Home Distiller

Galeoturpis wrote:Jimbo, no I'm not a chemist.

But you are trying to talk like one. The problem is you don't appear to have much experience. There's no problem with learning about proper yeast nutrition, but you have to take into account scale. You say lack of 'X' produces 'Y', but how much is produced in relation to everything else?

It's great to learn science but you have to keep things in perspective. The Tried and True recipes are just that. Maybe you could focus on understanding what's in them nutritionally and why they work as well as they do. If you want to experiment, go right ahead. If you think Rev's Crusty Old Nutbuster (fictional name) is deficient nutritionally and will produce some undesirable compounds, do some ferments, get out your lab equipment and gather hard data. Remember to get ppm as part of that data so we can determine whether or not a compound's presence is more than negligible. Then you can come back here and say something like "I tried adding a bit of 'gunk' to my ferment and it came out a lot smoother.' Most of all, get some experience under your belt and I promise that theory you've been reading will make a lot more sense.

MDH wrote:

thecroweater wrote:well no not really post distillation amelioration through filtering ect is what's colloquially referred to as polishing a turd. A good neutral ferment with a good wash ran properly with a good reflux still will get you a neutral or a slightly off neutral vodka if you use a recipe like a grain recipe for that purpose

You can, but it ends up being a time efficiency issue. You could use a high pitch rate, perfect nutrients, a low temperature, just the right yeast, and ferment for two weeks, or ferment in very little time and ultimately gain the same result anyway due to filtering and proper cuts.
The fact is, even a very well distilled, very well fermented mash will still produce a Vodka that has flavor of the mash source no matter what you do. No distillation exists in an ideal world where you can simply obtain pure ethanol. That's why Vodka is filtered at commercial distilleries, they know that consumers prefer it as a neutral spirit that disappears into your drink.
There are indeed more microdistilleries now who have decided to minimize or forfeit the process and their Vodka does certainly taste good, but it toes the line of what Vodka is supposed to be by definition by both the government and the common consumer, who expects a certain product when they shell out their money.

Well yes and no but mainly no, pretty much every "vodka" I have ever tasted has a flavour and that is not an accident, it is what the public expect. There are neutral products on the market, everclear, Polish pure spirit ect that are neutral and marketed as such but they are most certainly not vodka's. A polished turd is a still a turd. Personally I don't like advise to home distillers advocating filtering in leu of a good wash, well distilled product and or good cuts, you can make the a contaminated product taste kinda ok but those awful compound don't magically disappear nor do they filter out with normally employed filtering processes so although some offensive flavour has been greatly reduced the toxifing compounds are still in there the can do all sorts of organ damage to those that ingest this polished turd. commercial guys use all sorts of processes to allow them to take short cuts and maximize what hey can use but god damn some of it will make ya sorry you were born the next day
Point being I do not agree with the statement

Ultimately the neutrality of a spirit comes from the post distillation process.

A good neutral is not that hard to achieve with the right wash,process and still, plenty here would do it often

Do you find that Stolichnaya, Russian Standard, Belvedere or Luksusowa taste distinctly like Wheat, Rye and Potato? They have a slight varnish-remover, green apple or non-descript glue like smell and taste. Otherwise, they come off like a strong, thick water. That is mostly due to impurities imparted both by carbon itself, which produces aldehydes and other toxins when it is not used properly, and last but certainly not least, the inclusion of heads in commercial Vodka. If these companies could economically produce a perfect neutral spirit they would, because most people who Drink vodka do not want to taste the Vodka. It is either an inebriator, or something to cleanse the palate with (hence its popularity in caviar-tasting circles).

The toxifying compounds of which you speak are largely in either A. the heads -- or B., compounds produced by the interaction of phenolic or short chain carboxylic acids reacting with unstable nitrogen compounds, as well as Acetaldehyde, during distillation, and C. last but also definitely not least ethyl-carbamate. For all except the last, carbon filtering can actually remove these toxic components if properly used. As for heads, they will exist independent of either fermentation method or filteration. It is up for the distiller to make the call to remove as much head as possible.

