Setting Up Info

[mcgriff1985]

OK so I did my first corn mash, I'm all set, fermentation going good, so now to back up a little and ask some water questions first.

What do you use to test your water for its chemical balance, I am in a pure well, wonderful tasting water, high calcium and iron, and have a rain soft filtering system that takes all the iron out, I do notice calcium build which I won't complain about, it adds his nutrients and flavor to the water. That all said I am going to test the water so I know how to balance it and wanted an idea of what others did. If I can verify it's stripping the iron completely without stripping the calcium, then I suspect I'm getting water much like other natural springs kick out in the mountains around me without having to go setup on one.

How do you clean your still, I have a basic 10 gallon SS pot, with copper pipes going to another SS custom made thumper, connected to a condenser via copper. Just want to make sure I run a good clean through it, I boiled a 50/50 water vinegar solution through before thoroughly rinsing with clean water.

Planning on running next weekend or late next week. When you ferment do you wait not just for your yeast to fall to the bottom but for your mash to clear like a wine would during a secondary fermentation, I am because I plan to do brandy with fruits and grain mashes and didn't know if I needed to secondary ferment to clear some or just filter and run.

[Oatmeal]

Water chemistry is above my paygrade.

After a vinegar cleaning run it's advisable to do a sacrificial alcohol run to clean the last gunk, something like a basic sugar wash- after that a basic rinse with water should suffice as the foreshots/heads will take care of the residual fusels from the tails of the previous run.

As home distillers, we have the luxury of being able to take a bit more care with our processes than those with a bottom line. Better to let your ferment sit a while after it's done to settle and let the yeast clean up, a weekish. Won't necessarily hurt it to run quicker if you have to, but best not to rush if you don't have too.

[mcgriff1985]

So I am 6 almost 7 days into my ferment, the head looked good 24 hours in, 48 hours in the head was completely gone off the top of the mash, I left it be for 48 hours, I lost power temporarily which did shutdown my room heater that keeps my room at 75 minimum, it dropped to 65 in that room (as I wasn't able to turn it back on until hours later), not a huge loss the outside temps are in the 30s and house never lost its heat just my room heater shut off for a few hours, i turned the heater back on and checked the temp, my temp barely fell to 71 degrees (mash not room) no noticeable change I did , so I took a gravity reading, 1.025. I waited 24 hours after this, I was back at 75 degrees inside my mash and the room holding steady at 75. I am now at 1 full week from start of fermentation I noticed that I had no visual change of my mash. I checked my gravity again and am at 1.025 still this morning, almost a full 7 days from the start. I guess my ferment could have finished that quickly, but I am having trouble believing this, I would think the yeast would work until all the sugars are gone and my gravity would hit at least 1.000 maybe a smidge higher or lower, but that is saying still another 5% in potential alcohol, so I am just curious as to what others think.

[psf]

Raise your wash temp to the suggested temp for yeast you pitched.

Check your PH. It’s probably crashed.

Watched pot doesn’t boil. You sure it’s not working?

[mcgriff1985]

Raising my temp, I did check the yeast, distillamax says it's best between 68-91 and ph between 3.5 and 6 and I clearly misread my initial 6.0 reading or I needed better light today it was 8.5 out of the tap, I'm going to get some more test strips and retest these were from early spring last year as well.

I'm not sure it hasn't done its job, I have consistently read 1.025 on my hydrometer for 3 days in a row I started at about 1.050 maybe a little higher 1.055 on the hydrometer and used a 15% alcohol yeast, it could just be done but I'm thinking pH could be the issue of today's readings are correct, I'm going to get new test strips for my water tonight.

*update
I found my other set of test strips my ph at the faucet when I start is 6.3 a little high, I tested the ph of the mash and it doesn't read pH, not sure if that is because it's hard to read or because it doesn't have a ph reading

[NZChris]

Check your hydrometer in water.

[mcgriff1985]

I did, just to make sure, it was right on the money.

I threw in some baking soda after reading pH and it was through the floor, 0.5 , I tested again was around 4.5, now so I let it sit or do I pitch new yeast

[NZChris]

Re-pitching won't do any harm.

[jog666]

About the water, Im also using well water. I havent had it tested but all of the animals out back like it, garden does good with it, taste good enough we drink it vs county water and everything I have put yeast in came from the well. If the taste is good, i probably wouldnt do anything but check PH and thats if I ran into fermentation issues. I did run into one issue with some UJSSM but I was many generation into it and did cut back on the backset.

