All-grain vs sugar wash hangover???

[jedneck]

Next run. Cit a jar of center hearts down n see if you still get a hang over.

Even with my dirty whiskies (pot stilled) I dont get near tje hanhover as commecial swill. Dehydrated yes bit not hungover. And I usually have a 55-58% of the run as a keep

[Jeff the Millwright]

Well this is a real mystery then because I definitely pay a price for drinking too much which isn’t that much even with my neutral sugar wash but I don’t see how I can be getting some kind of poison because I really am following the guidelines set out on this site.

My sugar wash is basically just sugar bought from the grocery store and Fleishman’s yeast bought from the grocery store and some sort of cereal as a yeast nutrient also bought at the grocery store and I just use copper and stainless steel and glass. I don’t see how I can be getting some poison.

The only thing I can think of is that I have always been under the impression that the longer I let my wash settle the purer it will be so all my washes I let settle for at least a month so they basically are not cloudy at all but clear colored liquid. If Smiley is right about secondary fermentation causing esters and fusil oils maybe that’s my problem?

[Pikey]

......I clean my still out after every run...............

How fdo you do that ?

[Jeff the Millwright]

Next run. Cit a jar of center hearts down n see if you still get a hang over.

Even with my dirty whiskies (pot stilled) I dont get near tje hanhover as commecial swill. Dehydrated yes bit not hungover. And I usually have a 55-58% of the run as a keep

Yes I will try that but that’s ridiculous that you are basically doing the same cuts as I am and you are doing a pot still and I am doing a reflux to 91 ½% and I’m getting a hangover with the same alcohol as in four beers and you just a bit dehydrated. Something is very wrong here. If it isn’t that I have been letting my washes settle for way too long I have no idea what’s going on.

I really thought the stories about lack of hangovers with home distilling were like stories about the fish people caught but apparently everyone agrees that there is a big difference between home distilled and commercial but for me they are about the same but my corn whiskey is way worse. Back to the drawing board.

[Jeff the Millwright]

......I clean my still out after every run...............

How fdo you do that ?

My boiler which is made out of stainless I clean with a scrubbing pad and detergent and rinse thoroughly and the actual still part I run extremely hot water through everything same with my cropper scrubbers.

[HDNB]

Jeff - how much do you drink every day?

[Jeff the Millwright]

Jeff - how much do you drink every day?

I only drink once a week and I never drink more than the equivalent of 8 beers or 12 ounces at 40% because that’s where I start getting a considerable hangover but usually it’s more like six beer equivalency. I’m really not that big of a drinker but I really enjoy my one night a week.

Maybe that’s a lot to some people but I’m in the construction trades and in that world I am considered pretty much a teetotaler. Is this turning into an intervention, lol ??

[HDNB]

nah, i don't judge.
The point being if I drink every day (and did for 30+ years) i never really got a hangover. I don't really drink much at all anymore...something about having gallons and gallons that makes it less appealing i guess... if i drink two shots of anything now i get skull cramps, and if i dipped in like i used to on a daily basis (maybe 150 -250ml@ 40% was pretty average) i'll be sick as a dog all the next day.
granted less sick and less headachy on quality cut homemade...but not feeling great none the less.

the moral of the story is the best way to avoid a hangover is stay drunk.

[Jeff the Millwright]

nah, i don't judge.
The point being if I drink every day (and did for 30+ years) i never really got a hangover. I don't really drink much at all anymore...something about having gallons and gallons that makes it less appealing i guess... if i drink two shots of anything now i get skull cramps, and if i dipped in like i used to on a daily basis (maybe 150 -250ml@ 40% was pretty average) i'll be sick as a dog all the next day.
granted less sick and less headachy on quality cut homemade...but not feeling great none the less.

the moral of the story is the best way to avoid a hangover is stay drunk.

Thank you HDNB for your experienced opinion. If I can’t straighten out my corn whiskey problem I will consider your solution because already many of my work mates have adopted that devoted strategy, LOL.

[thecroweater]

Skyy Vodka is piss, could be one of the worst I've had. Drank a bit over half a bottle and was so sick I never drank any more but tipped it into a faints jar. Skyy is very very far from what I would call premium, more like the Wild Irish Rose of vodka
I know they claim its quadruple distilled, big whoop, buffy trace vodka is distilled 16 times and that's crap too. Distill it as much as ya like, if ya too lousy to make the cuts it won't be any good and maybe worse for it.

[Jeff the Millwright]

Skyy Vodka is piss, could be one of the worst I've had. Drank a bit over half a bottle and was so sick I never drank any more but tipped it into a faints jar. Skyy is very very far from what I would call premium, more like the Wild Irish Rose of vodka

Well that’s more piling on of disappointing news tonight because that’s pretty much the same as my neutral sugar wash that I distilled to the low 90 percentile as far as hangovers go. It is advertised as about the cleanest you can get which is why I chose it but I understand not all advertising is 100% truthful, LOL.