Thus, In terms of taste, I could ferment at 37 degrees in 24 hours but if I compress the heads and tails well and filter, I can easily make a decent Vodka that is as good as one fermented any other way.

It seems as though the original poster's goal was to optimize fermentation in order to produce the perfect mash with as little flavor as possible, but I don't think the pursuit is worth that much effort when you are trying to make Vodka and nothing else.

Jimbo is simply suggesting not to use chemical nutrients. There are always other options." If he is suggesting running a wash with nutrient deficiencies, I'd like to know what he's basing that on. Certainly not science. The chemists at the distilleries and breweries have brewed tens of millions more runs than he ever has and published their results for scrutiny. Breweries routinely add zinc. I'm not suggesting anything controversial and none of these ideas are mine. 
There are generally enough nutrients in barley for barley to grow but it's not ideally formulated to grow a 2.5 kg (5 lb) lobster jellyfish.
 "Galeo is giving bad advice". No, I'm just paraphrasing current knowledge. My suggestions about vitamin tablets and brewers yeast (which are cheap and easy) were too general. I'm making a huge number of assumptions and they are based on generic data from nutrientdata.self.com e.g.barley type - 2 or 6 rowed? U.S. or European? Did the farmer use superphosphate? Are the soils trace element deficient (e.g new Zealand is selenium deficient)? 
My maths was also wrong. I forgot about the phosphate that was already present. 
However to give you more specific recommendations. 
Zinc 0.2 mg/l , Phosphorus 2 mg/l, 
Pantothenate 375 mcg/l, thiamine 300 mcg/l, biotin 5 mcg/l, 
87 x ( 2000 + 200 + 375 + 300 + 5) = 250mg total. 
That is a 0.0003% change to your recipe. 
The added brewers yeast is probably not a good idea as it adds too much hops (bitter flavourings) from the hops resin. I am happy to withdraw the "bad advice" of adding brewers yeast. The bitter taste was mainly in the heads but required a redistillation. I have now bought some nutritional yeast -a touch more expensive but natural and easier to use than prepackaged yeast nutrient.
I bought 10 kg of kipfler potatoes which weren't that good so put them in a mash with a couple of kg of 2row barley and a beano tablet. I'll distill it later this week.

Id like to see statistics on how many breweries 'routinely add zinc'. I know a couple local brewmasters. They dont. One of them is a large outfit now, beer available at Costco. Im not suggesting running nutrient deficient mashes. Im suggesting that if you ferment natural products, all grains whiskey and beer, all fruit mashes, with good water, you wont have a nutrient deficient mash. I been running assorted stuff for 20 years, never had problems with my ferments. If it takes a week or 2 to finish low and slow, thats fine with me. This isint a race.

But this is a free world, mostly, so feel free to pour whatever you want in your hooch, and if you can get your ferment down to 27 minutes, yay you.

Galeoturpis wrote: That is a 0.0003% change to your recipe. 

Three ten thousandths of one percent. You're kidding with all this, right?

Galeoturpis wrote:The chemists at the distilleries and breweries have brewed tens of millions more runs than he ever has and published their results for scrutiny.

And yet many of those distilleries that have produced millions of runs still manage to put a product on the shelf that tastes like nail polish remover in comparison with what some folks round here can get with just corn, sugar, baker's yeast and tap water.

Costco? Seriously? Is that the place you aspire to get beer? 
My favourite brewery, Weihenstephan (which is also the world's oldest brewery),  has done some pretty convincing studies on zinc (page 37 of the below presentation.)  Most of the zinc in a mash is tossed out in the spent grain. Servomyces is a Lallemand product which consists of dead yeast and added zinc to foil the Rheinheitsgebot.

http://www.ahaconference.org/wp-content ... rition.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Here's another article which describes zinc in great detail. 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10 ... a2d16c8c03" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Try googling this as the above link is dodgy-
125th Anniversary Review: Improvement of Higher Gravity Brewery Fermentation via Wort Enrichment and Supplementation
Brian R. Gibson

