Ted's Fast Fermenting Vodka

[Garouda]

the small amount of tails collected gets tossed under the lemon tree.

Well, I killed an orange tree doing that too...

[NZChris]

the small amount of tails collected gets tossed under the lemon tree.

Well, I killed an orange tree doing that too...

If it wasn't in a pot, you must produce a lot more liquor than I do.

[Garouda]

the small amount of tails collected gets tossed under the lemon tree.

Well, I killed an orange tree doing that too...

If it wasn't in a pot, you must produce a lot more liquor than I do.

It wasn't in a pot... I usually make three 70-litre TFFV batches, so three stripping runs for one spirit run, boiler size 98 litres.

[NZChris]

the small amount of tails collected gets tossed under the lemon tree.

Well, I killed an orange tree doing that too...

If it wasn't in a pot, you must produce a lot more liquor than I do.

It wasn't in a pot... I usually make three 70-litre TFFV batches, so three stripping runs for one spirit run, boiler size 98 litres.

My largest ferment is 180l and multiple stripping runs, but uses far less bran than Teddy uses, 8% target abv. The 50 year old tree is doing very well regardless of how much distilling waste and urine goes under it.

[Kareltje]

Hey guys, loving this recipe, been doing it a few times. A question: what would the effect be of letting the bran/rye simmer for just 5-10 minutes instead of 30? I'm getting impatient with the bran/rye sometimes and proceed faster than the 30 mins but I don't want to continue doing it if the 30 mins are needed to lock the nutritions up for the yeast or something. Thanks!

Good question! I always let the bran simmer for only a few minutes and let it cool. Never get the very fast fermenting, though. But I am satisfied with the result after about four weeks.
I will make a comparison: next time I will make one ferment with 30 minutes boiled bran and one with a few minutes.
All the rest the same, of course. See what happens.

But maybe someone has done this comparison already and is willing to share?

As promised I did a comparison. Simple science: if you want to know something, do a test.
I made three ferments based on Teddy's basic recipe.
Standard I use:
1) 3 kg sugar, about 66 ml lemonjuice and 1.5 litre of water, boiled to inversion.
2) 1 litre of bran, 1/2 spoonful nutrition, 1 pinch of MgSO4, a pluck egg shells and 3 litres of water.
Bring both to a boil and let it cool about one hour. In the meantime I rinse a vessel of 30 litres, put in 5 litres of water with a showerhead, including much air.
Then I pour the still hot mixtures in the verssel and add up with cold water till 20 litres. Makes a nice 30 to 35 dgr C. Then I add a pulverized tablet of multi vitamin and I sprinkle dried bakers yeast on top of the fluid.
After about 5 days I invert another 1.5 kg of sugar with about 35 ml lemon juice and 3/4 litre of water. This I add, after about an hour and I rinse the pan with 1/2 litre cold water.
I leave it until it is clear and quite. That, by the way, is not very fast: it took about one month to sink under a denstity of 1,000!
I distill with 14 litres of beer in my 15-L boiler, put another 5 L beer in my first 10-L thumper and the remainder (about 3 to 4 litres) in my second 10-L thumper.
Throw away the first 100 mL, put the next 300 mL in my heads collector, distill till about 90 dg C and collect the tails in my tail-vessel.

I made three ferments:
A: according to NZChris's suggestion: about 1/4 th of a litre of bran added to 3 litres of boiling water. In stead of 1 L bran brought to the boil in water.
B: My standard recipe.
C: Brought 1 L bran (with the salt and egg shells) to the boil and kept it there for about 30 minutes.

The other parts of the procedure I kept of course as standard as possible.

First: The ferment A was inspired by NZChris's remark about his treatment of bran as a feed. This ferment got a froth on top, which stayed there until the end and the fermentation was very slow: it took about twice the time to finish to a rather misty beer. I guess I did misinterprete the recipe, but I will not do this again.
So I go on comparing B and C: bringing to a boil and boiling for 30 minutes.

Ferment C fermented a bit faster than B. I would say about 4 weeks compared to 5 weeks. Both had a smooth surface during fermenting and resulted in a clear beer, that was easy to take from the deposit.
Both resulted in about 2 L of about 67 to 70 %ABV. Taste was rather clear and smooth, but I think I will run both one time again. There was a small difference in taste, but I think that is more due to the stripping run than to the ferment or the preparation.

