No Ethanol. 30 gallons of wash, with zero ethanol.

[Bull Rider]

Okay, I'm stumped.
I've been making mashes and washes for 26 years now and I've had great success! I joined this website in 2009, so I'm no newbie. I run washes every spring before the fruit flies are out and before the ants show up.

Two weeks ago I started up two totes of sweet feed whiskey. I bought a fresh bag of wet cob. Each tote holds about 16 gallons of water, to which I had 25 lb of sugar and 12 lb of cob. The first run this year I had no back set so I used hot water from the tap to try and melt the sugar. We have good well water here. PH is great. I had scrubbed the totes out and sprayed them down with Starsan before starting the run. I added DADY yeast that I had pulled out of the freezer. I added the yeast to a 2 quart Mason jar and shake it up. I used water that's was about 90° to kick the yeast off. I added the yeast to each tote and the the wash temperature was about 90° when I added the yeast. I use calcium hydroxide and oyster shells to manage the pH. I keep the room temperature where the totes are about 77°. The initial specific gravity on the totes around 1.050. I keep the pH right around. 4.30. I measure pH, SG, and temperature every day and record the numbers. The specific gravity ran out from 1.050 all the way down to 1.000. over 8 days. The totes showed active bubbling during the ferment. The wash started looking funky about halfway through. There were large bubbles and foam on top of the wash. The bubbles were tan or brown in color and were up to 3” in diameter. The bubbles looked greasy, or oily. The wash didn't smell bad, and it tasted okay, kind of sour. Well while it didn't smell bad, it didn't smell like a normal ferment, it had an odd smell. The large greasy bubbles morphed into a foamy thick layer that I skimmed off. It looked like the foam on a beer, but was tan in color. No horrible smells.

I run a keg pot still with a keg thumper, both are 15 gallons. When I ran the pot still I noticed that there was no product discharge at the parrot. The temperature of the still vapor went through 180° through 200°, got up to about 210 to 215 and there was no product output. None! My thumper keg will usually start to rock and roll and make noise and a quiet down and slowly. After that the product will come out into the parrot. However this time the thumper keg never settled down it. Just screeched and and bubbled through the entire process until I shut it down. So, no ethanol. So I'm stumped!

The ferment process looked normal. The pH, the specific gravity the color of the wash when I siphoned it out of the totes was exactly what you would expect. So I emptied the totes scrubbed everything out again. Sprayed everything down with Star San and let them dry. Started up two more totes yesterday and they appear to be a normal ferment. I apologize for this being such a long post, I've been all over the Internet looking to see what may have gone sideways here.

I’m thinking that the sugar was fermented out into something. Or did the yeast convert the sugar into something with no ethanol. This is the only thing that I can think of. Something fermented out the sugar. There was no evidence of a vinegar mother. I took a sample of the was and drank a swallow and it didn't taste like vinegar.
I apologize for the long post, but I thought that this may be of benefit for the group.

Thanks in advance!

[Salt Must Flow]

Have you checked the contents of the thumper after it all cooled down? All of the ethanol may have condensed inside the thumper. I'm not a thumper guy, but if I recall correctly, isn't a thumper supposed to be approx 1/3 the size of the boiler or something like that?

[jonnys_spirit]

Nothing came out of the product condenser? You might have a leak. I'd check by running some water and fix before proceeding.

Cheers,
jonny

[Bull Rider]

Thank you.

I put 12 gallons of wash into the boiler, and four gallons into the thumper. Normal procedure for the past 16 years.

No leaks. It would a HUGE leak to blow off 5 gallons of ethanol liquid into ethanol vapor, just sayin....

I check every connection several times during the run.

There was no ethanol in the wash! So, what happened to 50 pounds of granulated sugar. 25 pounds into each tote?


Thanks

[jonnys_spirit]

How much was left in the boiler / thumper? If less than the 16 gallons you put in then there's a leak if nothing came out.

Cheers,
j

[Bull Rider]

I pulled out and dumped 16 gallons of wash (twice). That was the same amount that I had originally added.

There are no leaks. I can detect a leak by smell, before I visually spot the leak. I bet most distilled know that to be true.

It was cold out, in the low forty's, so a leak would have been easier to spot.

Thank, keep thinking.

[TwoSheds]

Just a thought, are you confident in your thermometer's accuracy and that it's placed to get a good liquid temp? Maybe open and verify with a handheld thermometer as you heat up next time (pre-boil obviously.)

How are you heating?

Good luck.

TwoSheds

[Bull Rider]

The digital thermometer was reading the correct ambient temp when used. I rechecked it today against a second thermometer. They agree.

I use a heavy duty propane powered burner.

I don't think that this is a mechanical problem. The problem seems to be in that the fermentation process just did not create ethanol.

I've run this recipe dozen and dozens of times over the years.

[Saltbush Bill]

Did the still head ever get hot........or did water ever leave the still?

[jonnys_spirit]

Something should have come out of the product condenser- even if it was 0%abv “water”. If it didn’t either you have a leak or it wasn’t boiling. Or for some other reason you maybe had 100% reflux.

