Clostridium Dunder Pit

[tommysb]

I had recently been making a lot of rum low wines by stripping SBB's all molasses recipe, and read that the best flavours come with addition of dunder/muck. Der Wo's thread on infected Rum seemed to suggest that he had a lot of success adding the dunder to low wines, letting it sit for about 24 hours, and then doing the spirit run. So this is my intended use of this muck. I already have been collecting up low wines, and have more strips to do until I have the right quantity for my spirit run.

To try to be precise with Rum terminology, let's call the fresh 'backset' from the still 'DUNDER', and the infected dunder MUCK. Please correct me if this inaccurate.

I wanted to make some MUCK, by infecting my dunder that was left from a stripping run. I wanted the process to be somewhat repeatable, so decided to infect the dunder with some commercially available CLOSTRIDIUM BUTYRICUM in the form of Japanese Miyarisan tablets.

This bacteria should produce BUTYRIC ACID in anaerobic conditions, which when esterified with alcohols, should give Methyl Butyrate -

it has a fruity odor, in this case resembling apples or pineapples

and (in much bigger quantities!) Ethyl Butyrate (amongst others)

It can be used in a variety of flavors: orange (most common), cherry, pineapple, mango, guava, bubblegum, peach, apricot, fig, and plum.

According to Wikipedia both are fruity, pineappley esters.

This is the butyricum supplement that I used. I had to order from Japan via Ebay, and it arrived after about 3 months. It had been sitting on my shelf waiting for its time to shine.

I crushed and used roughly what's missing from the bottle. I would estimate 40 tablets?

So, the only thing you guys are probably really interested in is how the muck pit looks.

The crushed tablets were added to a combination of dunder leftover from a stripping run, a little molasses, yeast, brown sugar and honey. I left the bucket outside, uncovered in a shady place, and there didn't really appear to be much happening. Yesterday, I moved it into the sunny part of my garden to get some heat, and activity started enough that I thought it was worth documenting here. Some leaves and petals fell in, but I'm not bothered.

In the direct sunshine it's probably getting to temperatures of 28-30c at the surface. I didn't want to disturb what has started to form on the surface, so just measured air temperature above the surface.

And finally...another bacterial mix getting ready for another experiment. This was purchased from India via ebay, and has STREPTOCOCCUS FAECALIS (mmm yum), Clostridium, and some Lacto bacteria. I think that some EXTREME caution needs to be exercised with this, and some more reading is required though. I recall reading about that microbe being detected in Jamaican muck pits, and also about its use over on the Stilldragon forum.

Anyway, cheers everyone, let's see how this progresses.

[NZChris]

Muck is reacted with acid’s from the Trash Cistern to create the esters.

[Dancing4dan]

I get the muck pit idea. As a healthcare professional clostridium and streptococcus just freak me out when it comes to food or drink!

And "FAECALIS"! I would rather not know what was infecting my muck pit! Not sure I would be importing bacteria from another country to infect a muck pit. Local environmental bacteria that I am exposed to seem safer to me.

let us know how this works out.

[OtisT]

My early experiments with infections in dunder went very slow. It would take my pit a long time for an infection to form, and they were usually very light infections that would stall or stop frequently. I found that by adjusting the PH up on the dunder, my infections would really take off. Just something to consider looking at.

I don’t mess with infections any longer, mainly because most of those batches produced off flavors and smells. (I will never look at a band aid the same way again. ). I was relying on natural infections for my tests, so you should have much better luck by seeding your muck pit with your desired infection.

I’ll be following to see how your stuff turns out. Good Luck.
Otis

[tommysb]

A couple of updates. I stripped some more rum, so topped up the pit with more dunder, and tried to get some yeast and solid left in the bottom of the still into the pit.

Then, I had to travel, so had a chance to just leave this alone to let it do it's thing. Capped it loosely with the lid from the bucket, and came back to see a pellicle had started to form (this was 5 days ago, I think.
Total time circa 2 weeks:

now, at about 2.5-3 weeks:

The pellicle has broken, and there is some small bits of mould growing.

[Single Malt Yinzer]

With any process around infections you're not going to have a single strain of anything for very long. Nature will end up introducing other things. What happens next is not something you can control. With every temperature, pH, and feedstock change the mixture of what bacteria, fungi, and anything else will change. So literally every day what comprises the dunder/muck will change a little.

The best example of this is the way we treat yeast. Most of us use a single strain of yeast to ferment from a company that produces high purity yeast. We purposefully inoculate (infect) our wort/wine/etc with that single strain of yeast to produce a specific effect - flavor, alcohol tolerance/level, fermenting speed, etc. We rarely reuse yeast. This helps create a consistent fermenting process and flavor profile.