The wait time after fermenting, any where from a few days to many months. Just depended on what I had going on at the time. I have run some murky wash on my boiler without issues many times. Since I got a thumper in service I havent cared as much about how clear a wash is. Clearest goes to the boiler & the rest in the thumper.

[NZChris]

Many commercial distillers of fine products distill with the grain in the boiler, so clearing seems a bit pointless.

Did the ferment take off again?

[mcgriff1985]

I got a little distracted last night. I have Irish twins at 1 and 2 years old (just turned in January) and they got a little sick and we had to sit with them, so I didn't repitch. It did not seem to change at all visually, my hydrometer seemed to read at 1.030, a .005 jump, and I checked it twice and rechecked my brand new hydrometer with just water in my beaker and it read exactly where it should have at 1.000. I went ahead and repitched this morning, following procedure to the letter, and just giving it some time to take off now. If it doesn't do anything in 3 days and my reading doesn't change I'm just going to filter and run it and see what I get.

[mcgriff1985]

I repitched this morning. it was brownish tan but no sign of anything going on, no bubbles, no anything before I repitched. After responding here, I decided to take a quick look and seems to be doing a little something which is good.

That was clear when I pitched but holding bubbles it seems now. I did also go ahead and order a digital ph meter, was like 30 usd not bad so I can monitor that until I can get into a groove on how to setup my water for the mash. Better than the strips I've been using.

[mcgriff1985]

I have been reading around, I am hearing where lots of others use oyster shells to manage their pH. They put some in a small sack and leave it hang in the mash, and they claim it helps keep the pH just right. I'm not sure how this is exactly but things do this from time to time, nature is awesome, and God has given us everything we possibly need, so it could be true. I was just curious if anyone here has experience with this. I don't mind using baking soda to maintain my mash but it's a guessing game as to how much a half tsp is going to adjust my mash. I have found no solid data that 1tsp baking soda will raise a mash 1 point in 5 gallons let's say or even break it down by the gallon.

My example would be
1tsp added to 1 gallon =+5 pH points, thus meaning 1tsp in 5 gallons =+1 pH point, or in my case 1tsp in 10 gallons =+.5 pH points

Now I don't know that those numbers are accurate that's just my example of what it could be it may be at 1 gallon 1tsp would raise it 7 points, I don't know, I can't find any solid data that gives this equation. I also realize that different mashes may result in different effects maybe 1 mash or goes up 5 points and another 7 points per 1 gallon with 1tsp. So was just curious if anyone would know these numbers or if they have used oyster shells. I could live with purchasing them and then throwing a few in a bag that can dissolve as needed by the mash. Supposedly if the mash pH drops the acidity will dissolve some of the shell and resulting in a raising of the pH, and if it is where it needs to be or higher, nothing happens to the shell. If this is the case, I buy a number of them and just use what I need and buy more when I run out and I don't need to ever worry about my ph being low. Just a thought, please weigh in.

[zapata]

I am hearing where lots of others use oyster shells to manage their pH. They put some in a small sack and leave it hang in the mash, and they claim it helps keep the pH just right. I'm not sure how this is exactly but things do this from time to time, nature is awesome, and God has given us everything we possibly need, so it could be true.

well, if you heard it from god, please repost it here. But the chemists I know would point out that oyster shells are made from almost pure calcium carbonate, and calcium carbonate doesn't easily dissolve in plain water, but as pH drops more and more dissolves. It may well be intelligent design, or basic chemistry. Get it, BASIC chemistry?

I don't mind using baking soda to maintain my mash

Other than it's a pain in rear and yeast don't love the extra sodium the way they love extra calcium, it's just a sign you're doing something wrong because it just isn't necessary.

I have found no solid data that 1tsp baking soda will raise a mash 1 point in 5 gallons let's say or even break it down by the gallon

Nor will you, that's not how pH works. How much an acid or base will affect a solution depends on it's buffering capacity, and that depends on the source water, recipe and even the yeast used and bacterial load of the wash. It's just not a volume related thing, and it's not likely to even be very consistent from wash to wash unless you intend on making exactly the same thing forever.

BTW, you need a meter, better strips, or to learn how to use the ones you have because

it was through the floor, 0.5

No it wasn't. 3.5? Sure. 2.5? Doubt it. Zero point five? Nawpe.

Supposedly if the mash pH drops the acidity will dissolve some of the shell and resulting in a raising of the pH, and if it is where it needs to be or higher, nothing happens to the shell. If this is the case, I buy a number of them and just use what I need and buy more when I run out and I don't need to ever worry about my ph being low.

