Distilling beer

[JBAR9]

My buddy gave me a keg of his brew shops beer to attempt to distill. I'm about ready to do a run and all I'm getting out of the nozzle is foam. Should I use just the foam ( and will this greatly gum up my pot still), give the keg more time to settle, or pump and pour til I have clear beer streaming? I'm leaning towards the later. Any prior advice on cleaning out the hop oils left in the still or will a good vinegar scrub down work for that too. Thanks folks.

[DAD300]

I believe that most will say you can get alcohol from old beer, but it is not worth it! Hopped beers do not distill well. Meaning it will taste bad...and you'll have to clean everything!

[Jimbo]

you need to decarbonate the beer first. keep ltting the pressure off the keg couple times a day for a week, or fill a barrel and keep stirring it up until its clear. last beer I ran keg cleaned up fine with a scrub down and the hot alc fores vapors from the next run.

Edit: to DAD's comment. I distilled an IPA, its a kick in the teeth. A lightly hopped pilsner or such may give you better results.

[MitchyBourbon]

I wouldn't do it, wouldn't be prudent. The hops (I assume it is a hopped beer) will affect the taste of future runs.

[JBAR9]

Thanks folks. It's a blonde ale, so lower on the hop range. I'll go for it, see how much she foams up, and let y'all know how it turns out. Definitely got a few fores and heads saved to do a cleanup run afterwards.

[DAD300]

Please report results.

[kungpo]

I wouldn't! But good luck!

When I tried it, the taste of the distillate was terrible! But each to their own. You might like it after all.

[Jimbo]

Im not crazy about mine either. Maybe 30 years on oak will calm it down LOL. I did see a commercial one once, forgot who, maybe Corsair, curious how they got theirs palatable.

[Cardinalbags]

If the keg is foaming it is likely because the keg is warmer now than when it was carbonated and dispensing say from inside a fridge. The dissolved CO2 in the keg is very much impacted by the temperature. the beer can absorb more volumes of co2 at lower temperatures. if the keg is warmed up, those volumes of co2 cannot be disolved in the beer any longer and will instantly foam coming out of the nozzle, much in the fashion that superheated liquid flashes off vapour when opened up to atmosphere.

beer brewers use force carbonation charts to set pressure on the keg based on the volumes of co2 desired and the temperature at which it will be stored.

If after reading all the other advice given and you still want to run it, dont worry about the foam. just dispense it into a container and allow the foam to settle back to a liquid, then load it into your boiler.

[humbledore]

I have taken pressurized carbonated beer out of the keg fridge, poured it into the boiler, and let her rip. Leave lots of headroom in the boiler. Low hops, I bet it will be good. Not saying this is recommend process overall but in a pinch...

[JBAR9]

Well, she ain't going so good to start. Poured 5 gallons into a bucket, aerated it, and left it overnight. Scooped off foam in morning, and she tasted flat. Poured into boiler, let settle then went to town. Just as my worm that's above water started to heat up, the stopper ontop of my still went flying off and a stream 8 feet tall of beer came spewing out. Not sure if this is due to my worm having low spots and clogging, the beer slobbering over into the worm and clogging, or if The beer is just still too carbonated and heating too quick. Left a bunch of headroom before heating and wasn't bubbling too hard when I attached cap and luted her shut. Didn't find foam in the worm and did a successful run the other day with my worm working just fine. I saved what was still in the boiler for another attempt tomorrow and got another 5 gallons sitting in a bucket aerating. Any ideas here?

[Jimbo]

Sorry, not full of ideas but thanks for the laugh, funny story, as long as you werent burnt by the boiling brew geyser.

[humbledore]

Well you could let it air out longer. How tall is your riser? Column diameter? Not sure how it got up there so quick. I don't have a pot still, I have a boka. it is 2" column and fairly tall. Mine did not give me problems, with plenty of headroom. Like 3-4 gallons of headroom minimum.

[JBAR9]

If it weren't for the roof of the shed I distill in, the geyser would have probably gone 12+ feet. Not burned by it but had to shoo my dog away who loves chasing water out of hoses and I guess this was a similar situation for him. My still can probably hold up to 7 gallons just below the cap and maybe 6 up to the collar. I charged with less than 5 closer to 4 gallons. My cap isn't that huge. Shed smells pretty good now though...

[Cardinalbags]

Yep, even at room temperature, something that heavily carbonated will still have some CO2 still in solution. If you take a paddle mixer on a cordless drill and mix it up, some more of the CO2 will come out of solution. I am guessing that when you put it in the boiler it foamed up a bit since you said you let it settle again in the boiler.

If you are patient, put it in a carboy and let it sit for a few weeks. CO2 will continue to come out and through the airlock. Especially if the room is warm where it is stored.

You may think its tastes flat, by all comparisons to a more carbonated beer (i.e something straight from the liquor store) but there is still a fair amount of CO2 in there.

Heating it up rapidly in the still is evolving off any residual CO2 at a very rapid pace this the foaming you experience on what should have been a "flat" beer.

