cotton wool in the neck of the funnel - I was surprised how grey it went.

I did a post with a couple of pictures of my first double-distillation with my airstill, it wasn't perfect, but using the flame test helped me to decide when to stop collecting.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 32&t=11934
Good luck.

[sparky marky]

thanks for the advice guys, its good to know i am thinking along the right lines. for now i will stick to my air still but i can definately see myself getting frustrated with it at some point

i guess the most important thing for me to do in order to get a good product with this turbo wash is to make sure its as clean as possible BEFORE going into the still and being boiled... i REALLY like the idea of using cotton wool in my funnel in addition to filter paper, i wouldnt have thought of that one on my own so thanks for the tip!!

can anyone give me an rough guess as to how much spirit i will obtain off the second run of the low wine (is that what it is called?). i intend to get 5 litres of 55 - 60% spirit altogether from the first run which i will dilute to 40% giving me about 7-8 litres (which is two distillations in a 4 litre air still). So, if i fill my air still with 4 litres of 40% spirit how much spirit can i expect to take off? 1 litre? 2 litres? i assume i can push it a bit further on the second distillation since the spirit going in to the still is fairly pure anyway...
Or should i perhaps stop trying to guess and just do this "flame test" as mentioned in the post above which i expect is simply lighting the spirit coming off, if it burns then its still quite strong so keep collecting alcohol runoff!!

[sparky marky]

I did a post with a couple of pictures of my first double-distillation with my airstill, it wasn't perfect, but using the flame test helped me to decide when to stop collecting.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 32&t=11934
Good luck.

just found this thread you linked me to... it was very very helpful!! the pictures helped alot, i think i will use a similar method of collecting alot of small glasses of spirit.

You got 850mls at 70% from 4 liters of 22% low wine. So if i am running 4 liters of 40% low wine im guessing i should expect something like double what you got? maybe aim for a ball park figure of 1700mls of runoff on the second distillation and start tasting and using the flame test towards the end.

i feel more confident about this now ... im just not looking forward to it taking an estimated 14 hours of distilling to get approx 8 bottles of 40% spirit haha!!