Home Distiller

knuklehead wrote:You can usually count on double what the turbo packets say as a completion time. Once the airlock bubbles have slowed to 1 per minute put it in a cool place. I don't know where you are but I put mine in may garage where it is around 10 C and on the concrete it is even cooler. It will settle out for the most part in a day or two. You don't really need it to settle out completely just make sure you pass it through a coffee filter on the way into the boiler and you will be fine.

Why pass it though a coffeefilter knucklehead? This doesn't stop the yeast, at least not from my experience.

What I do is carefully syphon (right word?) the liquid above the yeast layer into my vessel. I don't take all of the wash, I leave a small as possible layer on top of it so I don't disturb the yeast layer.

I just do what Pieterpost does, too. (Decant is the word!!).

linw wrote:I just do what Pieterpost does, too. (Decant is the word!!).

decant is not what I mean, I use a tube to suck out the wash. I don't tilt the vessel at all.

Jaxom wrote:Grayson, would you mind posting your recipie? I was thinking of using the one posted on the website, I'd end up using 13.xxx lbs of sugar and chamagne yeast. Yours sounds much better.

I just use the recipe directions on a Turbo pack. I think it's 17 lbs. sugar to one turbo package and water to make up 6.5 gallons. If using wine, champagne or baker's yeast I only use 10 lbs. of sugar.

Pieterpost wrote:
Why pass it though a coffeefilter knucklehead? This doesn't stop the yeast, at least not from my experience.

What I do is carefully syphon (right word?) the liquid above the yeast layer into my vessel. I don't take all of the wash, I leave a small as possible layer on top of it so I don't disturb the yeast layer.

I do exactly what you said. I have a copper tube that I can adjust the depth to which it reaches. It attaches to the side of my fermenter and I siphon off the wash into the boiler but I do pass it through a filter. I am well aware that the filter will not trap and hold back all the yeast but here is my theory. As I siphon into the fresh filter the liquid pours through quite fast and after the boiler is almost full the filter is clogged with something because it is dripping through slower and slower so it must be trapping something solid. Now sometimes I get a little greedy with the amount of wash I want to remove from the fermenter and accidentally dip a little deep with my siphon tube. Now I suck up a huge clump of the deposit at the bottom of the fermenter. I then just pull out the filter sieve and dump it waisting only what was in the filter at the time. If I had just had it going straight into the boiler then I would have to siphoned all the wash back into the fermenter, let it settle out again and then run another day. If you pour the thick yeast deposit into the coffee filter it would clog up the filter and the majority will not make it into the boiler. That's my story and I am sticking to it

knuklehead wrote:I don't know where you are but I put mine in may garage where it is around 10 C and on the concrete it is even cooler.

A bit of science for you: The concrete isn't cooler, it just feels that way because the heat transfers out of your hand better on concrete than in air.

knuklehead wrote: I do exactly what you said.

-snip-

That's my story and I am sticking to it

lol, that's ok then Smart move to have a filter as a precaution. I also have trouble trying not to be greedy when siphoning the wash