distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distillate

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Wasserwerks
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distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distillate

Post by Wasserwerks »

Hey all.
Recently ran a batch of old (nov 09') apple cider through the pot still. 5.25L of wine, cut the foreshot and heads, miscalculated the hearts, but saved the tails and reran in the next 5.25L batch. The calculations for that was spot-on as far as yield was concerned.
Since this cider (wine) was set for storage, there was Potassium Sorbate and Potassium MetaBiSulfate in the mix for killing off any extra yeast and also for preservative.
The boil produced upwards to 120P or 60% alcohol in average between both runs. However, I was noticing a sulfur odor when doing a "nose-test" I am primarily doing Brandy runs now, but if this is going to occur when distilling old wines I'm going to have to start making some fresh ferments.
Thoughts, suggestions?
Thanks!
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HolyBear
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Re: distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distilla

Post by HolyBear »

Do you have copper in the vapor path?
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Wasserwerks
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Re: distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distilla

Post by Wasserwerks »

Stainless pot, copper lines, coiled condenser. Its a small rig, I posted a pic of it somewhere. I modified it as since, as I had the condenser angled, instead of vertical.
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Wasserwerks
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Re: distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distilla

Post by Wasserwerks »

Double distilled.....left the smell in the pot :clap:
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OBX Phantom
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Re: distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distilla

Post by OBX Phantom »

Just for future reference, The copper needs to be in the vapor path, so most of the worm coil doesn't really count. If I was you I would try switching the scrubbers to copper then you might get away with a single run.
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Wasserwerks
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Re: distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distilla

Post by Wasserwerks »

Gotcha. It's just a simple pot still, not a column. There aren't any scrubbers in place, should i install something in-line somewhere? The second distillation seemed to have helped.
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Dnderhead
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Re: distilling old homemade wine, sulfur smell from distilla

Post by Dnderhead »

two ways, leave the wine open ..if that dont do it, put some clean copper in the wine and leave it for some time,the wineries use copper sulphate? but your on your own on that.
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