Dunder pit infections

[ElCubanazo]

Retort Lees are the other acidic component and a working distillery has a lot of it on hand.

Aight Mr. Staves, yet again you've piqued my interest. (Curse my unquenchable thirst for knowledge). What are these "retort Lees" you speak of?

My guess: lees in the fermenter after several generations of recycling get very acetic-heavy?

[SaltyStaves]

Retorts are the two thumpers used with traditional Jamaican pot stills. The 'Lees' that accumulate in them are acidic and rich in volatile acids that have separated from the wash but have boiling points that don't allow them as far as the condenser.

[WeegieDistiller]

Fresh (or not so fresh) attempt at the muck pit.

Treated the dunder with lime to raise ph, added some yeast extract for nitrogen, added some oyster shells for a ph buffer and finally inoculated with a proprionic and clostridium cultures.

After a few weeks the pellicle developed quite nicely and aroma wise it's started producing fruity but clearly acetone notes. I read that clostridium will produce acetone if the ph drops below 4.5 (which it had), added a tad more lime and within a week the acetone disappeared.

Next rum run will be in a week or so and will also chuck in some cane vinegar that's been fermenting separately as well.

[kiwi Bruce]

"WeegieDistiller"
Be careful with the "tapatalk" on this forum...you'll only get a couple of warnings from one of our moderators and you'll get the boot...not a mod myself...just saying, seen it several times...don't risk it.

[WeegieDistiller]

Totally forgot about it as I rarely post pictures on here.

Post edited and trying to resize images

[OtisT]

I swear it was Otis who said that the low wines are the most effective but I've been doing both jic.

I don’t recall saying that, but who knows. I’ve tried infected dunder before fermenting, after fermenting, and with low wines and don’t think I can’t tell the difference for sure. More recently I’ve been using 10% or less of un-inflected dunder before starting the ferment. The mixing with Low Wines was an attempt to try Fischer Esterification that I had read about. I played a bit with acids too, but only small tests and did not dedicate an entire batch to the process. I think I’ve said this before, but I’m no expert and I just like trying new things.

To be totally honest I’ve made more than a handful of batches with infected dunder and more half don’t turn out so well. The ones where I worked to create more esters just created more bad tastes in the final product. I had better luck using less dunder and no infections. I have three bad batches on oak now, two over a year old, and they have not gotten any better.

With all the work, smell and mess involved, combined with wasting a lot of time/$, I’m done experimenting with infections and am focused on good, solid and proven traditional recipes that very rarely turn out bad.

I wish you luck in the cuts to come.
Otis