First time distilling ( failed )

[Norric]

hello guys, I distilled my first bach of a sweet feed mash. I found a good recipe and followed it. Today I distilled it only to feel like a failure. I ran it slow and let it rise up to around 176 F°. Then started collecting. After it was all set and done. None of it tasted like alcohol. It tased like water with zero alcohol. I am using a half keg with a 2 inch copper pipe to 3/4 copper pipe. The batch of mash was 5 gallons. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Snuffy]

hello guys, I distilled my first bach of a sweet feed mash. I found a good recipe and followed it. Today I distilled it only to feel like a failure. I ran it slow and let it rise up to around 176 F°. Then started collecting. After it was all set and done. None of it tasted like alcohol. It tased like water with zero alcohol. I am using a half keg with a 2 inch copper pipe to 3/4 copper pipe. The batch of mash was 5 gallons. Any help is appreciated.

I'd distill the runoff again. I'm no distiller but my dad did that a bit. It seemed like a temp control vs tubing length kinda thing.
His stuff was pretty rough until he got to where he knew when to swap containers and catch just the heart and separate it from the heads and tails that contain most of the hangover alcohols.

 

[firerat]

Did you make any sort of cuts or just collect everything that came off the still?

How far did you go? How did you know to stop?

 

[Norric]

I started collecting at 176F° and the parrot was reading zero ABV. So I don't know where I lost everything at.

 

[Snuffy]

Did you make any sort of cuts or just collect everything that came off the still?

How far did you go? How did you know to stop?

Initially, he kept it all. It was all trial and error. He got a lot of advice from folks but their experience seemed relative to the still they used and didn't necessarily carry over between situations that well. It took so much mash and effort to get such little product that he eventually gave it up.

 

[Snuffy]

My experience is all secondhand, so I'm probably a bad candidate to have answered this post. I just hate to see 0 responses.
I do know he used a hotplate and shot for 174 F and played with coil lengths and cooling methods a lot. His tubing was more like 1/2 or 3/8 inch. He always got alcohol but also some water on the first pass.

 

[Norric]

I appreciate you helping me. I'm just going to have to keep trying till I get it right lol. Thankfully sweet feed is cheap to buy.

 

[firerat]

Yeah distilling can be a pain until you have a system going and each system will be unique to the other.

A 5 gallon wash that starts out 12-14% can only possibly yield less than a gallon of pure ethanol. And you aren't getting ALL of it out of there. How much you get will be determined by your ABV. And more is NOT better.

To really get anything worth it it's going to take multiple passes from multiple washes.

My grandfather and great-grandfather were old scholl bootleggers and showed me some really nifty stuff.

I had an 8 gallon system (pot still) I ran for a while and got decent results. I'd ferment a 5 gallon wash, do a stripping run (fast) down to about 20%. Then I'd ferment another, strip, collect. I'd do this until i collected 5 gallons of product. This could take 5 or six batches. I'd combine what i stipped and run that slow making cuts along the way (spirit run). I'd keep about 1/4 of what was left in the pots after a run to use for sour mashing and any heads or tails not used in blending I'd add back to re-distill. The stuff I'd get as hearts was fantastic but took a lot of work. I don't have the time or space anymore to mess with it.

You are going to be hard pressed to get what you are looking for out a 5 gallon wash. You can get something drinkable but it won't be much.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hiya Norric. Apologies if my thoughts and questions sound ridiculous to you. I may have grabbed the wrong end of the string.

Distilling begins with a wine or a beer (wash or mash). What was the ABV of your mash? If the ABV of your mash was zero then you made distilled water - and that would be a success and not a failure. Distilling , it goes without saying, does not create or make alcohol. It removes water from alcohol you have already made and so concentrates alcohol in the mash or wash: wine becomes brandy and beer becomes whisky and if you remove all flavor notes then both become vodka.

You say that the distillate tasted like water. OK. What was the proof or ABV of that distillate?

Note I am focusing on the fact that you never provided either of the two data points (Those two ABVs) that I think anyone would consider critical. And I wonder if that is because you don't have either a wine hydrometer or a spirit hydrometer (they look very similar but they cannot be used interchangeably). My last question: did you successfully brew a beer which you then distilled or did you simply create a wort that never fermented (or failed to fully ferment) and you tried to distill what was essentially a malted grain (sweet) flavored water?

