Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hey all,

Three days ago I put my 2nd gen McRum through my pot, and after used the dunder and lees to put on another generation.

So I added about 10-15l of hot dunder to 3kg of raw sugar, molasses and lees, filled to 20l with cold water. It started to ferment for a little bit (actually seeing bubbles and stuff) but then it decided to stop completely an hour or so after pitching the yeast. I decided to put my fermenting belts on just to see if it was the temp (too low) causing it too stall. However over night it didnt take off again.

Started reading the forum and people were saying that 2nd/3rd gens are quite acidic at the start, and to just add 2 or 3 teaspoons of baking soda to even it out a bit. So i did that and it bubbled like crazy (baking soda) and then decided to pitch more yeast.

Well that all happened this morning and with the heating belts on the whole day (wrapped 1/2 way up the side) and the wash still has nothing happening. What do I do? I have a pH meter in the mail and that should be here in a week or so.

Hey mate,
Sounds like a PH issue to me. You need the meter to accurately measure the PH otherwise you will be making blind changes. Calcium carbonate is good to raise the PH if that is the issue.
Also if I read it right, 10-15 litres of dunder to a 20 litre ferment is a bit on the rich side. I use a maximum 20% in my ferments. I'd hazard a guess as this being the root cause of your problem.
You could try splitting the ferment in to two, add a bit more raw sugar & top up to 20 litres with each


Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional

:scared-eek: holy schmoly waaaay to much dunder, secondly, as i read it you put hot stillage to sugar AND lees, the hot stillage would of wiped out you yeast in the lees. if ya going to use hot dunder to dissolve the sugar and other additives etc, wait until its cool to add to lees. dont panic, its all about learning, you just figured out 1 way on what not to do. :handgestures-thumbupleft:
i dont know your situation, but i would split what you have up into equal parts and/or make a bigger ferment and got from there. shit i hope that makes sense :))

Bahah, yeah I did this at about 12 at night too :/

So yeah, I'll just have to get two more fermenters then and divide the 2 washes into 4 equal parts and just add abit more sugar and yeast and junk and see how it goes :)

Thanks for the advice!

whoa if you've already halved it between two fermenters and topped back up with water this should not be your problem. A taste should give you and idea, lemons are around 3pH you want say 4.5. I would say you killed the yeast with too much heat try re-pitching before going to a whole lot of trouble :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Hey crow,

I haven't halved it yet, I originally had 2 x 25l fermenters with 10 - 15l each of dunder + other required recipe ingredients. So I need to go out and get a few more fermenters today and split it and see how it goes. My pH meter should be here sometime this week or next so I'll just halve and let it sit until I can accurately measure the pH.

karrotbear wrote:Hey crow,

I haven't halved it yet, I originally had 2 x 25l fermenters with 10 - 15l each of dunder + other required recipe ingredients. So I need to go out and get a few more fermenters today and split it and see how it goes. My pH meter should be here sometime this week or next so I'll just halve and let it sit until I can accurately measure the pH.

So why don't you just dump one of the fermenters then split the other one between them. Yes you loose some ingredients but it will get you on your way. No need to over invest in 25L fermenters, I can guarantee before too long you will be stepping up to 60L then 200L fermenters.

Dominator wrote:So why don't you just dump one of the fermenters then split the other one between them. Yes you loose some ingredients but it will get you on your way. No need to over invest in 25L fermenters, I can guarantee before too long you will be stepping up to 60L then 200L fermenters.

That is true, I'll look into it :handgestures-thumbupleft:
One thing though, I'm pretty sure the missus will kill me if I dump it down the laundry drain, so I'll have to wait when she's not home and then pretend the smell was already there! :teasing-tease:

I can't upgrade yet, as I will be moving in a few months and using removalists and the less I get them to move the better :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I'm a little confused how you came to using so much dunder, could you tell us what recipe you were following ?

Ok stick with you original plan and just get to more fermenters. I've never tipped a wash out and I never will

MacStill wrote:I'm a little confused how you came to using so much dunder, could you tell us what recipe you were following ?

I was using your recipe, but more of "That looks about right, ohshit oh shit ohshit hot dunder steam burning my hands...oooops"

The measurements are there for a reason :laughing-rolling:

Yeahhh, I'm sure they are :angry-banghead:

I did end up with an appreciation for how hot newly distilled dunder is, so I guess I took something from it! 8-}

Okay so I got my pH meter in the mail today, i calibrated it with the solutions provided etc etc

Stuck it into my ferments and they has a pH ranging from 4 to 4.5

What range do I want for a wash?

karrotbear wrote:Okay so I got my pH meter in the mail today, i calibrated it with the solutions provided etc etc

Stuck it into my ferments and they has a pH ranging from 4 to 4.5

What range do I want for a wash?

4-4.5 is good.

Okay so I finally got around to splitting the stalled wash.

Split the wash into 4 separate fermenters with approx 10L of original stalled wash per fermenter. Added an extra kilo or so of brown sugar and boiling water (ended up with a final temp of 28 - 34 degrees and pitched the yeast after allot of aeration (final pH was between 4 and 4.5). This was about 3 hours ago and they are somewhat disappointing with their 'fired up' -ness. Slowly chuging along (none of the 4 fermenters have a bubbling cap as I am used to). I have two of the 4 fermenters wrapped with a heating belt and hopefully they will start being happy again :pray:

So even with temp and pH checks it just doesnt seem to want to take off at all. Time to scrap it and restart. :(

Yeah look others might disagree with me here but I do think it's time you ditched it and started again mate, there's only so much stuffing around worth doing and I reckon your there.

Follow my rum recipe without doing the generations, you will get a very nice rum.

Better luck next time :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Same here mate im in the same situation
If I do a macrum first gen it fires on all cylinders crazy when I do gens it stalls sometimes stops I got a ph tester today and mines 4 the ujssm next to it reads 3.5 and is going crazy so ph hmmm wondering how important that is lol

I think I'm going to stick to first gen rums
Least then I get the yield and don't waste sugar

And I was only using 5l dunder for 25l wash

Just put down 4 x McRum wash, glad to report they are bubbling away a million times more than the gen runs!

feels good man!