Home Distiller

Hello all- I've been reading,reading,reading this site and the forum for some time. I bought all my supplies and made ready for the mash I created this saturday. Sadly I broke my hydrometer during the sanitizing portion of the day's events and so some of what I did was guesswork. I found light brown sugar very cheap at a local store and so went with that for my mash, which was made up of:

Roughly 17 lbs, ~7.9 kg light brown sugar.
Roughly 1.8oz/50g Yeast Nutrient (the instructions for the nutrient said half that, or .5tsp / gal but that was for beer, so I went for more)
Juice from half a lime, as I had it sitting beside the sink and at the last minute decided to pitch it in.
Preparation:
I brought about 2 gallons of water, 3 lbs of brown sugar, and all of the nutrient almost to a boil, poured it over the rest of the brown sugar and topped it off (to about 6 gals) with filtered sink water. Stirred it up, checked the temp (~100F) and set up about 200mL of it with two packets of Red Star champagne yeast for half an hour to proof it, pitched it and then sealed it. I have some experience with brewing beer and expected bubbling the next morning but didn't really see much, so I shook it and blew the airlock out of the bucket from the resulting gas, although after that initial furious bubbling it remained fairly inert. About 24 hours after pitching I was getting bubbling about once every 5 seconds. I haven't stirred it yet (I found it hard to get over the beer brewing advice I had to not ever touch the fermenter once it's begun). I have questions:
1) Shouldn't it be fermenting a little more, I dunno, violently?
2) Should I be stirring it daily?
3) How important is sanitation? I soaked everything in some left-over no-rinse sanitizer I had from my brief incarnation as a beer-maker but I didn't boil any of the water used.
4) If I've done something wrong (either recipe-wise or otherwise) what might that be?

I have other questions, especially about my still (aluminum with a bubbler- sure to stir up some hornets), but that's not for this topic.

Thanks all, I'm really looking forward to enjoying the hell out of this hobby.

ueberbill,

I think you need to dilute your wash/mash a little bit. Sort of like starting up your car, and giving too much gass at the start. Had the exact same problem using the Redstar champagne in a wash with too muck sugar at once.
Next time, try to make your "thick sugar water and nutrient",and add half to the fermenter,and keep 1/2 in a jug with a lid. Wait untill the stuff gets going, and then add the rest of your sugarmix, and things will happen muck faster overall.
For now, if you have a second fermenter, then split it in half, and add more water. You could then add more yeast if the stuff has pooped out compleatly.

good luck.

So if I'm reading you correctly, you're saying mix up all my sugar and nutrients, split them between the fermenter and a sealed jug. Then hydrate the yeast using that more dilute mixture(?). Then when it's bubbling (minutes/hours?) toss the rest in?

Thanks for the reply.

try reading over preparing wash section on tonys sight thats in my signature. welcome and good luck

I'm sugesting a days to week timeframe. Of course you can just make up the 2nd sugar after the first bunch has done its vigorous ferment and then slowed down...then boost it up. Tater is right to point ya to the main site, there is a good section on making washes. Check out the sugar wash, there is a maing mash from sugar section. There is also a handy calculter for how much ugar to use for a particular %alcohol wash. The Situation I think is givin you trouble is called osmotic stress.

Thanks for the advice. I have absolutely been reading the site, and loving it. The problem I've found is that there is almost TOO much information. For the rum recipe I used ("PK's" halfway down the Sugar-Based Wash Preparation page) it did not mention the parcelling out of sugar. I think I'm going to acquire another fermentation vessel and try a straight sugar mash. For that I'm just going to follow the succinct advice of the Summary for Tony's Wash Preparation page: 5kg sugar, 20L water, 60g yeast nutrient, pitch yeast. So the question stemming from the above discussion is: should I use 2.5kg of sugar initially when I hydrate and pitch the yeast initially, then a couple of days later when it's going well I should add the rest? Or just add it all and take my chances?

Thanks again, I appreciate the help.
Bill

"I didn't know I couldn't do that, officer"[/list][/code]

I think it depends on your yeast duberbill. 5lb(@2.3k) will work for sure, and 5kilo will probably work in a 20l wash, but more than that and you have to fool around with multiple feedings. Whitelabs yeast publishes instructions with thier high graviy ale yeast for @25% abv washes. Ithink there is a copy in the main site, or at whitelabs site under p0025 high grav ale yeast.

If ya stick to 2 lbs sugar to gallon water you should never have a problem.

Thanks for the wonderful advice- even with all my reading it always amazes ones capacity for screwing up in the beginning. When I first started brewing beer and producing ruined batch after ruined batch it always irked me that Sumerians 6000 years ago could do it without knowing a bacteria from a flying car but I couldn't with my bleach and plastics.

ANYWAY, I'm wondering if there's anything i can do to kickstart this batch. It still bubbles slowly away (1 bubble every 5 seconds). Could I remove some of the wash and dilute with water? Add more yeast?

Thanks,
Bill

Hi Bill,
Yes you can split the current mash into two containers and add more water to each. Possum mentioned that in his first reply above. You might want to give the mash a vigorous stir from the bottom just before you split it because some types of yeast settle on the bottom even while fermenting. That way you won't end up with all the yeast in the old fermenter and none in the new. Just make sure it doesn't foam up and spill all over the place when you stir!

Cheers,
J

Last evening I cracked the lid, stirred it up, decanted about two gallons and added about two gallons of water. I repitched another 5g packet of red star champagne yeast. It's bubbling slightly better, we'll see if my old yeast with the help of reinforcements can recover from the strain I put them under.