Air still vodka recipe

[Snow99]

Question on the mash process of making vodka for the air still. What’s the order of making vodka and how much to use. I have corn sugar, schnapps base, mango liqueur, vodka turbo pure, fuel yeast, turbo clear, vodka flavoring. What do I use to store the mash in. This is my first time making any liquor.

thank you everybody

 

[bernardsmith]

I am a certified contrarian so you are likely to find people with a very different answer but my suggestion is
1. You are not going to make a good vodka with an air still. The amount of wash or mash you can distill is small and you will need to distill the distillate several times to get a pure enough ethanol that has no flavors from your wash or mash. Takes about 2 solid hours to distill about 1 gallon and collect a scant pint, but will take about 8 -10 hours to distill your distillate enough to collect about 1 pint of 180 p from about 3 or 4 gallons.
2. To make a reasonable brandy (from fruit); or whisky (from grains) you need to know how to make a wine (wash) or ale (beer without hops) (aka mash). Making a wash with sugar and turbo or fuel yeast will result in a was that is so full of fusels and off flavors because of stressed yeast that you need to turn summersaults to remove those off- flavors. But in any event you want to make a wine or beer at about 12% ABV (that gives you 1 pint of 200 proof or 100% ABV ethanol (nominally speaking becasue not possible in reality to distill to such purity) in every gallon of wash or mash. BUT when you distill you also collect some water so you are unlikely to obtain more than about a pint of distillate at about 130 p (65% alcohol by volume). If you collect less the proof will be higher. If you collect more you are collecting dross.
3. If you don't know about "heads" and "hearts" and "tails" then it is worthwhile learning otherwise you are likely to be drinking nail polish removal mixed with some pretty awful tasting and cloudy spirits.
4. When you make a mash or wash you make it in a food grade bucket and store it in a carboy. When you make spirits from the wash or mash you can store this in mason jars or old bottles of spirits.

 

[mashpaddled]

The air still will make an ok clean-ish distillate so long as you have the filtration system to go along with it. Pot stills like the air still don't give you the clean distillation of a column still. You will always carry some flavor compounds over in a pot still. Without modifications that aren't available for the air still you can't get much above 60% ABV which gives you 40% water plus flavor compounds. The rougher your wash and fermentation the rougher your end product before filtering it.

I've never had anything distilled in an air still run through the filtration system but I would imagine a rough wash is not going to clean up that well through a single small filter. Maybe distilling several times plus running it through a filtered pitcher several times might get something decent. That seems like an enormous amount of work and cost (still, clean water, wash ingredients, filters) to get to a small amount of what is probably at best a mid-grade vodka.

 

[bernardsmith]

Mashpaddled, Your post suggests that the better the ale or wine used for distillation the better the end product - You suggest that the "rougher" the wash the "rougher" the end product. Does that perhaps mean that the finer the wash the finer the end product - so you are not going to get a neutral vodka as much as a brandy or a whisky and both require good fermenting protocols made with good ingredients...

 

[Snow99]

How long does the vodka need to sit after bottling into Mason jars.