If the hydrometer showed a decrease in specific gravity and it didn’t taste sweet anymore there very likely is alcohol in the wash.

Can you share some pics?

Thanks,
Jonny

EDIT:
If you charged the boiler / thumper with 16 gallons and removed 16 gallons then for some reason vapor isn't making it into the PC. You mentioned that it was cold out.. How much liquid did the thumper take on? Could be that the thumper was condensing and you just didn’t have enough power or maybe time to heat it up fully to operating temp?

[Bull Rider]

I have a 3" copper pipe that comes vertically out of the center of the keg boiler, this pipe goes up about 36" and then transitions into a 1" copper pipe that goes over horizontally to the thumper keg.

The vapor temp is recorded at this transition by a digital thermometer probe and reads out on a attached readout.

So yes, the still head gets hot, and the crossover pipe gets hot, and the thumper gets hot.

The thumper always starts to rock and roll when the thermo reads out around 180-185. Then, as the thumper gets up to temp it smooths out and quiets down. But not this last time. It was very loud!

No water left the still, and I didn't measure the thumper contents, but there was more wash in the thumper than the four gallons that it started with. This is what I usually see on a normal run.

The vapor temp was reading 210 degrees, and I knew that I would (should of) ended up with distilled water out the condenser. But I knew that I was way over the temps for any ethanol production. So I shut it down.

Beats Me! And thank you for your input.

[Saltbush Bill]

You seem.to be placing a lot of faith in thermometers.....ignoring them and keeping the still going until something left the still might have helped to work out what went wrong.

[still_stirrin]

Your thumper never “came online”. NO BULL.

If you got nothing from the spout, the thumper gained liquid volume, and your vapor tube temperature got to 212-215*F, then the vapors you did produce were condensed into the thumper and never made it out the spout. You shut down too soon.

This is the problem with trying to run a potstill by a thermometer. Have you learned your lesson yet?
ss

[subbrew]

if the thumper was heating up (rocking and rolling) vapor was leaving the boiler and making it to the thumper so volume in the boiler did go down. Apparently just not enough to get the thumper up to temp to put out product.

Perhaps something is wrong on the heating element and you were not putting as much power in as you usually do?

[Twisted Brick]

Your thumper never “came online”. NO BULL.

If you got nothing from the spout, the thumper gained liquid volume, and your vapor tube temperature got to 212-215*F, then the vapors you did produce were condensed into the thumper and never made it out the spout. You shut down too soon.

This is the problem with trying to run a potstill by a thermometer. Have you learned your lesson yet?
ss

+1

By virtue of your thumper continuing to 'screech and bubble' the thumper charge never got up to temp.

From your own readings you had 6.45% alcohol in your thumper charge. Run it again. Without the thermometer.

[shadylane]

Thank you.

I put 12 gallons of wash into the boiler, and four gallons into the thumper. Normal procedure for the past 16 years.

No leaks. It would a HUGE leak to blow off 5 gallons of ethanol liquid into ethanol vapor, just sayin....

I check every connection several times during the run.

There was no ethanol in the wash! So, what happened to 50 pounds of granulated sugar. 25 pounds into each tote?


Thanks

If the was no ethanol in the wash.
Instead of producing nothing, the still would have made distilled water.

Empty the boiler and thumper, inspect all the plumbing for blockage.
Then do a water run and look for steam leaks.
On a side note.
Ethanol vapor is invisible and even a small leak can get rid of alot of booze.

[HDNB]

you're not nuts. i had a ferment do that. Big Bubbles of a spontaneous ferment...i left it overnight to cool before pitching and had these huge bubbles rising in the morning.
after putting in yeast it appeared to finish out, but on stilling, there was no product to speak of...i mean i got a few drops of low abv when there should have been gallons of low wines at 60%
never did figure it out, but i guessed i made vinegar.

[Bull Rider]

HDNS:

I'm grateful for your response!

I've scoured the internet for a case matching my description. I seem to recall discussions in the past that talked about ferments that go sideways and something (yeast??) convert the sugar to ethanol, and then somehow the ethanol gets converted to something else.

I know that enzymes can be used to break long chain sugars into fermentable sugars, but that's not what happened. But perhaps something like that, where the available ethanol was converted or consumed by something? Zombies?

Well, I've started another batch and will report back when I run that out.

Thanks to all!

[Chauncey]

My first thought is blockage. Be careful

[montyjb]

I recently had a wash do almost the same thing you described, except I was not using a thumper.

My corn/rye mash started at about 1.060 & after a pretty vigorous ferment (kreuzen that blew lid off) -- ended at about .0995 fourteen days later.

After running thru my still, it yielded water only (slightly sweet?) -- but no alcohol at all.

It's a mystery to me.

[Soft batch]

The only temperature that would have any bearing is the temperature on the output side of the thumper (and subsequently the liquid temp of the thumper, assuming it was boiling). If you got zero output, the thumper never boiled, or you had a huge leak. Water vapor condenses to liquid regardless of alcohol content.

The only thermometer I ever use is on a column still.... pointless elsewhere!

[LWTCS]

Taste your beer? Was it dry?

[Wildcats]

This looks to be back in March....