Cassava Vodka

[CaymanRumBaron]

Hi all,

Ive been away for a while trying to startup a microdistillery. I did some testing with a cassava vodka and thought you all would appreciate hearing the outcome.

Heres the simple recipe;

25lbs of unpeeled cassava
1 tablespoon of alpha amylase
1 tablespoon of gluco amylase
4 table spoons of red star bakers yeast

The reason why there is no nutrients is because I figured the cassava would have enough nutrients to sustain the fermentation on its own.

Peeling the cassava and ended up with around 20lbs of peeled cassava. Cut the cassava up into smaller chunks and boiled till soft in a 25 liter stockpot. In order to ensure a good mash, I ran the boiled chunks through a food processor as the boiling progressed and ended up with cassava porridge. Turned off the heat and I then waited until the temps had dropped down to arounf 160F and threw in both enzymes. Stirred in the enzymes and left on the stove overnight in the covered stockpot with no insulation.

At 8:00 the next morning, the pot was still very warm to the touch and the porridge had become very liquid. Tasted the liquid and tasted very sugary. Iodine test confimed no starch was present (did not turn blue, stayed orange). I then added this wash to the fermenter and added water to get around 25 liters of wash. I initially thought the wash was going to be too thick but thinned out nicely after the starch conversion. I did not do a initial SG reading because I thought it would be off but in hindsight (and considering the corn whiskey process) would not have been off that much. I did do a SG reading and the end and it was 1.005.

I added the yeast after aerating the wash and within 30 minutes the airlock was bubbling away. I was expecting a eruption because of all the fiber in the wash and expected the CO2 to create a huge cap but nothing like that all. Fermentation was slow, only bubbling every 5 seconds or so. Fermentation lasted about 12 days or so.

To distill the wash, i tried to remove as much of the cassava fiber as possible in order to prevent any burning inside the boiler. The wash only had about 3 inches of clear liquid on top and the rest was like gerber soup. I started with old pillow case and boy was this the wrong step. The pillow case was like a plastic bag and let only a few drips of liquid through. I put away the pillow case and started using a sieve to get out the big stuff. Afted sieving out the big stuff, I revisted the pillow case and still had problems with the flow. After manhandling the pillow case for about 15 minutes and losing a a few cups of liquid I was left with 20 liters of still very milky liquid but atleast all of the chunks were out and would be less likely to burn.

I have a 8 gallon pot 40" CM column packed with copper scrubbers. I loaded the still and turned on the electric hotplate. I dont do strip runs as in my opinion, the final product does not vary that much to justify all the added effort and time.

After about a hour or so, the first few drops started to flow at 176 F. The smell was obvious; cassava. I kept the first 100 ml and put aside (not to drink but to compare smell to the rest of the run). I then collected around 270 mls of 90%, which took around 45 minutes to collect. Not knowing how much alky i had left to collect started to collect in another container and after 30 minutes or so and another 150 mls, the smell started to get different not bad and the taste just a bit more spicey, much like a sugar wash but different. The temp was now 182F. Watching the temps I finally shutdown at 188F and had collected another 270 mls at 85%. I mainly stopped because the flow was painfully slow at this point and the distillate was getting funkier, ie tails.

Now the most important observation of the day was the smell, not the cassava smell, but the lack of the alcohol smell.
Usually taking a whiff of 90% stuff straight from the still while running a rum/sugar wash would be overwhelming strong like rubbing alcohol but I could not smell any alcohol from the first cowardly smell I took. Intrigued, I took a deeper smell and barely could detect alcohol. This encouraged me to take a sip and bam, 90% strength, no doubt.

I diluted some to 45% later that evening to take a proper tasting and it smells strongly of cassava but is very smooth, unbelievably smooth with a sweetish/mineral like finish. It still has a little funk but from experience I know this will benefit from airing a few days. However, I know that the cassava smell maybe off putting to some so I am going to try slicing the cassava up into thin slices and letting it dry out before proceeding. I think this will remove the majority of the cassava smell/congeners/esters.

I realize this experiment would have benefited from a stripping run but I have quite a bit of backlog to run so I will definitly be doing a stripping run next time in order to hopefully stretch the run out to see which portions are the best.