At the moment I run second comparison, as in science one experiment is no experiment.
Now I noticed that at the start of the boiling of the bran soup, there was a thick froth almost rising out of the pan (B). Keeping it boiling for 30 minutes resulted in a more clear soup (C). Shortly after starting the fermentation, the ferment B (brought to a boil) had a froth on top, while ferment C (30 min boiled) was rather flat. After 5 days both were flat and I feeded the final 1.5 kg sugar. By now, 5 days after feeding, the ferments both seem to stall, but C is leading.

I think that sums it about up. Speaking for myself: I will stick to my standard, although I might skip the feeding as it seems to slow down the ferment.

[NZChris]

My wheat bran is slower than TFFV because it isn't supercharged with nutrients, but it's never taken four weeks in my shed.

[JimSmithy75]

I must say, this recipe looks very interesting and is getting solid reviews from almost everyone.
I started with the awful turbos and found I had to run it several times through my T500 to make it bearable. But was still really harsh.
Moved on to TPW's with a bit of variations to make a Frankenstein TPW which has turned out WAY better than my turbo.
I do find that using raw sugar instead of white seems to assist the bakers yeast which takes from a 1.070 start point to a .990 finish in 6 to 7 days.
But this recipe looks insane to go from start to finish in 3 to 4 days.
Gonna give it a crack!
Cheers to all!

[Yummyrum]

But this recipe looks insane to go from start to finish in 3 to 4 days.
Gonna give it a crack!
Cheers to all!

Never happened for me . More like a 7-10 days best effort but some manage to get it done faster .
Regardless , it makes a clean wash .

[Garouda]

Never happened for me. More like a 7-10 days best effort, but some manage to get it done faster.
Regardless, it makes a clean wash.

Same here, 8 days on average...
About boiling the bran, just pay attention, it overflows swiftly.
No need to cook it too long, compare with your breakfast porridge (oatmeal), it takes only three to five minutes in boiling water/milk...

[Garouda]

Just one remark, a sugar wash does not need to be completed as soon as a grain wash (whisky, whiskey, bourbon), where the limit should be 96 hours to avoid unwanted esters.
The small amount of bran cannot ruin your batch and anyhow, the purpose of this recipe is a vodka, which by definition is a neutral. You need a reflux still to make a decent vodka, or two runs in a fractionating still. Pot stills are not an option here.

[NivlacNZ]

I've done four TFFV runs now and all of them have taken four to six weeks to ferment out fully (often struggling to get to below 1.000). I see others are claiming less than a week (hence ... "fast ferment")
I am making 120l batches and using 25kg sugar (so not quite exact ratio but everything else pretty close)... It is fermented in a 200l plastic barrel in the garage with no insulation or heat belt etc (during summer months, in Christchurch NZ, where ambient temperature can range from 12-30 degrees). Have done a couple with Angel AM1 and a couple with just basic baker's yeast.
Is the "not very fast, fast ferment" I am seeing most likely due to the lack of consistent temperature control? Or are there other factors I should look at? Are there any issues, to flavour etc, with the longer ferments? or do others, who also have longer ferments, find the end result is just as good?
Thanks
C

[NZChris]

I've done four TFFV runs now and all of them have taken four to six weeks to ferment out fully (often struggling to get to below 1.000).

Straying from the optimum of anything will slow a ferment down.
Try using the exact recipe and method without fiddling with it. Upping the sugar % will slow any ferment and increase off flavours.
Try controlling the temperature to the happy place for the yeast that you choose use rather than just tossing something in and hoping it will be OK.

[SW_Shiner]

Temp control is important. Id say thats the biggest reason for slow ferment. The biggest problem that can happen is an infection if left too long and not sealed or looked after correctly.
I'm in the Waikato, so while it doesn't get as cold as chch, it also doesn't get as warm. Insulation and a heating belt and controller were the first things i bought after my first ferment.

[mcyeastface]

I am late for the party, but this is something I have wanted to write for some time. This is my first real post, so I will repeat things already mentioned here, but ill try to tell what happens with the bakers yeast the conditions described in the original True and Tried recipe.

