Diary/notes

[rustylevers]

Hey everybody, I'm fairly green to distilling and I've been trying to take in as much information from forums and my own trials and errors. I've started a couple of diaries, one covering fermenting and running the still and also one for blending, ageing and recipes. I'm curious about what info everyone is recording, what you found necessary or useful, and what you thought was important at the time but doesn't really matter. Cheers bigears :-B :think:

[howard]

i have a big A4 notebook from when i started.
the first spirit run filled up 2 x A4 pages, recording everything like boiler temp,column temp (pre & post deflag) output temp, power settings, output rate and ABV of every 250ml jar etc etc.
now it's just 6 lines, and 4 of them are for tasting notes :smile:
it was a good learning curve to record everything and reference it, even though it amuses me now.
i still record every brew, but it's usually just the name, date and "usual MO".
a new recipe will still take up a whole A4 page as i list the ingredients, method and settings and make notes on what went right & wrong (usually wrong).
but there's always something new to record, a new page is the amount of citric acid per litre to change the PH, probably brought on by the need to have precise PH using enzymes.

PS don't spill 250ml of 80%ABV product on the book, don't ask me how i know :roll:

[The Stig]

I gave up keeping notes years ago .
No matter what I did it always turned out different :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:

[bluc]

I figure a record of what ya doing is prob not a good idea. Arough version on a forum is a better prospect me thinks...

[rustylevers]

cheers for the info guys

[Carol]

I keep notes all on my runs and recipes.
I find it helpful to go back and look over them when I have forgotten what I did.

It works for me - just do what works for you.

Cheers
Carol

[Wellsy]

I keep notes on washes, ingredients, generations etc. and have an excel spreadsheet with all the outputs from my spirit runs.
All this helps me to keep an eye on the differing consistencies and look for reasons