Not supposedly, that's what happens. Personally though, I'd don't subscribe to them necessarily. Do know that while they are effective at preventing pH based yeast crashing, they will affect the flavor of wash. Speaking of...

OK so I did my first corn mash

This is a real mash? A sugar based "sour mash"? Did you follow a recipe? Did you actually follow it? Lots of things could've caused the stall you had, we know it wasn't the pH problem you described. It could still be a pH crash (just not to .5) but it could be lots of other things too.

[mcgriff1985]

I can only tell you what the pH test strips read that I purchased at the brewers supply shop, and I've used basic test strips for years, they seem exactly the same, the instructions say dip them for 15 seconds and then read the color on the comparison chart, they came out dead white maybe a small ting of color, as I used them, entering indicated little to no ph, i did purchase a digital ph brewers meter and a kit to calibrate it, it'll be in today or tomorrow, I'm hoping it's a bit easier to use and get proper readings. Through the floor, when yeast pH says 3.0-6.0, and I'm at 0.5 according to the test strip, which i did question with the strips, is through the floor. I followed a basic corn mash recipe with sugar added, I used 8 lbs of corn 2lbs barley 10 lbs sugar, I cooked the corn and stirred until 150 Fahrenheit, was using an analog of thermometer so i do have questions to how accurate this was and i recently so I bought a digital food thermometer to be more accurate, added sugar and barely and stirred until it hit 95 (yeast recommended 91-99 pitch temp) I had made a yeast starter, at 95 I pitched and let it go to work in a temperature controlled environment.

After added baking soda, I have reached 1.012 as of this morning, since Saturday. So it seems to have helped. As I said I ordered a pH meter for brewing, so I'll check it again. I would rather find the balance early and not add more than is necessary, but I want to balance and figure it out as well. If I can get it right without balancing and adding that would be great.

I was given the recipe by a guy I bowl with when we were talking about making whiskey and he said this was what he did, but on a smaller scale (he has a 3 gallon still), I just upped the ratio.

My pH readings could be off, and it may be a different cause that what I'm thinking or may be an easier and better fix than I know of which is why I'm sharing all the info I can from what I did. I wrote everything I've done in a notebook, including what the readings were, step by step so I can review what I need to do to fix it if I make a mistake or recreate it if it turns out great.

I'm pretty smart and technical, I can figure most anything out with a little help, I appreciate the help, I know I'm learning and some of what I say may be uneducated due to lack of experience, theory and study only means so much, you have to put it to practice and work out the hiccups which seems to be the only thing I'm getting.

Thank you to those who have the knowledge and responded, it is all a great help. I will never be perfect, but I not trying to be anything more than someone who can make their own liquor at home, and want to do that to the best of my ability. It takes time and mistakes to learn, so maybe my readings are wrong, I can believe that, I'm just sharing what I do have and what those readings were, and what I know, in hopes others can help fill in the blanks a bit.

[NZChris]

From reading your method, I suspect you might have uncoverted starch in your wash. Unconverted starch can scorch when you try to run it.

An iodine test will tell you if there is starch in it.

Putting some wash in tinfoil and heating it over a flame will tell you if there is a chance of scorching, or if there is still residual sugar in the wash. Black equals sugar or starch. If all of the starch and sugar has been converted into alcohol, there should be little to no residue.

[zapata]

No doubt there is starch in it.
Corn requires gelatinization which is effectively zero at 150*F. Most of us use boiling water and settle for above 180 for a an hour or three. Truly complete gelatinization requires over 200*F, the pros use pressure to cook up to about 250*F. Without gelatinization the barley malt just converted itself and not the corn. Wait, you said barley, did you mean barley MALT? Or barely grain? I'll assume malt for now.

Cooking the corn at higher temps is necessary to gelatinize the starch for the malt enzymes to be able to convert them, but it also knocks down the microbial population significantly. Steeping 8#'s of corn at 150 just wakes up all the bacteria and gets them roaring.

