Home Distiller

Yours turned out better than my 1st run. 2 weeks ago I ran my 1st ever.
Orange brandy, 13lbs oranges after peeled NO white stuff, 10 # white cane + 2 # brown sugar inverted together, pectic enzyme, Goferm protect, Fermade O, Lavlin EC 1118, 5 gallon spring h2o. Osg 1.090, pH 4.6 ended sg 0.992 pH 3.9. 6.5 gallons in 8+3 gallon thumper stainless setup. Ran 8 hours to get 1gallon 1pint of clear product that is so bad on smell and taste it is impossible to find cuts after 48 hour air-out. Rerunning once this new receipe must is ready for volume. Need a smaller test still obviously, now to talk the wife into that. Lol.

TXAKN wrote: ↑Sat Apr 19, 2025 7:58 am
6.5 gallons in 8+3 gallon thumper stainless setup. Ran 8 hours to get 1gallon 1pint of clear product that is so bad on smell and taste it is impossible to find cuts after 48 hour air-out.

Do you have any copper in the vapor path ?

+1 to needing copper in the vapor path and/or boiler.

Being your first run ever, it may hard to know what is “Normal” vs “bad”. Most spirits, especially single pass, do not taste wonder off of the spout.

A second pass should improve the spirit. Trying to get a single pass rum that tastes good is a challenge for an experienced distiller, let along someone new and with a recipe that is new. A single pass spirit on a thumper make a great spirit for aging on oak.

Your run time was good, so I don’t think you smeared it.

I've had poor luck distilling citrus fruit and sugar, it has a sharp headsie wang that I don't like, even with good cuts and ageing. Instead of trying to make orange brandy, experiment making orange liquor.

I've never fermented oranges myself because I've smelled fermenting orange many times and didn't like it. Where I was they called it Bush Beer, it certainly did the job, drinkers used to weave their way home past our place, pissed as chooks.

You might get better results by making a sugar wash neutral, then flavoring it with zest. Zest can be put in a thumper or gin basket or in the boiler, or you can steep it like making limoncello.

If your still didn't have any copper in it, any sulfides present would come over with the distillate. Putting copper in the boilers and risers should fix that.