Well I still say unless anyone comes up with a better solution I’m going to switch from Baker’s yeast to E-1118 and drastically cut down fermenting time to distilling time and see if these help. Maybe I’m just letting my mashes settle for way too long and be Baker’s yeast isn’t helping either.

I have to head out now so hopefully I can pick this up tomorrow if anybody has any more suggestions.

[thecroweater]

I can pick this up tomorrow if anybody has any more suggestions.

Make better cuts with a better wash

[shadylane]

"All-grain vs sugar wash hangover"

I'd be pouring gasoline on myself and waiting for the spark
For voicing my opinion on this

[The Baker]

You say you were here 5 years ago ? You need to pm one of the mods to get your old ID back

My old username was Wanker which I thought was pretty humorous but unfortunately no one else seemed to so maybe I will stick with this one. Maybe you have to be Canadian to appreciate the humor in that name, LOL.

Australians get it too.

Geoff

[700G]

Skyy Vodka is piss, could be one of the worst I've had. Drank a bit over half a bottle and was so sick I never drank any more but tipped it into a faints jar. Skyy is very very far from what I would call premium, more like the Wild Irish Rose of vodka

Well that’s more piling on of disappointing news tonight because that’s pretty much the same as my neutral sugar wash that I distilled to the low 90 percentile as far as hangovers go. It is advertised as about the cleanest you can get which is why I chose it but I understand not all advertising is 100% truthful, LOL.

Well I still say unless anyone comes up with a better solution I’m going to switch from Baker’s yeast to E-1118 and drastically cut down fermenting time to distilling time and see if these help. Maybe I’m just letting my mashes settle for way too long and be Baker’s yeast isn’t helping either.

I have to head out now so hopefully I can pick this up tomorrow if anybody has any more suggestions.

Skyy is the only vodka I like to drink if I don't have access to my own. It's very clean stuff. I've drank a whole lot of this stuff and never got a bad hangover.

Here's a chart I found somewhere a while back. Might have even found it here on HD:

skyy.jpg (12.03 KiB) Viewed 1996 times

[HDNB]

many of my work mates have adopted that devoted strategy, LOL.

it takes time, money, effort and a lot of dedication but i have every confidence you can do it!

[thecroweater]

That chart means not a thing other than Skyy ™ selected some brands with higher % of impurities with no regard to what those impurities might be, ie water is an impurity . My experience is its overrated crap that made me crooker than poison.
More often than not the quality, prestige and price are more about marketing than anything actually tangible. Skyy is one example but here is another, in the states Blantons bourbon is marketed as up market and a high dollar whiskey but in Aussie its lesser known and marketed mid range priced about the same as say Jim beam black label. Its all about perception and if I get sick my perception changes fast
Skyy here is similarly marketed and a quick check at a retailers like Dan Murphy's will show just under a dollar difference in price between skyy and basic red label Smirnoff, so with demand driven pricing it would be fair to assume a similar quality and I found it so.

[The Baker]

My wife does not like vodka.
I asked her to sniff a couple and say what she thought.

Smirnoff; 'that is horrible'.

Grey Goose; 'that's not too bad'.

She has a good palate.

Geoff

[kimbodious]

I am going out on a skinny limb here and flagging smearing through flooding

[robdouglas]

I only ferment for 7 days. Mash ferment distil 1 run a week.

[Swedish Pride]

I use HDNBs approach, stay drunk and you wont get a hangover

[Pikey]

...........Well I still say unless anyone comes up with a better solution I’m going to switch from Baker’s yeast to E-1118 and drastically cut down fermenting time to distilling time and see if these help. Maybe I’m just letting my mashes settle for way too long and be Baker’s yeast isn’t helping either.

I have to head out now so hopefully I can pick this up tomorrow if anybody has any more suggestions.

I think your cutting down the fermenting time could be a red herring.

I think 1118 is a good cean yeast.

I think I would run the still as simple as possible. Leave out any packing. All of the column which you are going to use, plus the dfleg if you can't leave that out - give a good soak for a few hours in a strongish citric acid solution until a noticeable colour change occurs (It gets to look more like new copper). Then a good soak and scrub of anything you can get at with clean water. Pull some scrubbers through your pipes if you can. Take special care to get your defleg as clean as possible .

Then I'd do a single run and take your 12 oz 40% equivalent from the very middle jar of your collection and see whether that leaves you with a sweeter feeling in the morning.

Edit:

[kimbodious]

Sorry in advance about all the questions... this is an intriguing issue

What is your output rate on your reflux run?
Is your 91% ABV a temperature corrected reading?
Are you making cuts by sniff and taste or by percentages?
Have you tried other people's home made spirit to see if you get the same hangover reaction?
Why were you using a reflux setup for the spirit run?