I was working on a recipe and it came out almost all tails.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 1:28 pm
Is that something that happens with certain recipes? Is there something I could do to prevent this?
What it is, I was playing with a raisin sugar wash, doing five one-gallon batches at a time with different methods and amounts of ingredients, trying to track differences in the fermentation process caused by my variations.
I just use Red Star yeast, I was doing two tbsp per gallon of that, sugar, raisins, water, and fermented them at around 72 degrees (hey it was the best I could do with my setup) for about a week, the sg would go anywhere from 1.07-1.09 depending on how much sugar I was putting in, to 1-.99 during that week.
Did stripping runs on about ten gallons of that, and then I did a spirit run - a very little bit of heads came out, a little hearts, and then strong into tails while it was still pretty high proof. I gathered the spirit run one (american) cup at a time. I passed over the first cup (after throwing out about a quarter cup for fores), and ended up keeping only the three cups after that, and even those, I'm wishing I had only kept two because my "hearts" still ended up really tailsy.
It's kind of disheartening to run ten gallons and only end up with 500 mL, so I abandoned the project.
Is it the raisins? I've heard that the grape skin can do bad things to a ferment...
What it is, I was playing with a raisin sugar wash, doing five one-gallon batches at a time with different methods and amounts of ingredients, trying to track differences in the fermentation process caused by my variations.
I just use Red Star yeast, I was doing two tbsp per gallon of that, sugar, raisins, water, and fermented them at around 72 degrees (hey it was the best I could do with my setup) for about a week, the sg would go anywhere from 1.07-1.09 depending on how much sugar I was putting in, to 1-.99 during that week.
Did stripping runs on about ten gallons of that, and then I did a spirit run - a very little bit of heads came out, a little hearts, and then strong into tails while it was still pretty high proof. I gathered the spirit run one (american) cup at a time. I passed over the first cup (after throwing out about a quarter cup for fores), and ended up keeping only the three cups after that, and even those, I'm wishing I had only kept two because my "hearts" still ended up really tailsy.
It's kind of disheartening to run ten gallons and only end up with 500 mL, so I abandoned the project.
Is it the raisins? I've heard that the grape skin can do bad things to a ferment...