WPOSW - Am I on the right track here?

[Braz]

The still isn't finished and a blizzard is keeping me from making a needed trip to the hardware store. So let me spend some time talking about my first fermentation and soliciting advice as to what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. This is Wino's Plain ol' Sugar Wash, cut to half the recipe (3 Gal.). It is intended to be the first one run through the still for cleaning so it will be tossed out in the end. Here's what I did:

Saturday:
Tested my water, Ph = 8.0
Dissolved 4lb sugar in hot water and dumped it into a five gal. bucket, added cool water to the 3 gal. mark and stirred vigorously to get O2 in, added 1/2 tsp DSP, 1 crushed vitamin B tablet, 1/2 tsp Gypsum, pinch of Epsom Salt, let cool to 85F. Then added 1/2 tsp Citric Acid and tested the Ph. It tested somewhere between 5-6. At this point the SG was 1.070 (tested at 60F). Then I sprinkled 1/4 Cup of bakers yeast on top. (Wash temp was 85F at this point. Should I have waited till is was under 80F?) Let it sit for 20 minutes then stirred it gently and put the lid/airlock on.

Six hours later the airlock had stopped bouncing so I panicked and threw another 1/8 cup of yeast in and stirred it in gently. (Maybe I should not have done this. Should the airlock be bouncing throughout the process or only early in the process?)

Sunday:
8AM: Temp. 65F, airlock still bouncing. Put a 40w light bulb under the bucket to bring the temp up a little. (I'm trying to hold the temp between 70-80F.)
Noon: No airlock activity. SG=1.036, Ph=5 (or just a little higher)
6PM: Temp.=75F, no airlock activity, bubbles on surface.

Monday: Temp=80F, no airlock activity, SG=1.005. (Dipping out the SG sample stirred up the wash a little and the airlock started bouncing again.)

Tuesday: Temp=74.5, SG=.996, no airlock activity

Wednesday: SG=.994 (9.8% ABV by my calculation), no airlock activity

Thursday: SG=.994 (no change in 24 hours so I assume it is done). At this point I moved the bucket to the shop where the temp is in the low 40s and let it rest.

Saturday (today): The top 2" of the wash is water clear with about 6" of cloudy wash below that. (How long should I let this sit before racking it into another container?)

That's it. Comments, critiques, suggestions?

Thanks
Braz
(snowbound at the moment)

[rednose]

As the sugar content when to zero and you had poor airlock activity it might be that you had an air leak in the fermenter IMHO

[Dnderhead]

as clear as you want, the more times you rack the clearer it will become. also degassing will help, for a "neutral" you want the wash as clear as you can git
as yeast can give off flavors. (witch can be beneficial in some washes/mash but not in "neutrals)

[SaltUbar]

Hi Braz,

Sounds just right to me. I agree with other posts that with your Sg going down the yeast is doing its job. Most likely reason for the air trap not bouncing is that you have a leak and the CO2 is escaping out this instead of through your trap.

Here is a graph of what I am getting in a batch of 55 lt with the same recipe as you are using. I have found that I have to keep the temp much higher that Wino recomends. The later bumps in the curve are due to my experiments with modifying the Ph Level so just disregard this last part.

ABV Graph WPOSW.jpg (10.84 KiB) Viewed 1315 times

hope this helps

Regards Ubar