Think of this when you're trying to introduce a specific bacteria via direct inoculation vs a dunder/muck pit. As soon as you infect the dunder the bacteria mix in will start to change. The longer your pit is around the more drift you will get. If you want a specific bacteria you should do direct inoculation closer to the time you are fermenting. A dunder pit/muck pit will eventually take on more of the local bacteria/fungi mix.

To try to be precise with Rum terminology, let's call the fresh 'backset' from the still 'DUNDER', and the infected dunder MUCK. Please correct me if this inaccurate.

Dunder is correct here. Season dunder has been left to get infected. Muck doesn't have a really solid definition but it can be infected dunder as you are using it. The Muck pit/graveyard is also a reference to the location where they pour dunder onto the ground after distilling. They would dig up the dirt in the this area and use that as a starter for the next cane season. Distilling terminology isn't well defined so you need to understand different people will use these terms differently.

I think that some EXTREME caution needs to be exercised with this, and some more reading is required though.

https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/index.ph ... Pit_Safety
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=69996

[tommysb]

4 week update of pellicle. I am leaving this covered with the bucket lid loosely resting on top but not sealed airtight.

[matjans]

I hope you take into account that clostridium butyricum will only produce butyric acid under anaerobic conditions and with pH>4.5-5

I have separate muck pits, hoping to create a "somewhat controlled" muck blend to follow the classic way of making High ester Jamaican rum (Allan, Cousins, Arroyo).

1. Dunder. Just for adding to a new fermentation. Hot stillage goes in the container directly after distilling a rum wash. Probably not completely sterile, but better than nothing.
Closed lid/Anaerobic, pH ~3
Smells of stillage. Nothing more.

2. "Flavour". Yeast lees from fermentation/wash, some chopped up sugar cane (bagasse) that I added to the fermentation, both boiled and raw, added sone COLD dunder to keep everything alive. This is to enable the "putrefactive fermentation" so often mentioned in older literature.
Aerobic, pH 4-5
Smells, well, "putrid". Not vomit like, but just yucky.

3. "Flavour 2" separate Clostridium butyricum ferment - awaiting delivery of miyarisan. Hot stillage will go to a bucket, add some sugar, neutralise to about pH 5.5 with NaOH or CaOH, cool down and add miyarisan.
Anaerobic and pH 5 - 5.5, hope to produce some butyric acid.

4. "Flavour 3" A true muck pit with a little bit of everything. Sunder, kombucha for the presumed presence of pombe yeasts, some sugar, some fruit (pineapple for wild yeast), banana peel, some raw sugar cane for molds and yeasts.
Anaerobic, low pH - 3ish
Smells vaguely fruity and moldy. Doesn't smell bad, although it's only a week old ATM and it's not very warm anymore over here.

5. "Acid" - some diluted dunder, added rum tails to reach a ~5% abv, some old unpasteurised Apple cider vinegar that had the "mother of vinegar" blob floating in it, a bit of sugar. All in order to get the acetic bacteria to produce acetic acid (vinegar).
Aerobic process (open lid with stocking fixed with rubber bands against fruit flies etc).

The only issue I now have is that with this much acid in the wash, the starting pH for fermentation is on the low side, inhibiting saccharomyces yeasts.

[matjans]

An update regarding no 3, the Clostridium butyricum "pit".

I finally received the miyarisan pills, and, after some googling, found a small but interesting paper on butyric acid production with c. Butyricum and optimum temp/pH.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1390654/

So I made a dunder/muck/fermentation base with

100 gr sugar
0.5 gr Citrix acid
Boiled 20min.

25 gr kveik lees (in stead of corn steep flour)
Boiled for 30 min.

Nutrition

5 gr DAP diammoniumphosphate
6 gr baking soda
2 gr Epsom salts (mgso4)
1 multivitamine tablet
And a few ml from a solution with some zinc, mn and copper sulfate.

As we are making turbomuck, I added half a cup of black strap molasses.

Put in a bottle, fill up to 5L, mix well, test for pH around 6.5. crush about 10 pills and mixed with some water. Add to bottle, stir and keep at 37C for about 72 hours or until fermentation stops.

Works quite well! Very strong vomit smell.
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You can use this as an active additive for your muck pit or as a separate part of muck. If you add it to a muck pit just remember that c. Butyricum will only produce butyric acid under anaerobic circumstances with high pH (6ish) and high temp.

[Single Malt Yinzer]

I'm totally into this but I am glad I'm not going to be the one opening that jug...