midwest supplies has a good carbon filter made especially for liquor quick.
CarbonSnake Filter System - Liqueurs - Other.
I use it for (purchased) distilled spirits, and it works great. I just hooks right into your bottling bucket. Cheap too. Remember, you can always just use the good ol brita pitcher too! its the exact same technology. I suggest you use a separate fillter for alcohol if you do that though.
Yes, and this does just run it through seni-compacted loose carbon granuals.
Oh, and i typically only do 1-2 passes
I've been struggling with trying to filter this stuff to a clear state, without much luck.
When I tried just pouring it through a handheld filter it took forever, so I just dumped the charcoal in and stirred it around, then let it settle overnight, and racked it into a glass carboy.
I let it settle for a further 2 days, then filtered it through a new brita filter, which actually made it worse!
Those things are crap, if they can't even filter out visible carbon particles, I certainly won't trust my drinking water to them!
After 4 passes and many many hours later of filtering through the brita, I gave up, and spent the 20 bucks to buy the filter snake hose, and tried that, and it did clear up a bit, but what I noticed was that the simple paper coffee filter in it seemed to be doing all the work.
I then put it through a few more passes through a stack of coffee filters, and it did clear up significantly, but it's still noticeably "grey" in color.
I decided good enough, and the carbon wouldn't kill me if I consumed it...lol.
The stuff still has a nasty "white glue" smell to it, and a nasty taste, so I emailed the manufacturer to ask their opinion.
Here is what they wrote in response to my inquiry:
All brands of commercial distillers yeast, whether ours or other brands, home use or industrial use, produce a slightly yeasty (and I suppose for lack of a better word, a faintly "gluey" odour right after fermentation. The gluey odour is less obvious the drier it is fermented. Fining and charcoal filtering will remove most but not all of this odour. If you are making liqueurs or adding to the alcobase to a punch, any residual off odour is typically masked by the addition of the flavorings and sweetening sugar. Sorry, but that is the limitation of fermenting distillers yeast. If you want to make a very clean, higher alcohol alcobase (i.e. to make rums, whiskies, etc), you have to further distill it.
Sincerely,
Michael Oxner
Sales Manager
So, I guess it is what it is, I didn't expect to get vodka, but I expected it to be a wee bit cleaner than it is, and I'm not gonna break the law by further distilling it...lol.
The irish cream liquid flavoring does not mask the yucky flavor very much either.
hmmm...what to do next?