As far as statistics on zinc use, most commercial breweries don't release their recipes, so how could you find out how many added zinc? 
The 0.003% figure is a bit disingenuous as it divides 1/4 gram by the 87 litres which is mostly water. The reason most beers/ barley mashes work is because their potential alcohol is kept between 4 and 8% but high gravity wort beer and other tricky fermentations (especially sugar washes which is what my main current interest is) can be easily achieved by adding the correct amount of vitamins and minerals. 
At the chemist/apothecary today, I saw a vitamin bottle called "Hair, skin and nails" that mainly had zinc, biotin and pantothenate as ingredients. 60 tablets for $10 would probably service about on or two hundred batches. 

Your Weihenstephan is available at Costco too pal. My point was, they (Two Brothers) have grown from a couple tanks in a small warehouse when I first met them, to a multi state (8 currently) operation with beers on tap at every respected brew pub in the region.

Anyway, Im not here to argue with you about healthy ferments. Its important for sure. There's people here at HD at both extremes, from dumping garden fertilizer in their hooch, to others doing very little aside from adding some gypsum (me).

Maybe the difference is sugar heads vs all grains. I dont do sugar heads but well imagine making the yeast happy in them desolate ferments must be a real trick.

I can't access your second link but that first Lallamand link is straight forward very easy to follow and comprehend and a very interesting read
Edit posted same time as Jimbo

Zinc is a trace element at best, and easily already found in the grain bill used for beer/ whiskey production. Also easily found in fruit skins often used in wine/brandy production.
No real need to add. Its already there. But can certainly be published as an ingredient even though the brewer had not a thing to do with it being there.

Im still new to this I only have 20 25 runs under my belt but it looks to me like galeoturpis is trying to reinvent turbo yeast.

The funny thing is, yeast have been around a lot longer than humans have been playing with them. They made it this far. I'm pretty sure with some natural and not too heavily processed ingredients they'll do just fine.

+1 Rev and blue duck. SS

This hobby can be as simple or as complicated as we choose to make it.

+2 Larry

Water, tomato paste, sugar, and bakers yeast gives me a completely dry ferment in 72 hours for a perfect neutral. I add nothing else.

Turbo yeast can suck on that.

My question is, why are you attempting to do this? To perfect fermentation like this? Are you trying to make a neutral flavored wash? Do you know that in some cases, stressed yeast can actually enhance your product's profile? There is a man in California who fermented a mash using sea water in order to provoke the yeast into adaptive measures which produce a separate taste. I'm not certain if I'm entirely impressed by that concept, but I'm also not sure why you are chasing this one.

LWTCS wrote:Zinc is a trace element at best, and easily already found in the grain bill used for beer/ whiskey production. Also easily found in fruit skins often used in wine/brandy production.
No real need to add. Its already there. But can certainly be published as an ingredient even though the brewer had not a thing to do with it being there.

This is true of many nutrients required by yeast. A malt based wort will usually have all the necessary nutrients required for fermentation. While a malt based wort does possess zinc it may not be enough.

Yeast The practicle guide for beer fermentation.
"malt based wort is often zinc limited. Zinc is important for cell cycle (reproduction) and is a co-factor for alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme responsible for alcohol production. There is no substitute for zinc."




Now if you are using just sugar you certainly need to add zinc.
+1 Galeoturpis

All grain mash= 6row, corn, yeast, water. Will go dry in 3-4 days and produce a finished product far greater than any lab in the world could/can make, if so there would be labs instead of distilleries. Have you been to one, neat places they use some of the oldest science in the world to make alcohol, some good some bad. I advise you follow the KISS principle, if not do your mad science collect data using the scientific method, repeat it a couple tens of thousands of times then compare it to tried and true those are big ol shoes to fill. Good luck keep reading, better yet keep stilling. What kind of a still do you run, never read or saw you mention that.

As a mater of interest, what would have been a good source for additional zinc supplementation 150 -200 years ago?

