Toddy to arrack

[thecroweater]

Ok well I'm getting some palm sugar and intend to make a kind of toddy wine (or Kallu as I knew it) to distil to arrack. Although a saw this done 20 odd yrs ago in Tamil Nadu I can't really say I know the best way to go about this and welcome any tips

[InglisHill]

Get some palm sugar, get an SG of 1080, check and adjust pH, add some nutrient, ferment to dry, distill, making appropriate cuts.

Job done.

[thecroweater]

I've has some suggestions from a guy to use coconut water for nutrients and add to the palm flavour, seems a pretty sensible suggestion. Any of you guys know if green coconuts have the goodies yeasts are looking for?

[thecroweater]

well I now have 12 kgs of palm sugar for a 75 ltr ferment, I'm thinking a white wine yeast might be the shot for this , I really do know crap all about fermenting this type of sugar

[InglisHill]

Same here Crow, I know bugger all about it.

You would think someone might............

Perhaps there might be some knowlege that is not in the search function :O

[thecroweater]

yeah mate i have done a google search and gleaned a lot of useful information for sure but many of these experiments were with coconut sugar or most likely nipa palm sugar. Coconut sugar is not quite the same and both coconut and nipa palm sugar is going to give hassles due to high salt concentrations
This sugar has a sodium level of zero and is the sugar from what i can tell of the Borassus (Palmyra palm), this is the same palm I saw used many years ago in Tamil Nadu
Here is a little bit on this palm and its use to make arrack

[thecroweater]

Well I got this wash down, this is what I've done. I put 11.342 kg of palm sugar dissolved into the 75 ltr fermenter and rain water to fill it. I used 1 ltr of coconut water for nutrients (hope they are in there) and a pinch of Epson salts. The SG is 1.052 which greatly surprised me as I was expecting higher and have pitched a re-hydrated white wine yeast

[skow69]

This is all brand new territory for me, but it sounds great. Can't wait to hear how it turns out. Makes me wish palms would grow here.

[thecroweater]

This is all brand new territory for me, but it sounds great. Can't wait to hear how it turns out. Makes me wish palms would grow here.

They don't grow here either but the Aldi stores here were selling palm sugar and muscavodo fairly cheap so I bought a heap as this is a chance to may something I otherwise couldn't
The sugar was quite hard to dissolve and tasted and smelled divine, like some sort of caramel toffee

[thecroweater]

Ahhhg wash stalled, talk about teething problems, aquarium heater takes a dump while I was away in freezing weather. I got it up to temp and now it's stalled so my guess is the coconut water lacked the required nutrients ei nitrogen so tomato paste it is. If I was heading to town I may have even tried DAP ( I know, right)

[WhiteDevil504]

Man I love good arak, I have only dabbled with it but I can tell you that once you have the spirit soaking the anise seeds taste it every day...it goes from amazing to WTF really quickly. It does bring back great memories....perhaps it's time to fire up a batch. I look forward to seeing your progress.

[thecroweater]

well this turned in to a bloody shambles, first the wash stalled at a ABV of around 3% with more then 50% of the sugar unfermented and nothing I did could restart it. Anyways in the time I took rooting about trying everything to get it to finish it seems it got an acetic infection so I ran it to get half of what I expected with 80% of that being faints.
40 odd bux worth of palm sugar for this result is pretty pitiful to say the least, I will be lucky if I have 500ml of hearts for a 76 ltr charge, not happy not happy at all. The only inhibitor listed in this sugar is 0.01% metabisuphite which should have done jack and boiled off with the dissolving of the sugar, I used coconut water that said "no preservatives" on the carton but I believe this may have been an untruth as I also afterwards added tomato paste as nutrients no longer trusting the coconut water to have what was needed. I used a white wine yeast and then trying to re-start it I aerated and re-pitched a considerable quantity of bakers yeast to little avail (that is it started and stopped again shortly after) the SG was 10.53 and it stalled at around 10.30 before the acetic ferment decided to join the party.
The conclusion I drew is there was some sort of unlisted preservative in either the sugar of the nut water or both as i don't think the pH played a significant roll in its demise

[skow69]

Bummer! So do you plan to try it again without the coconut water?

[MichiganCornhusker]

Condolences, Crow, sounds like a damn shame. I would like to know more about arrak, and how to make it, but it seems to be out on the fringes here.
We have Aldi stores around here, not sure if they carry that kind of sugar.
Thanks for posting your go at it, either way.

[thecroweater]

Bummer! So do you plan to try it again without the coconut water?

No, if the outlay was less I might be tempted but I need to get my rum and whiskey stocks up and have a rhum agricol I want to get under way . Yeah thanks MCH ya dunno til ya try eh.

[MichiganCornhusker]

....ya dunno til ya try eh.

Back in my day I remember about someone here trying to malt oats.... Gotta keep trying....

[thecroweater]

Arrack review
ok well straight out of the column it was pretty raw to say the least, i might have gone a little into the heads and tails due to the piss poor yield as blended it tasted a bit like a sugar wash low wines with a hint of turbo. i made up some tempering water by slightly caramelizing palm sugar adding water and as soon as it cooled I added it to the arrack and ya know what it does taste quite a bit like the arrack I drank many years ago. Not bad, not bad at all just a pity the outlay was a bit much for the yield

[Tomb]

Sorry to call this back to life after a year....

But I have been given almost 150 pounds of coconut palm syrup with the task of seeing what I can do with it.
(There is a thousand more on its way to the drain unless I find a fitting use)

It is about 78bix and I am lead to believe that this should mostly be fermentable. It is a dark honey colour, but still translucent (not black like molasses)

I was thinking of mixing it up like sugar. (Invert with citric acid, tomato paste, yeast nutrient, Epsom salt, egg shells, lots of bread yeast, high temp ferment)


Any hindsight on why the ferment did not work?
Did your ferment possibly go too acid?

T

[thecroweater]

No don't know why the yield was down, certainly there was a lot of unfermented sugar. The backset didn't taste especially acidic so my first thought were that the sugar contained some unlisted preservative but I can't really say I know that. I'm sure I still have some here so I'll give you an update on the taste once I locate it

[Pikey]

I'm almost scared to give an opinion on this one (Grandmothers and eggs - all that )

I'd stick in more acid - yeast likes acid. and give the initial wash a good belt with the airstone, to get the yeast breeding.

Personally I'm in the "anti - bread yeast camp" and would stick with crow's "decent wne yeast"

[thecroweater]

I think that protocol should work. Mine didn't not ferment it stalled after fermenting fine so something was wrong without being catastrophically wrong, could have been the wrong yeast for the job, could have been a preservative maybe pH, without repeating it and changing a variable its just too hard to tell. Good luck with it.

[Tomb]

UPDATE

Wow, I have never had a ferment go so fast!

Started 1.075 and got to 1.002 in 36 hours.

Was going so fast I had to rip off the reflectix and put a large fan to keep the temperature down. Smelt strongly of banana bread.

It has been another 24 hours and there is a very light activity but no real movement of the sg. I have turned the heat on to keep the temperature up to 31C.

Think the yeast is just cleaning up (used 2g per litre). Will leave it for another day of two and then let the temperature drop and let everything settle. I was expecting a week long ferment, so I am way ahead of schedule.
I guess all the effort to optimise the ferment paid off, of this is just a great product?

All the way through the smell was so unique that I am now toying with the idea choosing the right hop and making a coconut ale!

T

[Shine0n]

Sounds good, let us know the outcome for sure.