Home Distiller

Hey all,

I started two 5 gallon batches of a sugar wash.

Yeast is S4 - I grabbed the wrong packets out of the fridge.
Room temp is 67 F

8lbs sugar
juice from half of lemon
pinch of epson salt
and 1 6 oz can of tomato paste with no preservatives.

Batch 1 Started at 1.080
Batch 2 Started at 1.078

Currently its at
Batch 1 is at 1.024
Batch 2 is at 1.038

Its been running for almost 4 weeks.

I bought a PH meter (Electronic). I kinda calibrated it with a test strip. My tap water is 6.7. I checked it with a test strip and checked it with the meter. Its within .2 of being accurate.

The Ph is at
Batch 1 is at 2.9
Batch 2 is at 2.6

What do I need to make it take off again? Its working but very slow. Its about a bubble a minute on the airlock. They are sealed very well. Any ideas?

you need to get that ph up between 4 and 6.
here's a thread (one of many)
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=43264

just for interest of those buying ph meters. If it didn't come with buffer solution to calibrate it, get some. My meter for my hot tub was 3 points off out of the box.

just to add, you may have to pitch new yeast, I would.

if your pH meter is accurate (i hear this varys and you need calibration solutions to be sure) the pH seems too low,

It would probably help to know the kind of yeast your using, and if your temp is nice and stable at room temp,

anyhow, more nutrient, ph stabilising and yeast should fix it up imho

I updated with the requested information.

Are you using Safale S-04? Or something else? I'm not familiar with S4.

Thats a high SG and a low attenuation yeast. Both working against you. Numbers dont surprise me at all.

Yes, S-04. I bought that for cider.

i would slap some champagne yeast in there then, looks like the yeasts the issue, its a great yeast for beers but not so much for pure sugar

I only use S-04 for my english/scottish ales, so the OG is always below 1.050 ... and they finish around 1.014 give or take.

As Jimbo mentions, the high SG can cause trouble. An OG around 1.080 would be considered a big beer ... which means you would need to rehydrate, make a healthy starter, and do a good job aerating. Plus you can't skimp on the nutrients. Baker's yeast or a champagne yeast (like 1118) would probably do just fine. But if you just sprinkle an ale yeast like S-04 on top of a high gravity wash you'll probably loose half your cells right from the start.

The low pH (if you got a good measurement) just adds to the stress. Some of that is like due to the disolved CO2, so degassing might help a bit.

I screwed up. I grabbed the s-04 out of the fridge when i was supposed to grab the EC-1118. Both blue.. just different shades..

I'm going to start with some egg shells. I have those. I'll crush them up and throw them in there with some baker's yeast. See what happens!!

Thanks guys & gals.

Just dump the 1118 in there. It will finish it up and take it fully dry. Thats a great yeast.

If your water isn't too hard you could use some calcium carbonate to help moderate the pH (and provide some Ca++ for the yeast). I think you could get S-04 to do the job ... I'd be curious to know how it turned out ... it just needs some TLC so it grows big 'n strong prior to pitching into high gravity.

I'm new in this world, but pH meters, their styles and calibration, have been my friend for many years.

It's hard to argue with a pH meter for effective and easy readings. Unfortunately, the type that most casual users are going to buy, are the cheapest ones they can find. And actually, there's nothing wrong with that. Properly calibrated, it'll give accurate service, but unfortunately, all pH PROBES (not the meter), unless they are the more expensive refillable glass lab varieties, have a limited life span.

The typical cheap plastic gel-filled single junction probe will tend to drift badly as the weeks, months go by, even without use. If the pH meter sees the light of day only once a month, I'd calibrate it each and every time prior to use. Use a 2 point calibration, such as pH 4 and pH 7. Choose two points on the acid side, since that is what we are interested in. You did buy a probe and meter combo that has 2-point calibration, right?

Care of the probe - NEVER, ever, soak a probe in distilled or even tap water. Testing is fine, soaking is not. pH probes like salty environments with lots of happy ions moving about. Buy some pH probe storage solution, and use it. But a better answer than a $10 bottle of salt water is make your own; mix up a 3 molar concentration of KCl, potassium chloride, "salt substitute." And keep your probe tip in there. Never let your probe tip dry out. The little cup you see here on the probe tip - very common - often leaks and the probe dries and dies. A better answer is a small plastic bottle with a hole cut in the lid to admit the probe.