Been to just one distilery in Osakis, MN. I have also been to a few breweries too. I've been to the Grain Belt beer brewery more times than I can count. I run a simple pot still, I have always run pot stills. I started out making brandy out of whatever fruit I could switched to whiskey when got a little older. I never paid much attention to the science until I started brewing beer 3 or 4 years ago. Now I have a much better understanding when things go wrong and when they right.


I don't know what they would have used to supplement zinc 150 -200 years ago. The point is they wouldn't have known either. If you read the some of the historical writings on wine and beer you will find that it wasn't all that easy for them to make a great batch on a consistant basis. They didn't even know that the mechanism that turned stuff into wine and beer was yeast! It wasn't until 1857 when Louis Pasteur discovered that it was a micro organism (yeast) that was responible for producing alcohol. Shortly after this discovery, it became possible to isolate yeast in pure culture form. Armed with science breweries, wineries and distilleries can now make a consistant batch time after time.

LWTCS wrote:As a mater of interest, what would have been a good source for additional zinc supplementation 150 -200 years ago?

really! I'm not surprised by this comment but I am a little to find the author is one of the more progressive inventive minds on here. It was 213 yrs ago that the thump still was patented. An illiterate French workman Edouard Adam from Rouen attended chemistry lectures given by professor Laurent Solimani. Adam understood that the principles of the Woulfe bottle might also work for alcohol distilling and in 1801 invented and patented the first still to produce alcohol in one operation. In principle, that was the first working column still. Distiller's resistance to Adams "new" idea was why he died in abject poverty in 1807 and yet within 10 yrs these stills were all over the place and the next 30 yrs saw the greatest development of stills all based on this simple but "new" idea
After saying that yeah I think just about any AG mash will have about every trace element yeast could possibly require but it doesn't hurt to explore what deficiencies may exist. I should point out my Interest in that link has nothing to do with mashes but is specific to my interest in maximizing the efficiency of fermenting an otherwise quite deficient molasses/blackstrap wash as shown here

thecroweater wrote:

LWTCS wrote:As a mater of interest, what would have been a good source for additional zinc supplementation 150 -200 years ago?

really! I'm not surprised by this comment but I am a little to find the author is one of the more progressive inventive minds on here. It was 213 yrs ago that the thump still was patented. An illiterate French workman Edouard Adam from Rouen attended chemistry lectures given by professor Laurent Solimani. Adam understood that the principles of the Woulfe bottle might also work for alcohol distilling and in 1801 invented and patented the first still to produce alcohol in one operation. In principle, that was the first working column still. Distiller's resistance to Adams "new" idea was why he died in abject poverty in 1807 and yet within 10 yrs these stills were all over the place and the next 30 yrs saw the greatest development of stills all based on this simple but "new" idea
After saying that yeah I think just about any AG mash will have about every trace element yeast could possibly require but it doesn't hurt to explore what deficiencies may exist. I should point out my Interest in that link has nothing to do with mashes but is specific to my interest in maximizing the efficiency of fermenting an otherwise quite deficient molasses/blackstrap wash as shown here

I know , shellfish shells very high in zinc.

OK , personal questions.
 1) still - I bought a copper artisan reflux still from still spirits for $750 (which is great for making distiller water and essential oils , Mr Policeman) and an easy way to learn distillation. Last year I was buying up to $200 a week of alcohol ,for freeloaders mainly, and so is  great saving. It has it's drawbacks (too many plates for whisky, cut off thermostat, no temperature control etc.) but is a lot better than my mates 15 year old reflux still which I keep here. I also look after a Bosco engineering keg still which has a monster 2 metre column and 2000W and 1200 W elements. I will eventually either buy a pot still or get my fitter and turner mate to make one for me. 
2) motivations - yeast is one of the biggest variables in alcohol production. 30 years ago many cheaper wines and beers had obvious flaws which is much more uncommon now due to better technology ( nutrients, viticulture, corks etc.) I have a 1000 bottle wine cellar, 5 of my  highschool class mates (out of 100) became wine makers (one winning the Jimmy Watson). My thirty year high school reunion is happening later this year so i need to ask them some tricky questions. My first cousin and my sister's brother in law are also winemakers so my ultimate goal is to start making wine. Sugar washes are a great introduction because if I stuff it up, I can easily rectify the alcohol. 
I have three friends who mash beer weekly (American pale ale) but have stopped making certain beers because of sulphur production. Another mate sits on his mead ferment for a month because he doesn't put enough yeast  nutrient in the wash. Mostly I concentrate on the yeast because Turbo washes taste awful but only take 3 days in summer. In winter I have had some very slow ferments (probably from not using enough nitrogen).  Once I am happy that I have have got my nutrient mix right, then I will ferment the 10 kg of molasses and honey that are sitting around the house. 
Until I started distilling, I had forgotten that yeasts use exactly the same vitamins as humans and since I now have kilogram of brewer's yeast that can't be put into hooch, I add a couple of tablespoons to my smoothies as a vitamin supplement. 
I guess I just want to make a half decent drop that I can enjoy and give away as gifts at Christmas. This site is great for little hints (like adding lemon juice to the Strawberry panty dropper).

