I've been reading on this forum for a week or two now and only recently made an account.
There seems to be a wealth of knowledge that I hope one day I can contribute to.
I've been reading a fair amount of information relating to methods and best practice etc, something that stood out to me is that typically speaking the water used by many Rum recipe's is just that, water.
People later go on to add nutrients into their wash / ferment, some don't.
This led me to ask the question, what if we used water that already had nutrients?
So, i'm testing the theory in a small batch and would like to know what you all thought, if there's any pointers or tips you can provide, anything i've missed etc. (Never done this before so anything is helpful)
Currently, the wash is fermenting, i'll describe the process so far below;
- Soaked 10kg / 22 Lbs of Dry, Low-Dust Hay in 80L / 17.6 Gal container over 24 Hours.
- Collected 10L / 2.2Gal of the water in 2x 5L Demijohns
- Water Measured a S.G of 1.005, and a PH of 9, tasted bittersweet, grassy?
- This was filtered through a muslin cloth and sieve into a 20L stock pot
- I slowly heated the 10L of water to 90 C / 194 F over around 2 hours, where it remained for around 10 minutes and was taken off heat
- When the water was warm, the bitterness took a back seat, and it tasted like a very sweet herbal tea, much more palatable
- As the water cooled to 85 C / 185 F I introduced 2.5kg / 5.5Lbs of unrefined panela sugar crystals and stirred them in
- This was left to cool to around 20 C / 68 F overnight, around 12 Hours, and read a PH of 4/5 and a SG of 1.095 @ 20 C / 68 F
- I then Aerated a 1L Jug of the wash, and pitched 5gram of EC-1118 Yeast, stirred slightly and left to stand for 30 minutes
- This was then added to the main wash, which was again aerated and sealed in the fermenting bucket in a constant 28 C / 82 F environment
So far its been 4 Days since that, and it seems to be fermenting well, with bubbles coming out of the airlock every 15 seconds or so.
I plan to rack this after another 3 days into another fermenting bucket and let it settle for another week or so, and maybe repeat the process a second time before attempting a slow stripping run.
I've also read about double fermentation's, is that worth pursuing with another 5g of yeast, or will this be in vain?