Home Distiller

heartcut wrote:If you dilute the molasses with two times it's volume in water, stir in about 1 teaspoon sodium hydroxide (wear gloves and goggles, it eats eyes and skin) per gallon of molasses, heat to a simmer while stirring, then turn off the heat and let it slowly cool (at least an hour). When it's down to about 100degF rack the liquid off the sediment on the bottom. That should turn the propionic acid into salts and leave it in the sediment. After you make your wash, it'll probably need some acid to get the pH back down to 5.0 or wherever you prefer rum wash. The 1 teaspoon is a guess and will vary depending on how much propionic acid was put in your molasses. Lime or calcium hydroxide would probably work too, it'd take more but would be safer to handle.

msrorysdad wrote:Pint is my brother and he and others tought me how to "knock out" the propionic acid in feed grade molasses, add salt, or calcium hydroxide. I just ran a batch made with a propionic acid molasses, I added salt, boiled, let cool, racked, then made my wash, Pint and Art. guys it worked oh, so well. I got two gallons with phosphoric acid, hit it with cal, and after 12 hrs of coolin it left "gravel" when racked. We need to try the cal and someone smart needs to figure out how much of what, I used 2 tbl spoons of cal to 2 gal of acid treated molasses. I'll post up my results. Keep up the killer work site guys, all my love. Patton (oh, yes, I drank some, white, hot and damn good.) Yes, I'll regret this post later, Mtn.

RUMination wrote:Hey everyone, I'm new here. Haven't yet distilled anything but I have a few washes going and I'm a long time homebrewer. I have a bit of a technical question, or possibly the start of a technical discussion so I'll go ahead and get to it.

In searching for cheap molasses in my area, all I was able to find was the Evolved Habitats molasses that comes in 1 gallon containers. It includes propionic (propanoic) acid as a preservative. I've read a couple differing opinions on how to get around the preservative, most suggesting to boil the molasses with or without salt then allow to cool and rack off the sediment. Well, I disregarded that and started up a half- batch of pugirum with a gallon of the molasses and 2 lbs of brown sugar. Fermentation is going strong so I think either the propionic acid was diluted enough to be ineffective or it only inhibits reproduction and the amount of yeast was enough to get off to a good start. Now comes the real discussion.

I didn't want to reduce the propionic acid because when it undergoes esterification with ethanol, it forms ethyl propionate, an ester said to have a "rum" character. Sounds like it can only help a rum, right? And from reading about dunder pits and aged dunder, I've come to believe the flavors and aromas it lends to a rum is in part due to the bacterial creation of esters such as ethyl propionate. The reaction of propionic acid and ethanol to ethyl propionate is typically done in the presence of a strong acid. My question is whether the reaction will take place to some small extent without the addition of something like sulfuric acid. Even a small amount of ethyl propionate forming would probably be beneficial to the rum. With a boiling point of 99*C, I think it is probably one of the compounds that comes through in the tails that is referred to as "rum oils".