First run result

[Sataroth]

Hello guys!
I did my first run yesterday, and I don't know is it ok or is it complete unacceptable
Let me describe what I did.
Mashed 4Kg of base malt + 1Kg of caramel malt into 25L, that gave me 11.5% of sugar in 22L batch. Fermented with "Alcotec Turbo Whiskey Yeast" (after I red this forum I found out that was a mistake to use turbo yeasts ) which gave me around 20-21L with around 6% of spirit. First 2 days yeasts where spreading in a wort and than they have suddenly started to work extremely hard and did their job for only 6 hours or so I had to let everything sit into fermentor for another 10 days because had a work emergency, which game my wort pretty sweet yogurt smell (lactose guys have started to develop their stuff for around 5 last days). No signs of other infections, so it must be all good as I thought...

I did 2 stripping runs divided my batch by half, as fast as equipment could without foaming into condenser. I did that until I had 10ABV in output drops.
After that I did a spirit run with special copper lining made for moonshiners out of M1 copper(food grade copper). Took out 10% of pure alcohol as foreshots/heads (I had 5L of 20ABV so I took 100ml as 10%) veeeery sloooow, kinda 1 drop per 2 seconds. No signs of solvents came out anymore and I have started to slowly (2-4 drops/sec) collect into small jars until 50ABV in my output. Then I gave it max fire and took 400ml of stinky cloudy tails separately(don't know why, I think I will just throw those away as far as I can, they smell just terribly, kinda like a vet dog on a junkyard).

What I have now is 1.6L of diluted (with distilled water) moonshine at 50ABV. It's absolutely clean and looks awesome!

But what makes me think I'm wrong is:
1. Taste is harsh, no signs of stinky tails or solvents but just harsh. I hope this will go away by aging as I red already here...
2. Smell has small to none signs of malt or grains. It's quite complex and I'm too new in it to judge, but I have expect a strong malt smell. Is it because of turbo yeasts, or it's ok to be like that?
3. I remember from my childhood how pure sugarwash moonshine smells, and I recognize this smell as a "moonshine smell". There was dry law times and ppl brewed their own moonshine those times. So, my moonshine has this "moonshine" smell as well. It's much more complex but still persist. Is it incorrect to have such smell?

Where am I wrong, guys? Are turbo yeast and long fermentation my only visible mistakes?

[pounsfos]

But what makes me think I'm wrong is:
1. Taste is harsh, no signs of stinky tails or solvents but just harsh. I hope this will go away by aging as I red already here...
2. Smell has small to none signs of malt or grains. It's quite complex and I'm too new in it to judge, but I have expect a strong malt smell. Is it because of turbo yeasts, or it's ok to be like that?
3. I remember from my childhood how pure sugarwash moonshine smells, and I recognize this smell as a "moonshine smell". There was dry law times and ppl brewed their own moonshine those times. So, my moonshine has this "moonshine" smell as well. It's much more complex but still persist. Is it incorrect to have such smell?

Where am I wrong, guys? Are turbo yeast and long fermentation my only visible mistakes?

1: this is mainly a cuts issue, sounds like you are using a pot still, so you need to taste, smell and feel whats coming out,easiest way is to collect in bottles (i just use 330ml beer bottles) let them air a few days and then taste and make your cuts, practice makes perfect.

2: the smell will come through eventually this is a patience mans hobby

3:the smell is fine

overall I think you had a very good first run, you learned some stuff.

[Sataroth]

But what makes me think I'm wrong is:
1. Taste is harsh, no signs of stinky tails or solvents but just harsh. I hope this will go away by aging as I red already here...
2. Smell has small to none signs of malt or grains. It's quite complex and I'm too new in it to judge, but I have expect a strong malt smell. Is it because of turbo yeasts, or it's ok to be like that?
3. I remember from my childhood how pure sugarwash moonshine smells, and I recognize this smell as a "moonshine smell". There was dry law times and ppl brewed their own moonshine those times. So, my moonshine has this "moonshine" smell as well. It's much more complex but still persist. Is it incorrect to have such smell?

Where am I wrong, guys? Are turbo yeast and long fermentation my only visible mistakes?

1: this is mainly a cuts issue, sounds like you are using a pot still, so you need to taste, smell and feel whats coming out,easiest way is to collect in bottles (i just use 330ml beer bottles) let them air a few days and then taste and make your cuts, practice makes perfect.

2: the smell will come through eventually this is a patience mans hobby

3:the smell is fine

overall I think you had a very good first run, you learned some stuff.

Thanks!! Yeah, now my smell develops a bit and I recognize that I took too much heads and some of tails in first run
Is it ok to keep bottles or jars opened for a day(s)? Won't they just evaporate if I will cover with paper towel and a rubberband?

