Home Distiller

I just want to go on record as saying that molasses is great.
It contains all the nutrients your wash will need, and has a nice flavor in the final product. It also has lots of sugar available. If the molasses and sugar water is brought to a boil first (beer makers call this the heat break), the foam up volcano action will be substantially less durring ferment. The only thing besides yeast, sugar, and molasses i put in my rum wash is a lemon or orange (squezed), and this stuff ferments like gangbusters.

I cant wait to get a 5 gallon bucket from the feed mill, when the weather gets warmer, I'll do a big ferment outside.

Update:

I've been running a backset operation with the rum. I've been using 5lbs cane sugar and 1 gal blackstrap disolved together with 1 lime/lemon and brought to boil in depleated wash.
Add some cool water.Poured back onto a bed of yeast and old(continious) wash. I've kept about 70% of the depleated wash going back to the fermenter.
The sugar source varies ocasionally.Sometimes I will use brown sugar. Each generation will get a 1 gallon molassis and 5 lbs sugar feeder.
The most recent generation got 2 gallons to it with no cane sugar. I keep a portion of the new sugars in a seperate jug. I add the remaining sugar after the heavy ferment from the last feed slows down. I still add some more rehydrated dried (distillers) yeast ocasionally, or a cup of sourmash whiskey beer.

The "Yeast Bill" that has been in my live culture and
DATA ON THIER MAX ABV
(no information on which group has more cells)
Crosby superstarter dried distillers yeast @22%abv max
Fleishmans bakers yeast @14%abv max
White labs liquid new english ale #007 (highly attenuated) @10%abv max
White labs liquid yeast high grav ale yeast platnum #025 @25%abv


Consistantly good results.

Each generation of this process has been geting better. I should note that I try not to get the fine particles from the depleated wash in the new. I let the dunder settle and pour it off of the setttled fine parts before adding sugar. Supposedly the dunder is supposed to have some bacterial assisted fermentation in the traditional situation, but I haven't intentionally added any bacteria.

Glad to hear your havin good luck with backsetting your spent wash. In my experience I found that the flavor is SO much smoother than the original batch.

Do you do a stripping run first with your rum or do you take cuts straight from the original wash? If so, what cuts do you find work the best?

I've done it both ways. I seem to like it a bit better when I do a strippin run. I get rid of the foreshots on the final run, then I collect my heads in small increments, and go by my senses when to start collecting the heart of the run. I quit my heart when it is coming out at somewhere around 90 proof or so, then I collect in small increments again until it is coming out at about 60-70 proof. then I use my senses again to decide witch ones to blend in with my hearts(for added flavor). Usually, it seems that the lower proof jars(60-70 proof) are the ones with the most good flavors that I blend back into the hearts.

It seems to me that I get more of the off flavors in the jars that are around 80 proof or so.

I do a stripping run also. If the amount for the spirit run is smallish compared to the boiler, I'll often supliment some wash along with the spirit.
I have noticed that the heads cut ( not just foreshots) is important for good flavor. I kind of think that the off flavors are increased when the yeast operate in an environment with too much sugar.

I like to feed aditional sugars in stages. That way the colony can get multiplied and then get in the full fermenting mode.

Molasses is also a favorit of mine just made some rum today.Took a while for it to finally fermint out but as usal it was worth the wait.

Thanks Pothead and Possum, I appreciate your advice. I'm still working on getting some whiskey I made palatable, but rum will be my next endeavor.

Just got done with my first batch of rum yesterday, I used taters recipe for the most part. For 6 gal wash i used 1.5 gals molasses 5lbs sugar, half a lemon, about 2 tbsp distillers yeast and topped up with water. All went well with the ferment took about 13 -14 days to finish. I started stillin and tossed about 80ml and began collecting down to 80 proof as tater said, I ended up with about two liters that when combined was 114 proof. All seemed to go well except it has a rather strong taste of molasses not sweet but kind of the bitter after taste of raw molasses. Will this smooth out with age on some charred oak? Don't get me wrong its not going to go to waste but I was just wondering if anyone knows if is this a heads or a tails flavor so as to make a better cut for my next batch. Which I just started with pretty much the same recipe plus about a gallon of dunder from this batch. Any help from the rum gods would be nice.

easiest way to find out...do what I said above.

collect in baby food jars, and number them. After the run take tiny little half an eyedrop tastes till ya find out where the bad flavor is coming from. combine and measure out the ones that you don't use from the begining of the run (so you know when to make your cuts next time) blend the good ones, and measure that out too so you know when to start your tails next time.

Run it through your still again. Personally I don't go that deep for the tails . The first run all I toss is the foreshot and collect everything else. The second run I will collect a half liter of heads or so and then make my tails cut 45-50% av.

Airing it out will help make the stuff better. Like UR said, recycle it. I collected a fifth(bottle) after foreshot cut and kept about 2 fifths from about 9-10 gallons of wash. Most had been run once, and the remaining space up to 5 gall was filled with wash. I removed 350ml foreshots, before collecting the heads.

First distill rum is a bit rank in my opinion. The rum gets much better from aeration. For small batches, it is not impractical to do many bottle to bottle transfers, shaking with cap on, and other tricks.

Molassis particles will settle out and sometimes a bit of filtering will help. The particles are gross, I never got them in 2nd distill, but primitive first distills with foam up got some small amount in there. I also added some molassis to my finished spirit for sweetness, after setteling and filtering, it was swell.

thanks for the tips, I think i will run my next batch when done fermenting and add to this run and run it all together for a second distill and as pothead said collect in smaller amounts. That is what there is left of this run, it seems to taste a little better all the time