lemme check some math and retell the timeline and see if the story makes sense...
Wash volume is... 10 gallons?
Sugar is 46 points per pound per gallon x 10 pounds = 460 points
Say the malt is 30 ppg x 2 pounds = 60 points
That would be an OG of 1.052 Which is exactly what you said you read. Check.
I'm going to assume your starting pH was somewhere in the 6 to 7 range because you don't seem sure. It may be a little high for brewing beer, but honestly I'd think it's fine.
You pitched a yeast starter at 95* (FYI, I do not like to hot pitch whiskey with yeast I don't know loves it. Most strains I much prefer to pitch in the middle of their range and let them rise hotter if needed. Just my $.02 Corporate guys need fast ferments and don't care about fussels because they can afford time in a real a barrel and to select premium casks and delegate garbage to cheap blends.)
The uncooked corn, the 150 soak, the moderate OG with pure sugar, and a high pitch temp is like an incubator for all the bugs on that 8# of corn, and a high-ish starting pH just triggers everything that they need to make acids ASAP. So distillamax, wild yeast, and acid producing bacteria go gangbusters making acids.
In 3 or 4 days you ferment about half the points to 1.025, but a power failure also drops the ambient temp 10*.
This is a bit slow honestly, but not shocking. The temp drop alone can cause a yeast to stall. Gravity wise it's a little higher than I would expect a typical pH crash to stall a moderate gravity wash, but it's ballpark.
You get the heat back up, add 1 tsp bicarb, and observe a 5 point gravity bump *CORRECTING for temperature I assume?
- This can be explained by the corn. The acids are breaking it down, the yeasts do make some enzymes, and the malt enzymes are still working, just slowly. This could have been happening slowly all along, gaining 5 points of extract is normal and expected, but seeing it means that your yeast were well and truly knackered by something. That could be dropping out from the temp drop, or maybe it was shock from the acid, but honestly, I doubt it.
Now you are seeing more activity, yeah? 2 or 3 day since repitching, it should be done or close to it.

Basically, yeah, everything sounds good and makes since.
One note, if you had actually converted the corn you would have had an OG of around 1.070 to 1.074 which sounds great to me.
So questions or assumptions
1. Barley malt, or barley grain? Whole, cracked, ground fine?
2. Corn is whole/cracked/ground?
3. Temp correcting gravity readings?
4. Are you a brewer? You know how to do starters, calculate pitch rates etc?

BTW, don't apologize for anything. You have a good plan, you aren't doing stupid things or asking stupid questions. Your first ferment didn't go perfectly. It won't be the last, but it might just be bad luck.
It could be pH, but honestly I don't think so. You kinda did everything that would maximize acids, but they still tend to be self limiting, your water sounds like it probably has high buffering, the grains will act as buffers etc. Look at a recipe like UJSSM, it's similar to what you did and can run for generations building acids. IMHO the more acid the better.
I'd suspect #1 the unexpected temp drop, some yeasts are really sensitive to that and will floculate hard. You added bicarb, but presumably stirred it in, right? That could have re-suspended the yeast and get it going
The Iron would be my suspect #2. You say you have a system that gets rid of it, I'm not familiar with that. I just know that yeast doesn't like iron, to the point that for all the hoopla been bandied around about good distilling water, low iron is one of the only factors that actually matter in most places. IDK if your system really gets rid of it, or if that system doesn't cause problems of it's own.
A test ferment with bottled water would be informative.
Oyster shells can't hurt, though with your already high calcium water they may be unnecessary. How much they dissolve will be informative.
Your pH meter will also be informative. But I'd wager it's the least likely problem.
Option 4 is you bungled something you don't know about. You killed the yeast, subbed 1 pound of salt for sugar, etc.
Keep us updated.

[mcgriff1985]

I tried posting this earlier but twice on my phone I accidently clicked a button a deleted everything and then when I said screw it I will wait for my laptop, I somehow managed to hit a key combination with my arm and close the whole browser, just seconds from hitting submit. It's ok though, I can start over no big deal.

There were some valid questions by zapata, I should have been clearer so I will restate, mostly so I can make sure I say it all correctly. Most of what I posted was right so I will try and not be too long winded on things I have already covered.

The corn was a whole corn, I had milled to a course corn meal, and I purchased a crushed malted barley from a brewing shop. I put the 8lbs. of cornmeal into my fermenter, and poured the 210 (99 Celsius) water over the corn, I stirred it continuously really breaking down everything that clumped together and getting it spread throughout the water. I then added an additional couple gallons of water to the fermenter from another boiling pot of 5 gallons I had brought up at the same time, at this point my temperature was 195 (90 C) degrees, with roughly an 8 gallon mash (before malted barley and sugar was added). I stirred it pretty good every 10-15 minutes until the temperature dropped to 155 (68 C), I was also monitoring my other boiled water that was dropping in temperature, I didn't want to add too hot of water to fill out my mash, about the time that I hit 152 (66 C) (according to my notes) I added the barley and stirred it in real well, this dropped my temp to about 148 (64 C) maybe a little lower (hard to tell with analog thermometers that are high temp not just boiling temps). I then topped off the fermenter to 10 gallons of volume with water that was 150(64 C) degrees when i added it to the mash, I then stirred this really well, stirring about every 10-15 minutes until it dropped to 120 degrees (38 C). As I monitored the temperature and it dropped to 90 F (32 C) I prepared a starter . I purchased Distilimax MW, specifically says its for whiskey with malted barley, and followed the instructions, I pitched the yeast in the starter with sugar at 95 degrees (35 C) (it suggest 89-96 F, 32-36 C as its optimum range) and waited for it to start, after about 10-15 minutes it was really taking over my entire jar, so I added it to my mash which at this point was about the same as before and I just let it go to work from there. The rest is as you read with loss of power, reheat, add baking soda ect.

