I don't want to knock the distilling community but the brewing community is a lot more scientific about the fermentation process. It has to be, because beer is a fermented beverage whereas distilling removes a lot of flavor from a fermented mash.
I tried making sugar wash from 1.40 until 1.080. Every time I start doing sugar wash. the fermentation stops working at 1.020 or something. I bought yeast nutrient and it worked.What do I need to ferment a 1.060 water and sugar mix ? Other than yeast, water and sugar...
Not really. Yeast doesn't NEED grain. Grain just happens to have what they need.Turns out yeast need the nutrients provided by a grain. Who woulda thunk ? /s
Not really. Yeast doesn't NEED grain. Grain just happens to have what they need.
When you're done with this wash, save the yeast cake and freeze it in 750ml bottles or mason jars. When you start a new wash, boil up the contents of the jar to kill everything in there and use it as the base for your next wash. The dead crap in there is PERFECT nutrients for yeast. I do that with my sugar washes and they ferment great.
True, yet a bottle of good bourbon goes for $500+.
If you spend time exploring the varieties within a class of spirit, you really begin to get the differences and many come from the wash. For instance, with just a tiny bit of practice (and we know how hard THAT is), you can easily discern differences in the mash bill of a Bourbon for instance. High corn carries over as sweet, wheated has a distinctive grainy flavor, etc. Maybe these are nuances but it's something I've been focusing on recently.I dunno...I'm no spirits connoisseur but from extensive [distillery tour] experience, regardless of the style, it seems nearly all of the actual character that ends up in a bottle was acquired post-distillation. And that's the real art...
If you spend time exploring the varieties within a class of spirit, you really begin to get the differences and many come from the wash. For instance, with just a tiny bit of practice (and we know how hard THAT is), you can easily discern differences in the mash bill of a Bourbon for instance. High corn carries over as sweet, wheated has a distinctive grainy flavor, etc. Maybe these are nuances but it's something I've been focusing on recently.
I am new to distillation and I am trying to obtain good neutral. I always have a "rum" undertone from my sucrose washes. Good or very good once you put herbs in it, but "rumy" when I taste it alone. I will next strip twice before doing the spirit run with the packed column. I think this is the due to the few % points of the original ferment water and which tastes "sugar".
Instead of stripping 4 washes separately and then doing a spirit run with the column, I will strip the 4 washes separately, then put all together, dilute with water up to the brim so to speak, and strip again, and then dilute (again up to the brim) and use the column. For a neutral, I want to insert as much tap water as I can in the pot.
You might want to use a barley mash for your wash. Sugar washes are cheap but not very good tasting. You can as you mentioned do multiple strip and dilute back runs to clean out the low wines before doing the final high proof spirit run. You want to hit around 95% to get a clean vodka.
But that's the point: I want them cheap and good-tasting!
I did hit 95-96% with my column and I attribute the "rum" taste to that 5% of non-alcohol content.
In my first and so far only spirit run, I did not dilute. I stripped 4 washes, and then I put the 4 washes in my kettle and made a spirit run with that. Which means that the 5% which wasn't alcohol, was original sugar wash water, and it tasted OK but with a hint like rum, which is OK in a rum but not in a neutral.
Now I am going to add water water water water. Actually for my next stripping run instead of stripping the ferment I will dilute also that with water, which will make a wash around 6% and a longer stripping run, but who cares, I go for quality which in this case means neutrality.
So what I have done with a sugar wash is:
1. Do a normal set of stripping runs to get about a 35% low wine (distill off 1/3 by volume)
2. Dilute all the low wine back to 7% with water
3. Do another set of stripping runs (1/3 volume) and taste the low wine, if still rum like repeat above
4. After happy with smell/taste of low wine, do spirit run
The main issue is you lose some alcohol with each stripping run since you don't get all of it out. So your cost may not be much better than starting with a better wash. Makes for a good experiment none the less.
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