Probes can be cleaned by swirling in a 0.10 molar HCl solution, very dilute muriatic acid. Cut the hardware store acid, which is about 12 molar, by 100... 1ml HCl from the bottle, 100ml tap water.

The longest life can be had from a good double-junction probe rather than a cheap aquarium probe, or one of those "pens." In the U.S. at least, I recommend "Milwaukee" pH meters and probes as being a good mix of economy and ruggedness/longevity. This is a good one, the Milwaukee SM101 - Note that rather than a very expensive automatic temperature compensation mechanism in the probe itself, the user simply dials the temp of the solution to be tested. Foolproof.

I bought this. I calibrated with Ph 4 and Ph 6.4. I test my wash, rinse with tap water, dry with paper towel and recap.

I bought one of those too. 10 bucks delivered from China, prolly not the most accurate piece of equipment in the world, but gives me numbers that seem to make sense.

Simple test strips for me. They're cheap, accurate enough for what I want to know and, oh...did I say simple?

Had another BW wash stall on me again at 1.015. Tried warming (Red Star baker's yeast). No joy. Got some EC-1118 and pitched that into the fermenter figuring "what the heck". It took off again, finished at .998 and doesn't taste or smell funny so I'll run it today. Gonna stay with the EC-1118 for this recipe from now on. <shrug>

tp

Maybe I'm color blind, but those strips make me nuts. I just can't see some of the graduations. But they do work. Can't argue with the cost and ease.

Any pH meter will give good accuracy so long as it's calibrated. Even fresh from the box, they require calibration. And I wanted to mention also their limited life span. When the reading begins to take a long time to stabilize, or wanders under constant pH conditions, it's a sign the probe is about to join its bretheren in the pH probe beyond. <-- this is also why buying a USED probe off eBay is not a good idea. In some labs, they simply throw them in the trash, and some dude digs them out of a dumpster, and sells them.

I"m staying with EC-1118 from here on out too. Seems to do the trick with out the smell or the taste. I was a little cautious about sipping some tomato paste wash but It wasn't that bad.

I can't tell the colors apart from the strips.. I gave up on them. I'm thinking of distilling Sunday Afternoon and give my new electric setup a real run. Already did my sacrificial with water and vinegar.

I'm going to be moving soon and I'm going to have to change my setup. The girl says she doesn't want her house smelling like a brewery. I live where it gets cold, I can't put that in the garage. I'll think of something....

KeggerJoe wrote:Already did my sacrificial with water and vinegar.

Water and vinegar is a cleaning run. To do a sac run you need something to actually distill like some cheap box wine.

tp

Oh, I did that too. 4 gallon wash of sugar, water, and turbo yeast.. It tasted horrid. I dumped it back in to my big wash run. Came out great.

KeggerJoe wrote:Oh, I did that too. 4 gallon wash of sugar, water, and turbo yeast.. It tasted horrid. I dumped it back in to my big wash run. Came out great.

Huh?
Did I read this correctly that you ran a Sacrificial Run and it tasted bad, so you ran the output with your first real run?

If so, you just ruined your first real run. If so, the Sacrificial Run is supposed to be sacrificed - to the driveway, to the campfire, to the whatever, but not yer liver. The vinegar run is the initial cleaning of the still, the sacrificial run is the secondary cleaning, and thus should be tossed

Yep, it's called a "sacrificial alcohol run" for a reason... Water and vinegar is just one step of the overall process, but not a sacrificial alcohol run by any means... Water, to check for leaks and initial cleaning... Water and vinegar, to do an acidic secondary cleaning... Then a sacrificial alcohol cleaning run, with the spirits being tossed, not consumed... Repeat as necessary... It's clean when it's clean, but not before a sacrificial alcohol run... You'll waste a lot more alcohol during your tenure in this hobby so get used to it... The process needs to be repeated every time you add new components to or modify or repair your still...