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Hi everyone,
I'm about to do my first sacrificial run and I had the idea of using all the assorted booze that has been accumulating in the basement over the years. Gifted bottles of wine, mead, bottles of brandy that still have 20% of their content that I'll never drink, etc.

Can I do that? Do I have to be careful about additives like sulfites in the wine?

I have also started a sugar wash but energy is pretty expensive here and I'm too cheap to heat it. So it takes quite long to ferment at 17-18°C. I'd prefer to use that for my first run to get actual product.

If you don’t plan to consume the “basement bottles of booze”, then of course you can use those for your sacrificial run. But, just keep in mind that sacrificial means you’ll dump it after the run, not keep the alcohol for future consumption. The sacrificial run is for removing crud from your still.
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VincentPrice wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 4:19 am
I have also started a sugar wash but energy is pretty expensive here and I'm too cheap to heat it. So it takes quite long to ferment at 17-18°C. I'd prefer to use that for my first run to get actual product.

Some insulation, blankets, etc and a seedling heating mat and temp controller is pretty cheap and easy to come by and operate. It doesn't take much to keep your ferment temp up at 25C....

yes of course, I'm going to discard everything. I should have made that more clear I suppose.

I just wanted to make sure cleaning the still with the sacrificial run didn't require a clean homemade wash with nothing in it.

But it looks like I'm good to go. Thanks!

It's more about flushing your still with reasonably high ABV alcohol vapour than anything else. Any old alcohol will do really for a cleaning run, as long as you have enough in your boiler.

Vinegar run will get anything soluble by an acid, drop most of the nasties back into the boiler, rinse it out, then sac run, cleaning up the things that aren't dissolved by the acid run. Good scrub, water run to get rid of any residuals and you're golden, as long everything in your still build is up to scratch.

If anything you're using for a sac run has any sugar in it, depending on your choice of heating it could cause some issues however. Don't want to be burning sugar onto elements...

The idea of lousy booze is a good one I hadnt considered. Obviously I would stay away from the sweet liquors.
Feints are also a good candidate for a sacrificial run.
I think I read somewhere that vinegar and water as well but check to confirm.