I am not 100% certain as too what my gravity read at the point of pitching yeast, it was super early in the am I had started at 830pm on a friday just after I had put my kids to bed, and it was well into the early hours of the morning when I finished. I did check in the morning, only a few hours after going to bed because kids just don't care if you want to sleep, haha, and I was at my initial reading of 1.050-1.055, I checked in the fermenter as well on this one instead of dipping my beaker in and getting a sample as I did later on. so was a little harder to tell where I was at exactly but I was right in that range on my initial reading. I could have been higher but not sure.

As for the corn it was whole, I ground it to course cornmeal, and the malted barley was crushed. I purchased the malted barley this way already. I also used pure granulated white sugar.

The water system I have is a Rainsoft system, I purchased it about 4 years ago, it was quite expensive but I would say it has been well worth its money. I plan on taking this with me when we move in the future. We had a water test done through the local home improvement store, and they suggested a water softening system that could do more than just soften and didn't use salt, as the salt gave us bad dried out skin and other dermatological issues that were annoying. They came out did a test in our home and then used a portable water softener (he had a ton of really small ones that were all different he said based upon the type of water that they read from the well), and showed us the differences of what we had. The water before you could rub your finger tips together and they felt dry and like they were dragging and grabbing rather than gliding across each other like we get now, and he showed us with his small filter and a tester how it removed all the iron, now I haven't had my water tested completely since that time, so I do not know if the full system install removed all the iron but based upon the initial setup and results, I assume it did, if it didn't, then yes that would be an issue for sure. I hadn't honestly considered iron because of the tests and the water system that we had put in place, but that could be the cause. I also remember having brownish red water when it sat for a while (vacation/nonuse) and would stain things a bit brownish and I haven't seen that happen since we got a new system as well. That doesn't mean that some iron isn't still getting though, maybe its getting most but not all, to know for sure I will have to do another test for it.

I am not a brewer and have no experience. So this is really my first time being involved in any of this. I could easily have made a mistake somewhere, I can readily admit that. I was pretty careful, I had measured everything out before hand and put it into separate containers and added it, in its own timing, but that doesn't mean maybe I accidently grabbed one wrong thing or did something at the wrong time and didn't realize it.

As for my pH meter, I have now tested it, my mash read at 4.3 this evening. I was, at my best guess with the strips, at 4.5 the other day after adding nearly 2 tablespoons of baking soda to my mash. I had used the pH strips, and they were almost completely white, other than the slight color from the mash, as I slowly added a tsp of baking soda to my mash at a time and let it sit for a good 20 minutes to take off before testing and adding more, I noticed that the coloration was slowly getting deeper until I hit about a 4.5 by my estimate, as I explained before. I feel like they were pretty accurate but again they were strips rather than the meter and maybe I could have been closer to 2.0 pH, I am just giving my best information that I could at that moment. I did test my water at the tap as well, it comes out right at 6.5, that was right where my pH strips said that my water at the faucet is. I have yet to test the water at my spigot for hardness, I want to see what my water hardness is before I hit my water softener just to see what the difference is.

My next mash I will definitely use your advice. I have access to the 5 gallon water jugs, that I can get filled with purified distilled water, I can take 1 of those and use 5 gallons of my water at home and do 2 mashes side by side the same exact way and see if my ferments are different.

[zapata]

Cool. So you were trying to geletanize and mash the corn, and now you know that didn't work. Your OG should have been in the 1.070s, and is unlikely to have dropped 20-25 points in the few hours overnight. Big picture, I'd consider this your first problem. You need to be able to reliably mash grains, convert the starch to sugars, and observe that fact with a hydrometer and/or refractometer. Honestly though I don't see an obvious fault in your method. I would do a small countertop mash and find what works, keeping in mind the mass makes a difference with things like how fast the mass cools etc. Mash chemistry matters as much fermentation chemistry so you could include this test in your comparison of bottled water.

