Reuse waste from distilling?

[Oakleaves]

Hello,

I produce Gin using stream method and all my botanics and fruits will be in the cylinder on top of the pot still.

I always stop before it run empty to avoid my pot still get burned - sometimes I have 2-4 dl 96% alcohol (mixed with botanics and fruits) left in my pot still.

My question is - can the "waste" be reused and included in a new distilling - with the same recipe or do I need to treat is as waste product.

Thanks

Karsten Egeblad

[acfixer69]

You should not anything in the still at 96 ABV.

[NZChris]

The numbers you give make no sense. Note: % ABV, should not be confused with degrees Proof.

Botanicals won't burn on until the pot runs dry, which is unlikely unless you started with far too high an ABV.

I've never bothered to measure the ABV in my pots after a gin run, but I bet they are a lot lower than what you are getting. You don't say what you do, but I keep running after taking my gin cut to strip out more of the alcohol. Because I'm not commercial, I use that to make special drinks for only myself. If commercial, I would put it through a reflux still before recycling it, as recycling it as is would concentrate the late take VOCs and would change your gin profiles.

I'm sure that there are other tricks you could do. A small alembic could be used to test some ideas.

[Oakleaves]

Thanks for your input.

Really appreciate

Thanks

Karsten

[SouthwestAl]

A lot would depend on how the botanicals basket is located I guess - if it can 'drip' back into the pot, then the alcohol in the pot is going to be fairly tainted with oils from the botanicals, and this is going to flavour any further distillations you do re-using the alcohol, and skew your recipes leading to different final products on each run.

You mention the alcohol is 96% - are you not reducing this prior to starting the run? If so, much of what you have left in the pot is going to be water, and the alcohol content is going to be low, to the point where it's possibly not worth trying to recover it. I have read about people using 'backset' in their Gin runs, but the end result would be a bit random, is my guess, as the flavours would at best be described as 'stewed'.

Not tested by me, and not likely to be tested for safety reasons:

Filtering through an RO filter - removing solids first, and then separating the ethanol and water. I have only read about this being used for removing alcohol from wine, rather than distillates. I have not looked into this in great details, and suspect it does not really apply, as if it were easy and affordable, it would be the Holy Grail of LoNo distillates.