Home Distiller

Hi there , I am new here and new to distilling out here in the great north west , that would be Washinton not Oregon !! . What a great site to learn and get help !!! I do have a question maybe someone can answer about specific gravity. so far what I have read says to shoot for 1.050 in your mash/wash. My first 6 gallon batch I had to add about 1 pound of sugar to get that using a malted barley. but if more sugar will raise your SG why not get you SG up to 1.90 0r 1.10 which will raise your % of alcohol and yeild more distillent out of your run ??? or not !

note: my first run produced little over 1 quart of 160 proof from the middle of the run with my reflux still I built, ( thought I would get more ! ) through in some oak chips for a few days cut it to 80 proof and wow not bad !! ........... any way does any one know what that will do to raise your SG before fermenting ? good idea or bad Idea ??

Thanks for any input on this topic , WFW

You can go as high as 1.100 and get closer to 15% ABV in the wash. The problem is that this is more of a challenging environment for yeast and you tend to have more stalling and more production of nasty esters that come through in the liquor. If you use proper nutrients when necessary, and watch fermentation temps, and use a yeast that can survive the high ABV environment, then you can make a higher ABV wash.

I personally would stick to something under 1.080, thats got a much better chance of going smoothly and making a good product. after all, if you just do a few more stripping runs you'll still be able to do a nice full spirit run. So the difference between 1.100 and 1.050 is juts an extra stripping run and those are supposed to go quicker.

Greetings, wfw52, and welcome to the HD forums...

As for your SG question, not sure where you got the 1.050 figure from but there are reasons for keeping the SG down... While many strains of yeast can tolerate a higher SG not all can... And when you consider that SG can be correlated to %ABV you have another issue... Higher SG's can cause the yeast colony to suffer osmotic stress which can slow, stall, mutate, cause autolysis, cause off tastes and/or smells, or a multitude of other problems... And as the wash ferments the higher %ABV can also cause most of these same problems... For that reason we have, through practical experience, determined that a potential %ABV of 14%, or a starting SG of ~1.092 to ~1.100 to be the practical maximum... Going higher just adds stress to the yeast colony... Some folks stay well below that level, especially when doing all grain mashes... The unfermentable solids of the AG mash are the main reason for keeping the SG lower as they tend to keep the SG higher throughout the ferment, especially when fermenting on the grain... So, sugar washes at higher SG and potential %ABV are more forgiving for sugar washes than all gran mashes...

Hope this helps...

Good luck and enjoy the journey...

The specific gravity you've been reading about probably pertains to all grain mashes. You can get a higher SG with all-grain than 1.05 but it gets more difficult since the more grain you use, the more it becomes a big pile of mush.

Sugar heads you can shoot between 12-14% with no adverse effects.

EDIT: posted same time as Rad.

Thank you Tom, Rad and Washashore for your response !!! you guys gave me what I was looking for !!!! perfect thank you !!!! This is a fun hobby look forward to getting better at it thanks to you guys !!!......................WFW

Here is my explanation.

You make the yeasties happy they will piss alcohol and fart CO2.
You make them unhappy they will shit in your drink.

The urban legend about bakers yeast is that it dies at around 6%. That has been debunked by many here who have been using the stuff for years and can go to 10% without any problem. But a lot of people, including experienced homebrewers, still accept the myth as fact.

A buddy of mine screwed up his math on scaling down birdwatchers and fermented 21% with bakers yeast

RevSpaminator wrote:The urban legend about bakers yeast is that it dies at around 6%. That has been debunked by many here who have been using the stuff for years and can go to 10% without any problem. But a lot of people, including experienced homebrewers, still accept the myth as fact.

The myth came from a time when bakers yeast wasn't as hardy as it is now. Back when you didn't know if it would even make your bread rise.

Washashore wrote:A buddy of mine screwed up his math on scaling down birdwatchers and fermented 21% with bakers yeast

I accidentally mismeasured my sugar once and ended up with 19% using bakers yeast... Pretty sure it was a modified Birdwatchers, not an All Bran...

And yet the brew shops still push turbo yeasts Their profit margin must be ginormous on that stuff.

Since were talking about yeast I have a question , Is there a rule of thumb on how much yeast to use per gallon of wash your making? I can guess what happens if you under yeast , but what happens if you over yeast your batch ?? ........... WFW

Table spoon of yeast per gallon. Up to a point. 10 galling and above you mite go less or just make a good starter.

You can always use less when making a good starter.

Over-yeasting is really not much of a problem. About the worst thing you could expect would be a very rapid ferment and possibly more of a temperature rise than you might want. Some high temp ferments result in more fusels and esters.

tom sawyer wrote:Over-yeasting is really not much of a problem. About the worst thing you could expect would be a very rapid ferment and possibly more of a temperature rise than you might want. Some high temp ferments result in more fusels and esters.

This can be a debate. As some beleave over pitching can lead to off flavors. And some beleave it doesn't.

I beleave that most find a comfort zone that they like to stay in. They find something that works good for them. And they tend to stick with it. It may be influenced by things they have read. Like the over pitching thing. Or it mite just come from experimenting. Either way if it works for you go for it.

Over pitching is a waste of good yeast though.

When it comes to pitching yeast you need to consider the optimal size of the yeast colony required to adequately ferment a given wash... If you under-pitch you will end up having a longer lag time between the aerobic and anaerobic phases... If you over-pitch you can end up with too large of a healthy yeast colony that will consume all of your nutrients before fermentation is complete and the colony will either revert to autolysis (cannibalism) or it will stall while it waits for nutrients to be added... Right-sizing the pitch rate becomes a key factor which must be balanced between lag time while the colony attains proper cell count and ending up with too large of a colony... And every yeast strain can have different performance parameters... If you've ever seen how much yeast beer breweries and spirit distilleries pitch you might be amazed...

I guess my answer is mostly based on brewing beer, and barley malt generally has a generous nutrient content. I've never had a beer stall out when I over-pitched. Under-pitching is the worse sin when it comes to brewing beer.

With winemaking I almost never repitch yeast so I'm using a new packet and pitching the right amount, and I use nutrients and feed them at the end of lag and at 1/3 depletion.

I do know that a generous pitch that starts shoing activity within 8hr of pitching, is quite comforting.

Still on yeast...because I just ran across this.

Following the 1 tbspn per gallon....why does UJSM only call for 1 tablespoon but 5 gallons? Then the sweetfeed version calls for calls for 8 tablespoons for 6 gal.

Quite the spread there

I think you can take that as being the kind of range in yeast cell cont that will work. If you add less they'll multiply and get up to numbers, if you add a bunch they just go right to work. And throw in the highly variable amount of dead cells in your jar/packet/vial of yeast, that is dependent on time since packaging, storage conditions, etc and you really can't say for sure how many cells is in a spoonful. So some people recommend a spoon of fresh stuff, another recommends 6 spoons of what might have been in the fridge for awhile. As long as you add enugh to get activity in a reasonable amount of time (a day to two days) you are going to be OK. Heck they made beer and wine without adding yeast for hundreds of years.