 

[Norric]

Hiya Norric. Apologies if my thoughts and questions sound ridiculous to you. I may have grabbed the wrong end of the string.

Distilling begins with a wine or a beer (wash or mash). What was the ABV of your mash? If the ABV of your mash was zero then you made distilled water - and that would be a success and not a failure. Distilling , it goes without saying, does not create or make alcohol. It removes water from alcohol you have already made and so concentrates alcohol in the mash or wash: wine becomes brandy and beer becomes whisky and if you remove all flavor notes then both become vodka.

You say that the distillate tasted like water. OK. What was the proof or ABV of that distillate?

Note I am focusing on the fact that you never provided either of the two data points (Those two ABVs) that I think anyone would consider critical. And I wonder if that is because you don't have either a wine hydrometer or a spirit hydrometer (they look very similar but they cannot be used interchangeably). My last question: did you successfully brew a beer which you then distilled or did you simply create a wort that never fermented (or failed to fully ferment) and you tried to distill what was essentially a malted grain (sweet) flavored water?

I made a 5 gallon sweet feed mash and followed a good recipe. I dont have my numbers in front of me. But my first ABV reading was around 14% and my end ABV was at 8% . And that sounded wrong for the amount of sugar I put into it. The fermentation lasted about a week. And I am using a wine hydrometer. Thank you for letting me know there are two different kinds. I wasn't aware of that.

 

[firerat]

I'm going to assume when you say your first ABV gravity was 14% and the last was 8% you were looking at the scale on your hydrometer that says Potential Alcohol?

 

[bernardsmith]

I made a 5 gallon sweet feed mash and followed a good recipe. I dont have my numbers in front of me. But my first ABV reading was around 14% and my end ABV was at 8% . And that sounded wrong for the amount of sugar I put into it. The fermentation lasted about a week. And I am using a wine hydrometer. Thank you for letting me know there are two different kinds. I wasn't aware of that.

OK so this is helpful (and I hope my response is helpful too). Six percent ABV means that if your total volume was 5 gallons (let's call 5 gal 18.9 L) , then 6 % alcohol is no more than 1.1L of distillate (assuming your distillate was 200 proof which is of course not possible). That's about a quart. How much distillate did you collect? Let me assume (and I am being very conservative here) that 1 liter would have been around let's say 175 proof - so if you collected 2 L that would be about 87 proof and if you collected a gallon (4 L) that would have been about 44 proof (or about 22 % ABV

 

[waldoar15]

You need a proof and tralle type hydrometer to read alcohol. One calibrated for brewing and wine is calibrated for a different specific gravity range (sugars).

 

[Norric]

I collected around four 750ml jars, and every single one tasted like water.

 

[firerat]

How are you determining what the abv of you wash is?

What are you using?

 

[Norric]

A hydrometer

 

[firerat]

A hydrometer

Does your hydrometer have 3 scales?

If do which are you reading?

 

[Norric]

I'm not sure but here is a pic

 

[firerat]

My guess, you are reading the potential alcohol scale (the one with%) and not specific gravity. You ste reading ther wrong scale. That's why it went down. The potential alcohol scale assumes you'll ferment all the way down to 1.000 or lower.

So ok you said you were at 14%. On my scale that's about 1.110 specific gravity. Then you said it read 8%. Which is about 1.061.

That means your wash was only like 6.43%.

 

[Norric]

My guess, you are reading the potential alcohol scale (the one with%) and not specific gravity. You ste reading ther wrong scale. That's why it went down. The potential alcohol scale assumes you'll ferment all the way down to 1.000 or lower.

So ok you said you were at 14%. On my scale that's about 1.110 specific gravity. Then you said it read 8%. Which is about 1.061.

That means your wash was only like 6.43%.

Ouch. But for a 5 gallon batch, does that sound right?

 

[firerat]

Not for what you are trying to do.

What type of yeast did you use? What was your recipe?

 

[doug293cz]

Can you post your recipe here? And, what was your mashing process to convert the starch in the feed into fermentable sugar?

Brew on

 

[Norric]

Can you post your recipe here? And, what was your mashing process to convert the starch in the feed into fermentable sugar?

Brew on

 

[Norric]

Not for what you are trying to do.

What type of yeast did you use? What was your recipe?

I used red star turbo yeast.

