Tell us about your mistakes.

[NZChris]

Didn't listen to my nose when It told me that the juniper I bought to make the latest batch of gin was old and had little smell or flavour.
Thought maybe my nose was a bit out of tune that day. Now sitting on 10L of Gin that I'm not happy with.
Lesson learned that should have been learned long long ago in this hobby.......the nose knows best......listen to what its telling you.

Bummer.

Fortunately, there are easy fixes. Have you found a better juniper supplier?

[Saltbush Bill]

Usually the supplier I use sells good quality.......caught me out this time though.
Fixed a bad batch once before so got a pretty good handle on getting it fixed.

[The Baker]

Didn't listen to my nose when It told me that the juniper I bought to make the latest batch of gin was old and had little smell or flavour.
Thought maybe my nose was a bit out of tune that day. Now sitting on 10L of Gin that I'm not happy with.
Lesson learned that should have been learned long long ago in this hobby.......the nose knows best......listen to what its telling you.

The interweb sells juniper essences and essential oil and such....

Geoff

[Spike007]

Well my first wife (another forum lol) I got a bunch of Lil ceramic beads with a 24" x 2" column. Thought great! Put in two rolled copper meshes an almost filled the rest with these Lil circular bout 1/8th" long and small circumference beads an started finishing a sour mash run I was so proud of. Well these things settled like some kinda cemented plug in the column. Think you can see where this goes, pressure was building wife ran as far as you can get into the corner I'm smelling ethanol temp shoots I'm guessing 200 Fahrenheit. Very scary top of column was cold bottom was like a wood stove propane burning away! Yikes. I shut it down before it blew completely up. Now use lava rocks an not even close to filling the tube. But still crying over all that sour mash ruined. By time I opened it poured out most beads I got one quart of tails. lesson learned about another minute it definitely woulda blown. No more obstructing things in my columns.

[Bradster68]

Well......my first bourbon has been on oak about 4 months and still nasty as hell.kinda has a garlic taste . Not sure what happened? Just added some used brandy and rum dominoes to a jar to see if that helps.back on the horse I get.

[LWTCS]

Yikes

Sounds like a Silver Trails story.

[Bradster68]

Yikes

Sounds like a Silver Trails story.

There's definitely a story here ,but I'm not sure what it is

[PirateShiner]

Just made a huge mistake…. Instead of unplugging my heating element from from power bar in the garage I just turned the power bar off. That was yesterday. Fast forward to today and I discovered that my 5 gallon water bucked emptied onto my garage floor, so I grabbed the shop vac to clean up the water. I turned on the power bar forgetting I left the hot plate plugged in with my boiler on it. 4 hours later my wife yells thst there’s smoke in the garage, I go in, not smoke but a alcohol steam bath

I’m lucky my garage didn’t blow up

[HDNB]

that reminds me. a few year back...

i had a guy from the electrical department at my company come out to do some wiring for me. i have a permanent installation and i wanted a "holy shit" switch on my steam generator. i never told him what the steam was for, he never saw the "other room"
he tested everything and it was working great... when he left, he helpfully left the boiler on so the shop would stay warm....not realizing the shop had a different heater all together and having no idea that the steam would feed my mash tun in the next room....with no thermostatic control

Fast forward 2 or 3 hours and i have a chat with him..."yup, everything went great, i left the boiler on so the shop should be nice and warm!" ....I get home directly .... the ferment i had started the day before and just pitched that morning..... happily bubbling away at 212* in the tun and the whole shop is a 35-40* wet sauna. thank dog the ferment was only a couple hours old and had little to no booze in it.
i now have not 1 but 2 master kill switches (one hidden)...plus that really nice holy shit mushroom switch he wired in for me.

[cob]

It is downright frightening what can go wrong with someone just helping out.

Glad it worked out ok.

[PirateShiner]

that reminds me. a few year back...

i had a guy from the electrical department at my company come out to do some wiring for me. i have a permanent installation and i wanted a "holy shit" switch on my steam generator. i never told him what the steam was for, he never saw the "other room"
he tested everything and it was working great... when he left, he helpfully left the boiler on so the shop would stay warm....not realizing the shop had a different heater all together and having no idea that the steam would feed my mash tun in the next room....with no thermostatic control

Fast forward 2 or 3 hours and i have a chat with him..."yup, everything went great, i left the boiler on so the shop should be nice and warm!" ....I get home directly .... the ferment i had started the day before and just pitched that morning..... happily bubbling away at 212* in the tun and the whole shop is a 35-40* wet sauna. thank dog the ferment was only a couple hours old and had little to no booze in it.
i now have not 1 but 2 master kill switches (one hidden)...plus that really nice holy shit mushroom switch he wired in for me.

That’s what happened to me, except I had a 5 gallon pot 3/4 full of what was left over from a run the day before because I hadn’t cleaned up…

[Bradster68]

My first rye mash went perfectly 1.065ish. Fermented to.998.
Then I rushed it. Didn't let it clear properly, and it scorched. Batch ruined.

[HDNB]

My first rye mash went perfectly 1.065ish. Fermented to.998.
Then I rushed it. Didn't let it clear properly, and it scorched. Batch ruined.

if you try again, doubt it will ever clear. you need indirect heat with rye.

