Did my first run ever, it was about 4 gal of ujssm that had been sitting for around 2 months because I severely misjudged when my still would be ready to run (learned a lesson: never start a ferment if you don't know exactly when you're going to be able to run it). Well I finally got it ready to run, and decided to run the old mash even though the smell had changed since way back when it was fermenting (I did check for mold, however, there was none). I collected in separate jars, but didn't really make cuts, just sat there tasting every so often to gain some feel for it. It went from really harsh and sharp to slightly sweeter and then just started tasting weird. I wouldn't drink any of it myself. In the picture you can kind of see that the first jar is the only one that's not cloudy, which I think means I had it too hot, right? I have a 2nd batch fermenting now and I think I'm going to strip that batch, and put that product and this product in and do a second distillation and try to keep it slow so I can get some good, high ABV product.
Was it a bad idea to run such an old mash? should I just toss it to avoid contaminating this next batch? Also, I did two cleaning runs before with just water, but there was still very tiny flakes of copper left in my product, should I filter it, toss it, or redistill it to get rid of these flakes? These flakes are muuuch smaller than the ones that came out during the cleaning run, so I'm hoping that eventually I will get stuff with no copper flakes in it.
From left to right is the order they came out of the still. I tossed the first half pint, and the first jar has about 1.5 pints in it. The ABV of the jars are 50, 45, 35, 25, 19, and 10 from left to right. After sitting out in the open for a couple of days they appear to have gotten cloudier (than in this picture).
