Home Distiller

Gday, I scaled the Birdwatchers sugar wash recipe down to 20L, and that gives 4.5Kg of sugar for a 20L wash.

What would happen if the 4.5 kg of sugar was increased to say 6-8kg?

We have been using the turbos yeasts using 8kg of sugar. We got roughly 10L of 40% per batch. It would be good if we could get similar results with this.

Can anyone help us out? Thanks.

4.5 kg in 20l = 113%
6kg in 20L= 17%
8kg in 20 L= 23.5 the 6kg can be done but it whould depend on type of yeast also that is asking for off taste. do to stressing . if you are
going to do that you mite better sick with turbos.and make "fuel"

Oh ok, so using less sugar will give better taste?

I have read that this simple recipe is better than the turbos? in terms of taste?

yes yeast under stress can produce foul taste some yeast do better than others. some time look at yeast website (like Wyeast) quit interesting
most tell what it is used for, the temperature, (*that can also make good/bad flavors) the alcohol range, also flavors that it tends to produce.
* some yeast produce "esters" that can enhance other flavors as in rum/brandy so higher temps are used on purpose*

sounds like you need to read a hell of a lot more about distilling

it also sounds like you arnt making cuts at all

The question that comes to mind is what type of still are you running...??? Are you running Birdwatchers sugar wash through a pot still or a reflux column...???

You're gonna be making a lot more work for yourself if you're running turbo wash through a pot still... You'd be further ahead by running any sugar wash through a reflux still and making proper cuts... A 20L recipe with 4.5kg of sugar should yield 13.2% wash... With a single run you should be able to pull 2.6L - 3L of 95% - 82%, respectively, which should be relatively clean... A large amount of 40% spirits from turbo will require far more runs through a pot still, consisting of time and effort that can be avoided, in order to attain the quality of a single run through a reflux column...

Don't be blinded by greed... Making less spirits of better quality is easier in the long run... You can do that over and over again with far less effort and you and your friends will be happier with the results...

You shouldn't need turbo yeast with the Birdwatcher recipe because it already has all of the required nutrients... The minimally slower ferment time makes for cleaner wash and, therefore, cleaner spirits...

Good luck and good reading...

We are using a Still spirits reflux still, I found the wiki page on this site last night and am gona do a lot of reading over the next few days.

I'm also going to mod the still to put a larger reflux column in too.

We have been carbon filtering the turbo yeast grog, I assume we should carbon filter the birdw...recipe too?

"'I assume we should carbon filter the birdw...recipe too?"
why? if you make good wash and make good cuts no carbon filtering is necessary.