If you do use bottled water, keep in mind you don't want to use actual distilled water. A wide range of chemistry will work, but I'd add something to distilled water. Which isn't a good suggestion, I know. Brewing water is complicated. Stilling water is too but less well documented. But distilled is bad. brewer's friend has a fairly easy calculator that can give some insight. www.brunwater.com is a pretty easy to use, widely praised resource in the homebrew world. I will say that most homedistillers don't bother with water chemistry (but then again, they don't use distilled water or have mysterious mashing and fermentation failures).

One last note on water. I did a quick googling, and while it seems that your water softener probably does remove iron but it may well be adding way too much sodium or potassium. Apparently the end result of water softeners has as much to do with the starting water as it does the system, so each install is unique and getting help from across the internet is nearly impossible. The best brewing advice seems to be to either not use softened water, get a water report done, and then treat your well water as needed. Or get a good report done on your softened water and treat as needed from there. Personally, I've never lived somewhere without good water so I can't help much. I don't know how you'd correct high iron, so I guess you'll want a test done on the softened water, but you may well end up having to use bottled water at least in part (lots of brewers dilute their tap/well water with RO/distilled to correct flaws)

On yeast, what you did isn't really a starter, it's much more like just a proof that the yeast is alive. A starter needs a good bit more time to actually use the oxygen and sugar to multiply. The easy answer is to just do a starter overnight either on a stirplate or with periodic shaking. More precise answer can get gotten by searching for yeast pitch calculators and reading their respective pages. Or don't do starters at all, lots of us don't, in which case your "proof" starter is fine, it's just the equivalent of straight pitching.

Your tap and current pH are fine. And now that you have a meter you'll know in the future if it really crashes more acidic than stomach acid. Going forward you'll want lime (calcium hydroxide, pickling lime is a convenient source) for immediate drastic pH correction to use in place of the baking soda. Lime is not very water soluble and is usually added as a slurry, you got lucky with the baking soda, quite often adding dry powder to ferments will result in explosive degassing and volcanic foaming. And calcium carbonate for slower maintenance type additions, be that oyster shells, pure powder, whatever.

Of course there is one easy test yet to be done that might be enlightening. The actual distillation. Assuming a FG of 1.000, will your wash boil at 93.8 or at 95.5? If the lower then your mash was fine and your measuring failed, if the higher then your mash failed and really needs solving.

cheers

[mcgriff1985]

Thank you for the info, I'll probably use distilled water for now, a little disappointing but we are planning on moving in a year or 2 and I'm moving closer to my mountain home area that I grew up in.

I had to go out of town for a family emergency, but I plan on doing my stripping run tomorrow night if I can after work, if I get that done timely, I'll do my spirit run directly after, and then I'll update on how it turned out. I'm going to send off for a full analysis of my water after the softener. This will give me a good indication of what I need to do to correct if I can do anything. I will try and post those results when I get them as well because I would really like to use my well but if I'm getting iron and sodium, although it doesn't use any salt except when it cleans and flushes the resin tank. However, I'm not sure how the resin works, so a full test will work. I did research the iron removers and there are some really good ones to get the rest of the iron out, in thinking it could be just trace amounts but will never know until I get a full spectrum test.

[mcgriff1985]

So completed my run, seemed to run OK, I ran my stripping run slower so I wouldn't burn the unconverted stuff. I collected right at 20% discarded the first 12 ozs of that and kept the rest for today's spirit run. Ran slow and seems to have turned out pretty good, I collected about 3/4 of a gallon in total the last 6-8 ozs were very watery almost no alcohol. Going to let it sit and get a good hydrometer for spirits, my one I bought was reading 10 proof in distilled water out of my puritan water jug so I don't trust it to give a good read. I will keep them separate until I can check and blend and see what I get! I learned a lot about the process, I feel much better with the whole process and am excited to put my learned stuff to practice.

[greggn]

Going to let it sit and get a good hydrometer for spirits, my one I bought was reading 10 proof in distilled water out of my puritan water jug so I don't trust it to give a good read.

See how it measures 80 proof commercial liquor. If it reads that as 90 proof then it's off by a consistent and repeatable amount ... and I can argue that repeatability is more important than accuracy.

[Ben]

If you are concerned about the chemistry get a water test from someone like Ward Labs. You can then use something like Bru'n water to make adjustments to start out with and give the enzymes and yeast their best chance.