Yes indeed, my hooch makes me and some people that have had a good session on it crap! I used to add a little glycerin to smooth out the bourbon but after some research I discovered that glycerin can irritate a mucus gland in your ass so I swapped over to glucose only to find that it settles on the bottom of the bottle and dosnt look very good.
I now dont use anything to smooth the spirit and allow grandfather time to do a little smoothing but as my skills have improved a lot since I started and the final product gets better and better with every batch. I just do a plain Ol sugar wash.
I have an LM fractioning reflux still and I end up with 95% every time. I discard 150ml of foreshots per 20L of wash just to be sure. I collect the next 14% as heads and the last 14% as tails and I still carbon filter after that only because I have access to as much top quality carbon as I want for free.
There is no hint at all of nasties in my bourbon and the first two batches I made without using glycerin or glucos have still made people shit the next day....evil evil bowl spraying sessions
I'm only a novice so I don't know, but thanks for the great laugh!
My questions would be, A) how much glycerin did you use? B)exactly how much was consumed during this good 'session'? C)what type materials are the still made out of. My guess the experts here will want to know some of this information and would return a better answer having this information.
vault13 wrote: I just do a plain Ol sugar wash. Cheers
How do you get bourbon from a plain 'ol sugar wash? A bit more information on your recipe/aging/still setup could clarify why you've invented a new laxative <lol>
I use a wee bit of pure maple syrup to smooth out the mouth feel/texture of my product. No shits...
Might be a recipe ingredient or perhaps even something to do with what you use for aging... I guess we'd need more details in order to be of much help...
Thanks for the replies, Ok.. Good to some good has come of this problem...some laughs and its very nice bourbon actually.
I follow Wine'os recipe to the letter, love it! works well.
I water down to 40% using purified water and soak the result in carbon for 7 days and filter properly using non bleached tissue paper and I make sure ALL the fine carbon is removed.
I then add oak chips and leave it sit for two weeks.
I remove the oak and add the bourbon flavorings.....I am still exploring all the different essence flavoring brands so they vary but come to think of it there has been once constant in regards to essences and it is that I have always used a portion of an essence that I got from a home brew store which is their own brand in a 1 liter bottle.
Last thing I do is add some sugar - 8 teaspoons to a demijong.
And thats it, nothing else as of the last two batches.
Are you making proper cuts, or relying on the carbon to remove the fusel oils, acetone and ethyl-acitate?
It is the very things that we think we know, that keep us from learning what we should know.
Valved Reflux, 3"x54" Bok 'mini', 2 liebig based pots and the 'Blockhead' 60K btu propane heat
Yeah I see what your saying about cuts for sure but after quite a few runs I have perfected the cuts down to a reliable 14% each way for heads and tails. This "still" produces such good quality spirit. I know this because I have seen how a few of my mates stills perform and they don't match up frankly...good score to me...and yet even though they don't make good cuts and I can easily detect the nasties in their product it doesn't make them "shit!!" LOL....and bye the way they are all home brew shop turbo junkies!! I have never looked at a turbo and I don't see the need to as Wino's does it for me which is why I have refined my cuts using my fractioning column so well.
To answer a few questions from before as I ran out of time this morning.
I used to use 2 teaspoons of glycerin to a 4.5 liter demijong.
Then I switched to the recommended amount of glucos as per the parent site.
A good session = 1,5 liters of bourbon per 2 people over an 8 hour period..big people too, not fat just big...I am 152 kilos and can kick the doors off of a 57 chevy....well before I was stuck on the toilet for half the morning.
My still is all stainless but I have about 200 grams of clean copper in the boiler and a few pieces stuck up into the packing and have extended my collection tube using copper. The boiler utilizes only a 1300 what element so it takes some time to do a run but I believe from research that It is partially responsible for the quality.
Yes, I have used a portion of that one liter essence in every batch of bourbon, but....I have made vodka as well and yes a bowl sprayed brown was be the result.
Having said that....Could I still have rubbish in my spirit that is totally undetectable?....I do a very clean beverage, I believe that if your gonna go the neutral spirit method and add the flavorings rather than doing the whole corn mash pot still thing then to make a fine spirit it has to be totally neutral and clean to be very good quality.
I have done quite a few batches now and yes some of the first ones had detectable rubbish in them while I was sorting out the cuts but myself and no one else so far can detect any poo in the last 4 lots apart from the poo the next day!!
When I tastes other peoples I can detect what they have done...I can detect distinct tails, I can detect distinct ethel acetate or some times they do a dam nice batch where its dam good, but with mine in the last 3 batches its very very very clean.
So could I still have undetectable rubbish there? I can go down the shop, buy a bottle off the shelf and detect the nasties....nice nasties though....thats potstillin so I am told. Me? I go for clean.
The only thing in my life that gave me the shits was bad water...I can always point to some example every time. The only thing is, with high proof alcohol i dont see how bacteria could be getting through...
What are you diluting/mixing with? I can only imagine its there as your still wouldnt/shouldnt let bacteria through.
Is it possible that if a wash had a really bad infection that it could carry through? Even though any nasties should be dead maybe they are still "potent"?
Maybe you are allergic to one of the colourings in the essences you are using. I know when I smell the propylene glycol in some of them I want to puke. Most of them are artificially coloured with god knows what chemicals.
I'd be willing to bet it's your cuts needing some work. When I first started distilling my hooch gave me the runs too until I got the cuts worked out. I'd really suggest making all your cuts by taste and smell.
Another possibility is that you ran your still too hard and dragged tails into the hearts of your run, epecially if you made your cuts by percentage.
EDIT- If we want to be absolutely by the book accurate, by definition it's impossible to make bourbon from a sugar wash and an essence. True bourbon is an all grain mash with corn being at least 51% of the bill. Now you can sound smart and explain this to your friends!
Thanks fellas, I use bottled water for watering down the spirit. I think at this point I would have to agree about the cuts even though I used the multiple jar method to get a feel for it....perhaps its time to bring them out again.