[JBAR9]

Thanks cardinalbags. That's what my new plan was-let the beer sit in covered barrels for awhile to lose all CO2, then get back at it. I'll probably let it sit about a week then I'll let y'all know how she's coming.

[MitchyBourbon]

Beer mashing techniques deliberately produce some un-fermentable sugars to offset the bitter taste of hops. Those sugars will also tend to foam during distillation. So after you solve your carbonation issues you should still expect a little more foaming than you would see with a normal wash/mash.

[Cardinalbags]

Yep. Sounds about right. When I carbonate beer using forced carbonation via CO2 cylinders i am not happy until at least a weeks goes by with the beer exposed to about 8 psig at 4-6 deg C inside the fridge starting out from room temp. Without doing the math, it would seem fair to take a week to go the other way..... I know thats not really scientific but maybe a good rule of thumb.

Edit: here is a link to the force carbonation chart that i use when i make beer in kegs.
http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

i like to get about 2.3 volumes of CO2 for my beer. you can see as temp rises, the amount of CO2 the beer can contain for the same pressure goes down, but there can still be up to 0.8 volumes of CO2 in the beer at room temperature and next. to atmospheric pressure. If there is 20l of beer, then the gas contained in the beer at room temperature could be as much as 16 litres of gas which when heated would cause a lot of foam...... you almost need go warm it a little above room temp if you can or alternatively leave it for a longer period of time until it reaches equalibrium with the surrounding atmosphere.... that sounds like a week to me.

[JBAR9]

Finally, after all my slobbering/puking problems and refitting a larger diameter worm to my pot, the beer distill is on. Still need a super slow burn to have it not slobber over even after only charging the still half way. Initial taste test around 40 abv ain't so bad out of the spout. But I'll let y'all know how it goes after I run off the other 10 gallons I got and do a spirit run. Though I'm planning on saving a single distill pint or two to taste against and do some pints-both single and double distill-on oak chips.

[JBR]

I did a really dark oatmeal stout a few months ago. Actually turned out excellent tons of flavor none of which resembled hops. But the IBUs were low and tons of dark malt
Good luck

[JBAR9]

JBR-how much if any aging did you do? One run through a reflux or several through a pot still? Try adding any chips yourself for more flavor? Thanks.

[nerdybrewer]

I have a low hopped very heavy and dark stout I've been aging. It's a 10% beer so I tried it in the crap still I returned to the ebay seller.
The distillate was clear and about 25% ABV and smelled like malt.
I still have a couple gallons of the stuff, so I'm wondering since it's so very heavy bodied should I dilute it before running it in the new still I am building?
Just dilute with spring water maybe 1:1 and then run it? Maybe use this for the sacrificial run then clean with water & vinegar again?
I don't want to ruin my new still with beer if that's what the consensus is about running beer, but it would also be nice to get that stuff off my shelf so I can replace it with something better.

[humbledore]

Beer will not ruin your still. I'm talking clear beer without gunk or actual hops residue in it. Just leave it out to go flat first.

[Jimbo]

Beer will not ruin your still. I'm talking clear beer without gunk or actual hops residue in it. Just leave it out to go flat first.

+1 I ran a couple. No harm done to the still. The spirit is pretty odd tho.

[rad14701]

Most folks dislike cleaning out the hop oil enough to defer from attempting to distill beer... I've run beer once but it was very flat light beer and I got lucky that it didn't gunk things up too much... I used it for a cleaning run after still modifications which entailed soldering so it wasn't anything I would have considered drinking...

[humbledore]

Well I keep hearing this and I have to say I have not experienced it. I understand beer and hops, I brew hundreds of gallons a year and have been for years. I know hops have oils but it is a very tiny part of a beer. Do beers taste like oil or leave your mouth oily? No, they don't. I would not recommend that you put hops in something you intend to distill simply because that's not how the best distilling recipes are made. But I have distilled beer, more than once. A good rinse afterwards and nothing in my still smelled or tasted like hops or hop oil. Neither did the batch I ran afterwards. I can only speak to my own experience.

Again I am not talking about a raw beer wort with hops floating in it. I am talking about a finished clear beer.

[JBR]

JBR-how much if any aging did you do? One run through a reflux or several through a pot still? Try adding any chips yourself for more flavor? Thanks.

Was a slow run on the pot still. I did not get much from it I only had 4 gal at like 5%. So alittle over 1/2 quart of drink. I drank it white no aging just aired for 2 days.

[nerdybrewer]

If I run the rest of my thick & dark black beer should I take any extra steps to clean my equipment after?

[JBAR9]

Nerdy brewer-ran all my beer, including spirit run, cleaned with lime, salt, and vinegar/water. Am currently running a 2nd generation sweet mix whisky and it smells/tastes normal. I'd say no more cleaning than normal. If anyone is interested how the beer distillate came out, it was a supper low yield overall but the lady and I will be tasting and cutting tonight or tomorrow and I'll let y'all know immediate results before aging...

[nerdybrewer]

Added the beer to my AB wash and stilled 9 to 10 gallons in one run.
I got a real nice yield ranging from 57% down to 20% in 9 quarts.
Tastes very good!!