Home Distiller

There are many different opinions on exactly when to add dunder to your wash or distillate. Reading the comments, there seems to be many options: Some add it at the beginning of Fermentation, Some towards the end of Fermentation, A few add it into your stripping run, And finally one or two suggest adding dunder to your spirit run.

So my question is what is the consensus ? Have any of you tried different methods ? What were your results ?


Cheers,
Max

You should add it to your spirit run.
On 2nd thought, maybe to your wash.
But if you do that, definitely put it in at the beginning. Unless of course you want it toward the end.
If all of that fails you really could just strip it with everything else.

For real though, you know the options. Surely you read some opinions to find all those options? What do YOU want to make? What flavor profile are you looking for? Do you WANT to infect your wash? What recipe is your wash anyway? Do you even do double runs? Do you reflux? Lots of options, for your rum. What are you learning towards and why?

Talking about making Rum and reading about making Rum don't teach you a whole lot, fermenting and distilling a lot of rum teaches you a fair bit . That's my hint for the day.

My fermenter and boiler is over 100 litres, my boiler setup doesn't work to well with smaller batches either so I'm yet to experiment on this front.

I have subscribed and eagerly await some options on this topic. I'm keen to see what the claimed differences are.

Max_Vino wrote:So my question is what is the consensus ?

There is no consensus. And not only between members, but also the most members don't have a clear opinion here, including me.
What I wouldn't do: Adding it to a wash before fermentation. According to my small experience, the yeast has to dominate the fermenter.
So the earliest point to use infected dunder is when the ferment slows down.

Adding to the low wines is way more effective, especially when acidifying it with sulphuric acid. But effective only means, you need less dunder or the dunder less infected.

If your dunder is ready to go, include it at the stripping. And then let the flavor of the low wines decide, if it's enough or if you also want to use it at the spirit run.

If your dunder is ready to go, include it at the stripping. And then let the flavor of the low wines decide, if it's enough or if you also want to use it at the spirit run.

der wo: Thank you for that. I suspected there was no consensus. I was hoping for a “one handed” Rum distiller, what I got was “On one hand... and the on other hand” blah blah. OK so what to do ? I liked the idea of running a stripping run with dunder and taste testing from there. If it's not enough I think I will add it into the spirit run like Odin suggested.

Zapata Too funny, humor is always welcome !

vqstatesman I'll report back here with my results in a few weeks.

Cheers,
Max

I was joking, but I wasn't only joking.
I'm guessing you have a pot still, but what do you want to make? An ester bomb? A bit of complexity? Are you targeting 1 ester or despise another?

There arent clear answers anyway, but if you arent at least trying for a goal more specific than "use dunder" then it really doesn't matter much.

Another thing to think about is the logistics. Eg: 20% dunder in a stripping run is 20% less wash is 20% less rum. On the other hand I have a large boiler for stripping and a smaller one for spirit runs but they arent perfectly matched so there is plenty of room for dunder in the spirit run without reducing my batch size. For that reason alone I would prefer to use dunder in the spirit run over the stripping run, if everything else was equal, which it probably isnt

I assume it would be good to add before fermentation as a way to lower the PH. Similar to a sour mash process. You might try adding it to several places in the process.

Hampdens distillery adds it at the beginning of ferment, but they have a really nailed down process. If you're a home distiller wishing to come close to recreating Hampdens perhaps get close with esters from everything I've read and seen around here, I would add halfway into your ferment, a little before der wo said. The yeast is established and have done a lot of work, and then your infection and those bacteria can have a party with what's going on. Then der wo and Otis have some threads about sulfuric acid use for when you'd be running this rum with the infected in the ferment, how to use sulfuric acid in the distillation process, to further increase ester production (from what I understand from them... using sulfuric would be to nearly turbo charge the ester production).

This process of mid-ferment and using sulfuric would probably/likely yield a pretty high ester rum; from all I have read chasing the rabbit far down the hole reading many many threads about infected dunder and ester building in rum in the past 3-4 months and making rums myself (but not using sulfuric yet).