[Bradster68]

My first rye mash went perfectly 1.065ish. Fermented to.998.
Then I rushed it. Didn't let it clear properly, and it scorched. Batch ruined.

if you try again, doubt it will ever clear. you need indirect heat with rye.

That's good to know. I was also a little heavy on the grain bill which made it very thick.2.5lbs per gallon. I will drop a little for next batch I read 1.5 lbs per gallon would be acceptable.how would a double boiler style set up work. Probably take a while to heat up om guessing?

[Sporacle]

Thought I'd list the ones I can think of for full disclosure.

I tried to solder 3/8 copper pipe to the outside of a 2 inch diameter 12 inch length of SS sanitary spool to make a reflux condensor.... before I understood how to solder SS and before I understood reflux

I built a PID to control the boiling temp of my still, it is actually awesome for controlling a brew heater for fermenting.

I placed botanicals in cheese cloth in the column of a "Super Reflux" still.

I stripped a rum wash and took the low wines and returned them to the boiler with the backset they had been stripped from and then did a spirit run from that....

I added a choclate malt barley to a rum wash...smelt amazing

I did a ferment of sugar and water, pitched Bakers yeast and nothing else....It didn't finish dry, maybe I should have inverted the sugar?

I did a mash of corn and water, not malted corn and no enzymes....did not convert

I thought my first all grain would taste amazing.....it tasted like JD made by Jesse Pinkman before he got schooled by WW

I thought..... no that jar is alright ill throw that in to the blend
.... Morgan Freeman voice "the jar was not alright, in fact the jar ruined the blend"

I rushed and didn't read.

I didn't listen at times and I didn't stop and think

Oh and I didn't try to just be nicer

Happy brewing to all for 2023, unless any of you are Melbourne Storm NRL fans

[Specman]

I found steam rolled corn at a semi-local feed mill at about $17 per 50 lb bag. First bag was great and I made several 75-15-10 corn-rye-6 row mashes that now occupy my 10L barrel. The recent bag of corn was contaminated with other feed - some sort of pellets - and since I was dead set on mashing one evening, I threw it in the BOP. I was in a hurry because it was late, and at about 11 pm, it was at 148 and I had added the Sebstar HTL at 180F and later GL (which I later discovered was still too hot). I loaded up the fermenter and went to bed - no wort chiller action. SG was about 1.055 which is not as good as usual for me. Next morning, it was around 115F so me and the wife head out for the day. I got home about 4 that afternoon, open the ferment to check the temp and it was already bubbling. Pitched DADY anyway at about 90F. The next several days, the bubbler was almost blown off by the off-gas. Ultimately it never went dry - got to 1.005 and stunk like something I have never smelled. I pulled the liquid off the grain and put in empty carboys to clear. I know i got my first bad infection and the chicken pellets - or whatever that stuff is - has made an almost cola colored wort. I am still gonna strip soon after reading some advice here to carry on, but I may have just ditched the entire mess. It is not pleasant.

[NZChris]

The the FG and color suggests the pellets might have contained molasses. You might be making Rumskey.

[sadie33]

My first sweet feed mash had pellets in it. (before I came here and didn't know to use the one w/o pellets ) I stripped it, did a spirit run and made some really nice blueberry pie moonshine, Or so I thought. It did have a taste that was a bit different, not bad, just something you could taste. As it aged even a few weeks that taste got so strong.

The last time I had it, I decided was the last time. I had a dream that night that I was in the woods making moonshine. Big foot came into my camp and I offered him some. It was so gross he destroyed my whole still.

yup, it turned out pretty gross.

[Hillbilly Popstar]

I attempted a potstilled vodka from a sugar wash last year.

I decided to utilize baking soda to clean up the esters and heads prior to final distillation.
I had like 5.5 gallons of low wines.
I researched high and low for the exact amount of baking soda to use. Somewhere in this forum I found some people saying how much they used and most were in agreement. Don't ask me to link the thread now, cause I'd have to search for it, but the amount seemed pretty absurd to me. It equated to several cups of baking soda in the entire collection of low wines. I let it all sit for a couple weeks until I had time to run it.

The distillate tasted like soap. I mean, it was bad. I rerun it 4 times to no avail. Completely undrinkable.
Might as well have been a corn scorch cause no amount of distillation would clean it up, not in my potstill anyways...

Oh well, you live, you learn.

[ShadyGdy]

Was a few posts back but I too learned about the yellow "Costco" towels. They work well for setting glass on until one spills over. Now i have a nice yellow spot on my shop floor. Learned the easy way, I guess.

[NZChris]

I attempted a potstilled vodka from a sugar wash last year.

I decided to utilize baking soda to clean up the esters and heads prior to final distillation.
I had like 5.5 gallons of low wines.
I researched high and low for the exact amount of baking soda to use. Somewhere in this forum I found some people saying how much they used and most were in agreement. Don't ask me to link the thread now, cause I'd have to search for it, but the amount seemed pretty absurd to me. It equated to several cups of baking soda in the entire collection of low wines. I let it all sit for a couple weeks until I had time to run it.

