Home Distiller

For the last few years I'm been following following the bird watcher wash recipe and it's been working well, until the last 6 months. All my recent washes have all started out fine, bubbled for 2 or 3 days then stalled, and when I look into it, the PH has dropped really low, around the 3-3.5 range from a 5.2 start. I add baking soda and pitch some more yeast in and it will generally come right.

Any ideas what's going wrong? As far as I know I'm doing everything exactly the same as I used to.

Could be your water treatment plant hired a new guy that can't just ph worth a shit..... Sugar washes ph crash all the time. Just go by a feed store and get a bag of crushed oyster shell chicken grit and add a quarter cup per 5 gallon wash before pitching yeast. Baking soda pisses off the yeast.

Was going to say- water.


I believe jb nailed it.


R/o might help.

I've been using whole shells as a pH buffer for a long time and that works well for me with my local water. If you are going to take internet advice on adding crushed oyster shell, tool up to accurately check your pH and keep accurate records for future reference.

Yeh I'd kinda reached the conclusion it must be water, but I couldn't really say what about it.

Thanks.

Just grab some ph strips and test your tap water,if its below 6 your gonna have to add something at some point in the ferment. Oyster shell keeps the ph at about5.3 and don't dissolve unless the ph crashes. Kinda self regulating.
Jb

I've never done a sugar ferment*. I've only ever
distilled fruit mashes. I'm interested in understanding why those who do have problems with fermentation when the pH gets low. For fruit I keep the pH below 3.5 and have never had a stuck fermentation. In fact I would be very worried about infection at anything above 3.5 in an unsulphited mash.

I can see that infection is less of a problem in a mash that has been boiled and thus sterilised but yeast is pretty happy down to at least pH 3 in my experience. Is it low nutrients combined with low pH that causes the stall? Or maybe it's the strain of yeast. My low pH fermentations usually use wild yeasts. Baker's yeast** will be a monoculture selected for working at the pH of bread dough (around 5.5?).

I'd love to find a way to make an apple fermentation stick and make a sweet cider without all the rigmarole of keeving and multiple rackings. Understanding why these fermentations stick might help.

*Nor would I. I like flavour in my spirits.
** Something else I'd never use. I made some beer with it once. It was disgusting.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/5-2-mash- ... lizer-1-lb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

This is what I have been using. My well water can vary on PH. I have had much success with this product.

biggybigz wrote:http://www.northernbrewer.com/5-2-mash- ... lizer-1-lb

This is what I have been using. My well water can vary on PH. I have had much success with this product.

biggy, have you ran a batch with out it to see if the taste is different? When I use that for my beer it makes it taste like band-aids

NZChris wrote:I've been using whole shells as a pH buffer for a long time and that works well for me with my local water. If you are going to take internet advice on adding crushed oyster shell, tool up to accurately check your pH and keep accurate records for future reference.

Hi NZ,

Do you just throw them in? Do you rinse them off? How do you add them?

I weigh them wet, often around 20-30g/25l, then pour boiling water over them to sterilize them.
Add them after everything else is done, so that they are on the top of the grains/whatever.
Record pH.

After fermentation, check pH.
Re weigh them wet so that that I can calculate how much got used.
Record everything.
Then write up the protocol for the next ferment using the notes from the previous one to make adjustments.

I also use oyster shells but in a much less technical fashion. You can't really use to much (within reason) so figure a big handful per 15 gallons on a sugarhead. Got myself a seemingly endless 50 pound sack from a feed store for $8.

bearriver wrote:I also use oyster shells but in a much less technical fashion. You can't really use to much (within reason) so figure a big handful per 15 gallons on a sugarhead. Got myself a seemingly endless 50 pound sack from a feed store for $8.

And you just add them, no washing off?

Yep.

tp

Wizbang wrote:I add baking soda and pitch some more yeast in and it will generally come right.

Don't add baking soda, especially if you're carrying over backset/dunder. It will leave salts behind, and you don't want to do that. You want calcium carbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate.

If you want to be fancy, you can buy calcium carbonate from a home-brew shop for a couple bucks for dime-bag size amount. Then you have to carefully add it in small amounts while measuring the pH change to make sure you don't push it to far. Or, as others in this thread have pointed out, you can go the much cheaper route and use natural sources of calcium carbonate that also have the advantage of being self-regulating.

Egg shells and oyster shells both will balance your pH at an optimal level, and will not dissolve unless the solution they're put in is acidic enough to dissolve them. They self-regulate at a pH of around 4.2, which is right in the butter zone.

When I first started cooking UJSSM I occasionally had problems with stalled mashes because of excess acidity. At first, I tried to solve it with brew-shop calcium carbonate, but that turned out to be tricky. I later started to just add a handful of crushed oyster shells to every batch, and that was the end of the problems.

It helps that crushed oyster shells cost less per pound than than calcium carbonate does per ounce.

FYI, that seems to have done the trick. I added about a 1/3 of a cup of crushed oyster shells and fermentation seems to have started up again, though at this point not at a great rate (I haven't added more yeast yet).

Dagnabbit...
I put 2- 5 gallon buckets of UJSSM to ferment today..... I was doing 12 things at once but constantly telling myslef to add the oyster shells.. somehow I got busy and totally forgot to add the shells. so I am ripping the lids off and inserting the placebo oyster shells, before everything stalls out.. I am also doing an experiment of Bakers yeast vs. DDY.... so far the bakers yeast is screaming ahead in the bubbler...
+1 for the oyster shells...

Carry On
RR

spisska wrote:Egg shells and oyster shells both will balance your pH at an optimal level, and will not dissolve unless the solution they're put in is acidic enough to dissolve them. They self-regulate at a pH of around 4.2, which is right in the butter zone.

Lets not go starting/propagating a new internet/youtube myth here at HD. This is not correct. If you think it is, please produce some credible evidence.

spisska wrote:

Wizbang wrote:I add baking soda and pitch some more yeast in and it will generally come right.

Don't add baking soda, especially if you're carrying over backset/dunder. It will leave salts behind, and you don't want to do that. You want calcium carbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate.

If you want to be fancy, you can buy calcium carbonate from a home-brew shop for a couple bucks for dime-bag size amount. Then you have to carefully add it in small amounts while measuring the pH change to make sure you don't push it to far. Or, as others in this thread have pointed out, you can go the much cheaper route and use natural sources of calcium carbonate that also have the advantage of being self-regulating.

Egg shells and oyster shells both will balance your pH at an optimal level, and will not dissolve unless the solution they're put in is acidic enough to dissolve them. They self-regulate at a pH of around 4.2, which is right in the butter zone.

When I first started cooking UJSSM I occasionally had problems with stalled mashes because of excess acidity. At first, I tried to solve it with brew-shop calcium carbonate, but that turned out to be tricky. I later started to just add a handful of crushed oyster shells to every batch, and that was the end of the problems.

It helps that crushed oyster shells cost less per pound than than calcium carbonate does per ounce.

You may want to get some facts straight before spreading crap around.

Likker_Head wrote:

biggybigz wrote:http://www.northernbrewer.com/5-2-mash- ... lizer-1-lb

This is what I have been using. My well water can vary on PH. I have had much success with this product.

biggy, have you ran a batch with out it to see if the taste is different? When I use that for my beer it makes it taste like band-aids

Yes, two stripping runs on UJSM one with and one without. No bandaids here.

PH troubles?
Crushed Oyster shells and a yeast bomb.