Zinc supplementation in the past
There is probably enough zinc in the wort (for growth)  if you aim for 4-8% alcohol but off flavours and hydrogen sulfide would be more common which is why ageing in oak was so important. Before stainless steel, there was enough zinc in the galvanized iron tanks. 

Cool, keep posting mate, I am enjoying what you have to say

I'm really enjoying this thread. I appreciate learning more of the science and respect the fact that Galeoturpis is including links to his references. I also completely agree with the comments that theory is just theory until you test it out in the back shed. Success in this hobby requires a mixture of art, science and experience; with different measures of each required for different recipes. Some of us hobbyists get more enjoyment from exercising their artistic creativity & gaining knowledge from experience; others like to dig more deeply into the physics and chemistry going on under the covers.

Galeoturpis, lets not forget the nutrients and minerals that can be obtained from different sources of water. I collect mine from a nearby natural spring. In the picture below I have the chemical breakdown of the trace minerals (tested regularly by the municipality). The yeast loves it and I never get a stuck ferment when I use water from that source. However, from time to time, I get some off flavours from it that I'd like to identify and isolate.

thecroweater wrote:After saying that yeah I think just about any AG mash will have about every trace element yeast could possibly require but it doesn't hurt to explore what deficiencies may exist. I should point out my Interest in that link has nothing to do with mashes but is specific to my interest in maximizing the efficiency of fermenting an otherwise quite deficient molasses/blackstrap wash

Jimbo: Maybe the difference is sugar heads vs all grains. I dont do sugar heads but well imagine making the yeast happy in them desolate ferments must be a real trick.

I, too, am about to try out a molasses/panela recipe and I'm a little concerned about nutrients.

Pugi recommends:
I will start with my " Yeast Bomb "
2 vitamin B, crushed with mortor and pestal
5 teaspoons of 20-0-0, agrcultural fertalizer
1/4 teaspoon of epsom salt
1/4 cup bakers yeast
1 gallon water
Boil all for 15 minutes and strain.

Hook:
2 teaspoons of DAP
20 litres of dunder (if using it, plus calcium carbonate). If not, then use 1 heaped teaspoon of citric acid.

Any other suggestions for rum? Thanks, guys, these discussions help make me a better 'stiller that I ever would have been in one lifetime!

Good Lord thats a LOT of gunk in your rum cornhusker. Panela is far different from refined white sugar. Ive done batches of 100% Panela rum from sugardaddy's Panela and they ran just fine, with nothing added. Panela is 100% pure mother nature, nothing refined or filtered, just squeezed and had the water boiled out of it.

I guess that makes it more a Cachaça, or aguardente, pinga, caninha or whatever the hell you want to call it. But whatever, its fuckin delicious and makes really nice rum drinks that make wifey frisky.

Jimbo wrote:Good Lord thats a LOT of gunk in your rum cornhusker.

I know! That's the thing, I read all this stuff about nutrients and then think I should be adding gunk. If you have had good luck with the natural goodness of panela, then I'd rather keep it simple and just go with the panela/molasses and pitch it.