TFFV is optimized for speed, and it works as intended only in a narrow metabolic window. When all is good, that will happen.
But that means that it can be accidentally pushed out of that window.

First thing first, stable moderate temperature is mandatory. The yeast won’t run as intended if not kept moderate warm, maybe around 29C (83 to 85F) and steady, like really steady.

All this is related to bakers yeasts metabolic modes.

In FFV, bakers yeast is pushed to be and kept a growth and then high speed mode.
Keeping it in that mode is used to have it approximately as fast high-flux ethanol converter as it practically can be.
On one side, if you try to push the window further, you end up in Turbo yeast like over-supplementing and overstressfull environment, and pretty much need turbo yeast to pull it off. And even with TTFV, the fermentation speed and the absolute cleanliness as goals are automatically pulling to different directions here.

Bakers yeast can be fast eating its sugars only by dumping its internal redox load into ethanol, and that’s what we want it to do. The bran, vitamins and salts are there to let it to grow and use much energy fast and then dump ethanol quickly. However bakers uses “leaky” side metabolic paths to handle the redox stress caused by high anaerobic sugar consumption, which does not to make this the most clean recipe ever. Because bakers is in that leaky and very fast metabolic state in higher temps, this recipe pretty much demands that reflux still is used later.

When all is right (moderate sugar rather less than more than in the original recipe, moderate warm but not hot and stable temp), bakers stay in high energy mode, and this does finish fast. But, we are at the edge of stable bakers steady window. When sugar is pushed higher, or temps swing (big batches contributing to that), bakers yeast cant handle the internal state,and then it decides to shift into more slow maintenance metabolism. And from those variations we get the weeks long fermentations, which actually may finish just nicely (bakers won’t actually crash and stop unlike some other yeasts, but it won’t be fast anymore). So, this recipe calls for stability and exactness more than for example BW.

Someone mentioned the brain boil time. Well, the long time is to reduce variability in the nutrients and make them more consistent from batch to batch, meaning that you know what you are putting into the ferment, and you have one uncertain thing less in the barrel.
Also the boiling may reduce the foam formation. Keeping the lid open for a day may give too much oxygen too late, that affects the yeast. Maybe rather aerate aggressively before the pitch and then try to keep the lid closed later, minding the headspace. This should keep the ethanol route as the main way to handle yeasts yeasty busineses.

I would say to reduce the bran from 250g to 200g for that reason too, and also also maybe give just maybe ten percent less sugar and about same reduction for the yeast, assuming the 23 litres volume. Just tiny tweaks to keep the things more failsafe. But as the previous poster mentioned, the temp control alone should take care most of the yeast mode shifts.

[8Ball]

I’ve completed 8 runs of this recipe as written by scaling it to 9 gallon ferments. All were successful and finished dry. I used bakers yeast for 7 runs and the last run was a trial run with FermPro FP-1 neutral yeast which works great BTW. The 8 runs were completed in all types of weather (hot, cold, mild) in an outdoor open sided shelter using a ten gallon water cooler for a mash tun.

By now you might be thinking: So what? Well, the point is that this is a great TnT recipe and if you follow it closely you will be rewarded. No need to modify it — you can. of course, but there is no need to.

[Mandark]

does this recipe scale normally? like i have 4x 25l batches active right now, do i just multiply everything by 4 for a 100l batch ?

[shadylane]

Yes it scales. the only difference between small batches and large batches is the fermentation temp is more constant with a bigger wash.

[Mandark]

thanks for the quick reply. i shall go shopping for a large fermenter

[shadylane]

The down side to 4X bigger ferments is the mistakes also get 4 times bigger.
Long story short, do what's needed to maintain a constant temp no matter what the environment is.

[Saltbush Bill]

Big ferments can generate more heat, keep an eye on the temp.
At times Ive had them almost get to hot.
Not saying 100L will do it , but pays to be careful.

[HeyBroChuckNorris]

I've had a few batches get really warm in my 50L esky. Pitched at something like 28 and it rose to 35, I was getting really worried. It all worked out because the FermPro yeast I was using has a very good tolerance. Finished below 1.000 in a hair over 48 hours. It looked like a jacuzzi it was going so hard.