Building Carbon Filter help

[PalCabral]

As part of my reading up phase, I am returning to distilling after 30 years, I am doing a lot of "archeology" in the forum threads. That's when I run across this thread, which made me smile. Sorry for bringing it back to life after 3 years, if I only had been here then, I could have been useful. FWIW, I'll try to be useful now.

Who is Gert Strand and why should you care about what he says?

The short answer is: Gert Strand is Swedish producer of spirit essences and sells stuff for the homebrewer and the home disitller. His motives are only to sell his stuff. His products are of high quality and he may have a degree in chemistry, but he's no more an authority in distilling than some of the more distinguished members of this forum. The thing is, Gert Strand was active before the dawn of internet when you needed to be published to reach the public - not just by creating a nick when signing up in an internet forum.

The long answer is that Gert Strand has been in business since the 1970'ies when moonshining was alive and kicking in Sweden. Prices for booze were sky high and one could save a lot of money from making the booze yourself. He started one of the more successful essence factories, in fact his company was an international brand leader, and he made Gin, Whisky, Cognac, Rum and many liqueur essences under the brand names Prestige and Strand. In Sweden, home distilling was illegal, even owning a part of a still was illegal, so Gert Strand was doing a balancing act selling his products to predominantly people doing illegal things.

The problem is that no essence in the world can hide the tastes from poorly made spirits, and the stills and distilling procedures of the 1970'ies and 80'ies were often pretty poor. So it was in Gert Strand's interest to make sure his customers had good neutral spirits as the base when using his products. As most of this was bordering illegal, he had people writing books and instruction notes on the subject using pseudonyms, much like we see today with forum nicks and youtube channel names, in order to educate moonshiners make better products. That's not bad.

He realized there was a void in the market for yeasts, yeast nutrients, buckets, hydrometers/alcoholmeters, etc. and of course active carbon. His motives may have been to make money but Gert Strand opened up shops, PGW and Partyman, and had a major postorder company selling all kinds of brewing, winemaking, and similar stuff. The only thing he couldn't sell was stills. In fact, most of the stuff I used when I was in business back in the latter half of the 1980'ies were purchased from Gert Strand's shops. I still have the book "Stora Hembränningsboken", the "Big Moonshining book", which was a bible for how to make booze at home, back in the days. It wasn't him who wrote the book but he had people write it.

Fast forward 30 years and one can argue that, with some of the stills and help we have today, we don't need to filter products. Yet, all major producers of Vodka will carbon filter their spirits, so there is a use for it. And the facts that existed then exist today, what has changed are the producers of active carbons and some of the tools available to us. For example, aquarium carbon should NOT be used for filtering spirits. There is a size intervall of the carbon pieces that is optimal for filtering. The coals need to be activated with hot water before they can be used. etc. The way spirits are filtered/polished is through perkolation. Moonshiners do it vertically, industrial producers do it horizontally, pumps pushing the spirits through.

In conclusion, respect is due to Gert Strand, but we need to remember he was selling his products. And his work is more than 30 years old. Not all of it is relevant anymore.

[shadylane]

I'm a purist who prefers to ferment and distill a clean vodka instead of relying on using activated carbon to polish a turd.

Having said that, here's my opinion on a simple carbon filter.
Forget using tubing, fittings, gravity and all that other stuff. Put the shine in glass jars with washed carbon.
Give the jar a shake every so often. In a couple days pour the vodka into another jar using a strainer to remove the carbon.

[airhill]

Couple of things, activated stone carbon, I suggest you watch a video by 'still behind the bench' on what it is and how activated carbon works and perhaps clear up some myths. Not sure I necessarily agree with his reverse flow, seems seems awfully complex for what it achieves (aside from Industry use). I have used a gravity ss filter and done what shady suggests (smack it in a carboy and keep shaking it) results seem the same just one takes a bit longer.
Curiously neutrals (mine consistently run at 96) are not without flavour its very very faint eg a wash with maize still has that creamy flavour. I have tried running an off the shelf vodka through activated carbon and it changed from total crap to almost drinkable.

[quadra]

4% is small, but on the molecular level where our sense of taste and smell is capable of detecting in the PPM- parts per Million, and for some people and chemicals that threshold is in the PPB - parts per Billion range. I think " Still behind the bench " does a great job of cutting through a lot of internet noise and opinion, if you are willing to sit down for a science class you will walk away wiser for the effort.

[Saltbush Bill]

Agree 100% Still Behind The Bench is one Youtuber that I'd recommend anybody watch , anytime.

[Dancing4dan]

Agree 100% Still Behind The Bench is one Youtuber that I'd recommend anybody watch , anytime.

Thanks for this! I have been looking for information on converting Inulin to glucose. Good information.