Fusel Oils????

Brewmeister · Post by **Brewmeister** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 11:35 pm

Hi all,
A question for some of you gurus out there.

When I done my testing run with some cheap wine the other day I kept my distillate in separate bottles e.g heads. hearts and tails. (or what I think are these)

Anyway with my hearts bottle it appears as though some tails may have come through as, for an experiment, I added some water to the distillate and it went a bit cloudy (not overly cloudy but wasn't nice n clear as it was prior to adding the water)
Anyway I let it sit like that for about 3 days and when I checked it this arvo I noticed that the liquid had cleared however there is a heap of white coloured 'gunk' which is sort of suspended in the liquid but sitting on the bottom of the bottle. Looks like white fluff. As soon as you move the bottle it begins to float around in the distillate.
Admittedly the last 3 days we have had rather warm weather & the temps here have been 30ºC+ during the day and down to about 11ºC overnight.

Are these white fluffy things fusel oils that have separated or something else - remembering too that this distillate came from a very very cheap white cardboard box wine.

I have attached a pic here to show what it looks like so you know what I am talking about :-

Thanks in advance

Watershed · Post by **Watershed** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 11:42 pm

I've only had that with fruit washes when I've diluted with hard water - something, presumably a fruit acid that's come over reacts with the calcium in the water a drops out of solution - if you filter out the bits you should find they're quite hard and gritty.

Harry · Post by **Harry** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:13 am

Calcium or Magnesium floc. Comes from cutting with hard water. Always use distilled water for cutting. Go here and read about faults. Start at page 74.
http://distillers.tastylime.net/library ... /index.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

.

Brewmeister · Post by **Brewmeister** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:10 am

Thanks for your replies.

Harry - from what you said I thought maybe it would be right and I started to read that site you posted - then I got some visitors and was discussing the problem and then I looked at the bottle I used to catch the 'heads' in and lo and behold it has the same thing too, yet not to same amount as the 'hearts bottle'.

I haven't let any water at all come near the heads bottle and it has been sealed shut all this time.

So now am in a quandary again - could it be because of the 'fruit' in the wine I used to distill with???

Post by **Husker** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:35 am

Brewmeister
Thanks for your replies.

Harry - from what you said I thought maybe it would be right and I started to read that site you posted - then I got some visitors and was discussing the problem and then I looked at the bottle I used to catch the 'heads' in and lo and behold it has the same thing too, yet not to same amount as the 'hearts bottle'.

I haven't let any water at all come near the heads bottle and it has been sealed shut all this time.

So now am in a quandary again - could it be because of the 'fruit' in the wine I used to distill with???

Do you possibly have any plasic or rubber in your still's "path" ? If so, what you may be seeing is disolved plastics coming out of solution.

They will get cloudy (especially when cut with water, even distilled water). However, I do not know if they settle out, or simply stay as cloudy solution.

H.

Brewmeister · Post by **Brewmeister** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:38 am

Husker,

No, no plastic whatsoever. Just copper all the way from the keg to the glass bottle - structured copper mesh as packing etc etc.

junkyard dawg · Post by **junkyard dawg** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 11:26 am

That was exactly why I suggested distilling something you can toss out on your first run. I had this same thing happen on my new still and again everytime I made modifications to it. IMHO there are some things that are dissolved in the hot ethanol and end up in the collection jars. After a couple of runs this stopped happening to me.

Post by **Husker** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 12:33 pm

junkyard dawg
That was exactly why I suggested distilling something you can toss out on your first run. I had this same thing happen on my new still and again everytime I made modifications to it. IMHO there are some things that are dissolved in the hot ethanol and end up in the collection jars. After a couple of runs this stopped happening to me.

Could you "clean out" the still, by simply distilling a gallon of denatured alcolol (or other "cheap" substitute) with 4-5 gallons of water, then back flushing everything, then distilling it again, then back flushing, then distilling some straight water (possibly two water runs). I would think that would clean out the flux, solder, copper chips, dirt, chemicals or any other "nasty" present anywhere in the system.

I am working on my first home made still right now, so there will be lots of new solder joints and other things to klean out. I would like to start my first real run of product, and not have it tasting like the still components.

H.