[pounsfos]

paper towel and a rubber band is fine, I let mine air for a week before testing, but that's mainly because I have to wait to the weekend before I can play with the still again

[NZChris]

Young white dog will always be harsh at 50%. Try lower.

Long airing should help if you are in a hurry to drink it. I never air obvious heart cut jars because I don't see any great advantage from doing that. If your's is already light on flavor, letting what remains waft out the door might not be such a good idea.

You don't say how you did your stripping runs, but it is possible to lose quite a bit of flavor if you strip using poor advice.

[DSmith78]

All grain for your first run? Very well done!

[Sataroth]

Young white dog will always be harsh at 50%. Try lower.

Long airing should help if you are in a hurry to drink it. I never air obvious heart cut jars because I don't see any great advantage from doing that. If your's is already light on flavor, letting what remains waft out the door might not be such a good idea.

You don't say how you did your stripping runs, but it is possible to lose quite a bit of flavor if you strip using poor advice.

Dilluted some to 40% and let settle for 2 days, tried and taste is good, but smell isn't. Have to separate more tails for sure.
And I'm doing stripping runs down to 10-15% alcohol in a stream and on a quite slow speed due to foam rising Have to strip at around 3-10 drops per second, slower at start and faster after. And discarding first 20ml per 13L batch.

[Sataroth]

All grain for your first run? Very well done!

Thanks I have experience in beer brewing, so the only new area for me is distilling

[NZChris]

When you say 10-15%, I presume you mean at the spout, something I never watch because I aim for a predetermined low wines abv. What abv did you end up with?

To help with puking, don't overfill the boiler and use some kind of anti-foam, I prefer butter because the flavor is a match, it's cheap and we've always got some.

Realising too late that you've included one late jar too many is PITA if you have an empty drinks cabinet. Time and oak will fix it if it's not too bad. My fix is to quickly put down another ferment, learn from the mistake and put the tailsy batch on oak some place where I won't find it for while.

[Bryan1]

When you said you used turbo yeast you start polishing a turd, no matter how much you try and polish it basically it is still a turd. I did say this to a HB and the resonse was well don't say that is it will harm sales

[jayka]

Young white dog will always be harsh at 50%. Try lower.

Long airing should help if you are in a hurry to drink it. I never air obvious heart cut jars because I don't see any great advantage from doing that. If your's is already light on flavor, letting what remains waft out the door might not be such a good idea.

You don't say how you did your stripping runs, but it is possible to lose quite a bit of flavor if you strip using poor advice.

Any chance you can expand on this? The only advise I have ever seen is strip as fast as you can.

[NZChris]

If you take a foreshot then strip to a target abv, you should get a lot of flavor. If you watch a thermometer or parrot you run the risk of shutting down early and chucking out flavor with the backset. Eventually, I was lucky enough to find a suitable glass vessel that can take a whole strip and have the alcometer floating in it. Before that, I emptied the jug into an SS preserving pan and measured the abv of that. I aim for around 25-32%, depending on what I'm making, 40% for neutrals.

I very seldom have to add water to my heart cut to get to barrel strength.

If you surf commercial distiller's websites, some of them tell you what abv they strip to.

[Sataroth]

When you say 10-15%, I presume you mean at the spout, something I never watch because I aim for a predetermined low wines abv. What abv did you end up with?

To help with puking, don't overfill the boiler and use some kind of anti-foam, I prefer butter because the flavor is a match, it's cheap and we've always got some.

Realising too late that you've included one late jar too many is PITA if you have an empty drinks cabinet. Time and oak will fix it if it's not too bad. My fix is to quickly put down another ferment, learn from the mistake and put the tailsy batch on oak some place where I won't find it for while.

Not using perrot or such, just using small medical cylibder to fill for 40ml and put alcoholmeter in it. Ending when pot gives me 10-15% and ending with total 3-5L of low wines at 20-35% which is good for spirit run.

Can I add just butter to float on a surface? Cool, didn't knew that...

[NZChris]

I've been using butter since I read about it here. It has been working well for me.

[Sataroth]

Great, and how fast could you run your stripping run?
I have 23L pot filled with 13L and 2" head with straight condenser, entire stuff made with stainless steel.
Filling 13L as my fermentor ggives me around 26L, so I have 2 stripping runs divided in half. And I didn't bought larger pot because having issues with my back and shouldn't lift heavy stuff

[NZChris]

I strip as fast as I can without puking.

I use a preheater and that did involve heavy lifting for many years, but I'm getting too old for that now and I'm using a cheap 12V pump to fill the preheater.