 

[doug293cz]

I don't see any enzymes being added to turn the starch from the feed into fermentable sugar. This could be why your FG (end of fermentation SG) was so high, and the alcohol in the wash so low.

Brew on

 

[IslandLizard]

I don't see any enzymes being added to turn the starch from the feed into fermentable sugar. This could be why your FG (end of fermentation SG) was so high, and the alcohol in the wash so low.

That! ^
In addition, the feed grain should be crushed/milled before starting the mash. Whole grains won't hydrate and convert.

 

[bernardsmith]

The sugar would have fermented. 7 lbs in 5 gallons is about 1.4 lbs per gallon and so the fermentables (if the grains were not malted - ie were not sprouted - that to produce enzymes to convert the startches to sugars accessible to the yeast - and then heated to stop sprouting and flavor the malt (longer heating at higher temperatures destroy the enzymes but produce flavors that brewers like for darker brews) would provide a fermentable gravity of about 1.055 or potentially about 7% ABV

 

[TGFV]

If you used turbo yeast it would have gone the whole way to to a full ferment, but most likely smelt like burnt A-hole and rotten eggs. Either the yeast heated up from its own activity and committed suicide (a common problem with Turbos) or the lack of nutrient killed it.

My advice is to ditch the Turbo Yeast right away, you are only going to make crap. And no one wants to drink crap.

Since you are only fermenting sugar (the grains are for flavour) I would go for either a good wine yeast, Kveik yeast, or specialized yeast designed for ale ferments and lower the sugar a bit. The higher the ABV gives you more alcohol, but also more feusels (unless you use a kveik) and the flavours aren't as concentrated as if you used more runs of a lower ABV.

Secondly, keep fermenting until the gravity is 1.000 or close to. The grains aren't going to convert, unless you used specialized species of yeasts such as S. plum or the like, so it's just a sugar conversion and therefor like cider, mead and kilju.

Lastly, if you are wanting to drink your first runs and not do a second run like others mentioned, you will want to do a much slower run and collect in much smaller jars to be able to make your cuts and do tatses.

I used 200ml jars for a 3gal still when I was learning.

Best of luck and hope to hear about your successes soon!

 

[Norric]

Thank you for the advice. I will be making another run here soon and will give a update.

 

[Munster51]

Doing it the way you did would also not leave with a full 5 gallons. The grains you use would soak up some of the initial water you used. I would do a little research on all grain brewing. That will give you a good base to begin distilling.

 

[Norric]

Ya i think im going to take a big boy step and try 15 gallons next run.

 

[IslandLizard]

Ya i think im going to take a big boy step and try 15 gallons next run.

That makes no sense at all!
You're still in the beginners and testing camp. Wouldn't it be much smarter to first iron out the problems doing small batches before ramping up production?

 

[Norric]

Chill lol I'm going to have someone to help that knows what he's doing. I appreciate your concern though thanks.

 

[TGFV]

Chill lol I'm going to have someone to help that knows what he's doing. I appreciate your concern though thanks.

That's one of the best ways to learn this trade. There is only so much you can learn from reading online, though there is more information online than most people could ever process lol.

Are you in the other forums? They have a lot of amazing information for new homedistillers and are an amazing resource, even if a bunch if salty old codgers (on the same level as many MTFers).

 

[bracconiere]

I dont have my numbers in front of me. But my first ABV reading was around 14% and my end ABV was at 8%

already covered....

and then heated to stop sprouting

actually the sprouts need to be dried first to lock up the enzymes before kilning, so they don't denature.....and i believe sweet feed is rolled barley....so it wouldn't sprout.....

for the record, when i was first making rice beer with amylase enzyme...it took me a couple batches to learn i had to add gluco to the fermenter, because i was getting like a FG of 1.035 or something (gave me mad runs, but i drank it, lol) then i found out i had to add gluco to get to actually finish dry, because alpha is a lazy S.O.B., needs someone to clean up....


i'd also say, don't try and keep it at the boiling point of ethanol....give full throttle till you get runoff, then back it off....water/ethanol are i believe something called aziotropic, they like each other.....


(sorry, when i find something fun to talk about...i can't speak right)

 

[bracconiere]

oh, where was it 176f? the kettle or the top of what i assume would be your column? the kettle should be a full rolling boil, and the column should be at least 3-4 feet tall, for the vapors to seperate......the taller the more pure you can collect it.....