The distillate tasted like soap. I mean, it was bad. I rerun it 4 times to no avail. Completely undrinkable.
Might as well have been a corn scorch cause no amount of distillation would clean it up, not in my potstill anyways...

Oh well, you live, you learn.

I've use slaked lime to do something similar. Adjusting pH worked for me. Forget quantity/recipe/etc. and use your choice of base chemical to adjust the pH up to close to 7 over a few days. The pH doesn't have to be all that accurate, I use paper strips, but under pH 7 is safer than over.

[bunny]

I attempted a potstilled vodka from a sugar wash last year.

I decided to utilize baking soda to clean up the esters and heads prior to final distillation.
I had like 5.5 gallons of low wines.
I researched high and low for the exact amount of baking soda to use. Somewhere in this forum I found some people saying how much they used and most were in agreement. Don't ask me to link the thread now, cause I'd have to search for it, but the amount seemed pretty absurd to me. It equated to several cups of baking soda in the entire collection of low wines. I let it all sit for a couple weeks until I had time to run it.

The distillate tasted like soap. I mean, it was bad. I rerun it 4 times to no avail. Completely undrinkable.
Might as well have been a corn scorch cause no amount of distillation would clean it up, not in my potstill anyways...

Oh well, you live, you learn.

The term you are looking for is "saponification".
Once was enough for me.
I no longer try to do that conversion in low wines or anything else.

[sadie33]

my season is coming to an end so I am starting to save the backset for the winter when I start up again.

I just ran my last UJSSM (gen 4) and was just about to toss the backset (I already saved one earlier in a gal water jug) when I noticed how clear it was, then I remembered seeing stuff floating on top of the other one I saved. I stopped myself before pitching the backset and went and got the stuff I saved earlier. NOPE, not backset, I must have saved some of the yeast water left from syphoning. It was under pressure and was so tight!! It sounded like opening a bottle of soda! I dumped it, rinsed it out and put my UJSSM backset in.

Now that I think of it, I think I did the same thing with my HBB. Good thing I have one fermenting now.

oh my goodness, I need a new brain. I'm soooo gald I didn't dump that backset!

[sadie33]

LOL, I swear I have NOT been drinking!! I was telling my husband about my mistake and I picked up my gallon of dunder and was like- this is DEF dunder. Then I realize it's black...

So, I have saved the backset from the STRIPPING RUN. Which one are you supposed to save? The stripping run backset or the spirit run backset?

[still_stirrin]

my season is coming to an end so I am starting to save the backset for the winter when I start up again… (I already saved one earlier in a gal water jug)…

I “can” backset.

When you shut down the boiler, it is HOT, and has been boiled for some time, effectively killing bacteria and yeasts. So, when I drain the boiler after shutdown, I let a little run through the drain hose (yep, I have a drain on my keg boiler) to sanitize it. And then I fill a cleaned Mason jar with the backset. And then, I put the lid and ring on it and let it cool slowly to room temperature. When it does this, it will pull a vacuum, just like when you’re canning vegetables.

I can then store it for as long as needed, I have some canned backset that is 3 years old already, and it’s still clean and clear, ie - nothing growing on it. I’ve used this (canned) backset to acidify my corn mashes for bourbons. And the enzymes like the addition of the acids to lower the pH to the optimum range.

Rather than “bagging” and freezing backset, or filling a milk jug and sticking it in the refrigerator, just use clean Mason jar and “can” it. Works great.
ss

[Saltbush Bill]

Use the stuff from the stripping run.

[NZChris]

I'm experimenting with using both.

[sadie33]

my season is coming to an end so I am starting to save the backset for the winter when I start up again… (I already saved one earlier in a gal water jug)…

I “can” backset.

When you shut down the boiler, it is HOT, and has been boiled for some time, effectively killing bacteria and yeasts. So, when I drain the boiler after shutdown, I let a little run through the drain hose (yep, I have a drain on my keg boiler) to sanitize it. And then I fill a cleaned Mason jar with the backset. And then, I put the lid and ring on it and let it cool slowly to room temperature. When it does this, it will pull a vacuum, just like when you’re canning vegetables.

I can then store it for as long as needed, I have some canned backset that is 3 years old already, and it’s still clean and clear, ie - nothing growing on it. I’ve used this (canned) backset to acidify my corn mashes for bourbons. And the enzymes like the addition of the acids to lower the pH to the optimum range.

Rather than “bagging” and freezing backset, or filling a milk jug and sticking it in the refrigerator, just use clean Mason jar and “can” it. Works great.
ss

I have seen you post this before. It is a great idea, except that I am a canner and have absolutely no room for any more jars!! Of course this time of year I have put a small dent in my supplies, but will be replenishing them soon.
thanks for the tip though

[sadie33]

Use the stuff from the stripping run.

Of course I dumped the stuff I should have used, after laughing at myself for wanting to use it. My new lesson is never make decisions after hours of stillin'!!

I am putting that on the front of my note book.

[sadie33]

I'm experimenting with using both.

Do tell...Have you used the spirit run backset yet and did you notice a difference?