Home Distiller

Around where I live, the oak grows well and wild. I figure that I can use any tree trimmings to both burn for flavor when aging and carbon filtering. When it comes to filtering, will any char coaling do, or is there a difference in flavor depending on species of the tree burned?

NO you can't use any carbon. carbon for filters requires specific properties. Why do you want to filter anyway?

OK sometimes there are specific reasons why you might want to filter, but in general filtration is a tool to fix poor technique. Unless you have a good reason for WHY you want to filter, there are alternatives that mean you do not NEED to filter.

Carbon filtering is done using "activated carbon", not charcoal...

As Myles pointed out, carbon filtering is best left as a last resort when nothing else works, like improved fermenting and distilling practices, or diluting and redistilling...

When it comes to cleaning up bad spirits, nothing beats plain old water... Think activated carbon has a lot of surface area...??? Check out how much molecular surface area water has in comparison and you'll know why it works better than activated carbon... And no messy preparation or cleanup...

Bear with my apparent ignorance fellas. I thought that charcoal was a form of activated carbon. My thinking was that you either pour the activated carbon in the liquor then filter said product through a funnel of cotton or a coffee filter, or pouring the product over charcoal (like from a fireplace) and letting it filter through. My thinking was that charcoal or activated carbon were one in the same with as the function was to filter out the toxins that produce a rough taste and making your liquor "smooth".

Mr.Rice -- google the two and you will see the signicant differences in the two.

You can make your own charcoal out of oak or any other hardwood, I make my own out of cherry wood. It is a byproduct of smoking meats and works great for smoothing out vodka. All I do is crush up the charcoal so it fits in gallon wine jugs and put about an inch of chunks in the jug and fill with 90p vodka and let set for 2-3 weeks, removes alot of stuff you don't even realize was there. It adds no color or flavor, just smoothes out and removes off tastes and smells.
I don't know what kind of oak you have in California but make sure it is a veriety of white oak. I have 3 verietys of red oak in my area and 2 will not make for a good whisky because of tannins in the woods.

Can we please make sure that everyone understands the distinction between using carbon for flavouring / smoothing out spirits and its use as a filter. These are two completely different applications.

For filtering you need to have carbon that has been ACTIVATED either chemicaly (typically) with phosphoric acid or zinc chloride at temperatures between 500 degC and 800 degC, or with steam. 130 degC blown into coal at 1000 degC.

Please refer to this book: http://homedistiller.org/activated_book1.pdf

Once used your activated carbon has to be RECYCLED before you use it again. This can be done at home but it smells bad and is dangerous.

You are removing flamable components by washing, boiling in water, and then drying at 140 degC to 150 degC. This drying temp is ABOVE the boiling point of the higher alcohols that were absorbed by the carbon, so pay strict attention to ventilation.

1) I want to thank you fellas for pointing out the critical difference. Yes I did google, wiki, and even asked my mother's uncle's brother's dog (no relation) to confirm my results and OH YEAH....you guys

2.)myles thanks for streamlining me a link on the subject. I'll just assume there's a pop quiz on the subject so I'll study it before you all slip one on me. As per your original question as to a good reason WHY I would filter. I'm not familiar to those alternatives...yet and I have my 5th stilling attempt coming up. I've made some adjustments on my still and I'm adding filtering as an additional step. All experimental at my end.

3.)Fastill thanks for the answer about oak. I'm not sure about the oak here in Cali. I know what white oak is to look like. Funny thing, it just never dawned on me if our native stuff has those tannins you describe. I'll post another post when I find out.

Thanks again fellas.

Plain carbonized wood can add flavour while removing some of the nasties. Activated carbon will remove flavour along with more of the nasties. They are two different beasts.

Myles' answer is correct Mr Rice. It is important to understand that charcoal is not activated carbon, and properly made spirits will not require the use of carbon. It's main use is for fixing stuff ups. I have bags of the stuff that I bought years ago and would gladly give it away, along with the thermometer which I thought was an absolute necessity on a pot still.

Stay Safe

Mr_Rice68, with regard to your comments about improving your distillation process I would suggest that you focus more on the fundamentals and forgo the idea of using carbon filtering as a crutch... If your distilled spirits come out with some off smell or taste, dilute and redistill... Don't cheat yourself out of a learning experience or you'll just further extend the learning process because you'll continually take the easy way out by filtering... This is the best advice we can give novices who start out thinking they should rely on carbon filtering...

Hi Mr Rice,

Here is the difference.

1, Activated charcoal is generally used to “polish” neutral spirits such as a sugar wash that has been run through a reflux still.

2, Charred oak spirals, chips or barrels are used to smooth and flavor whiskey or rum. Jack Daniels filter their spirit through charred sugar maple before aging in charred white oak barrels. The color and some of the flavor of whiskey comes from the barrel.
MR

Activated carbon and charcoal are different but they both adsorb using the same mechanism so in that way they are similar. The biggest difference in that aspect is the efficiency. You may need 10x the amount of charcoal to do the job done by activated carbon.

Ayay is right about charcoal adding to the distillate and activated carbon taking away. This is because regular charcoal will have some resins trapped in its pores which is what is removed by the activation. Some of this can be leached out by the distillate. Activated carbon has it's pores cleaned out which is why it is more efficient.

From personal experience I would say try all three. It's the only way to really know what you prefer.