Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

BackyardBrewer wrote:OK I reckon more sugar water is the go (WineGlass may object, I get the feeling he only wants fruit in his fruit washes ;-) ) and yes, I love the idea of the sheet or beach towel.

Hmmmm. :think: The wife has some fine 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets that should be perfect for filtering.... Surely she wouldn't object? :laughing-rolling:

In all honesty sheets got it cleaner (like wine but just took way to long (read days) the towel wrung stuff was somewhat milk but fine for stilling and was all over red rover in an hr or so

Beach towel wringing it is then!

Yeah, racking the stuff's a bitch.
Maybe cupcake might share his wet/dry vac method?
Go the jippo sheets! just chuck them in the wash afterward, she'll never ever know.

You're right BB, I don't want sugar in my fruit washes.
One day I'll grow up and stop using sugar in my whiskey. Nothing wrong with getting all the yeast fuel from the grain, no reason why fruit is any different.
And I don't like headaches.

Empty : it's the luxury of plenty eh?

I am still a povo trying to be zero waste, resource efficient. I will absolutely get to a point where I try nuthin but fruit so I have a comparison. When I lay my mits on a endless supply l will swear off commercial yeast and sugar!

WineGlass wrote:Yeah, racking the stuff's a bitch.
Maybe cupcake might share his wet/dry vac method?
Go the jippo sheets! just chuck them in the wash afterward, she'll never ever know.

You're right BB, I don't want sugar in my fruit washes.
One day I'll grow up and stop using sugar in my whiskey. Nothing wrong with getting all the yeast fuel from the grain, no reason why fruit is any different.
And I don't like headaches.

BackyardBrewer wrote:Empty : it's the luxury of plenty eh?

When there is plenty.

I can get fruit sometimes, I can't get grain without a lot more effort. Malted grain is dear, malting your own is a skill, but fruit comes ready. Its not easy to get a drum full of plums or aprcots, as you know. If you want to fortify it, its all up to you mate. Hopefully the bubbler can make the cuts easier. Pot stilling brandy is a lot of work to get it nice, but with a bubbler you can do in a day what would take weeks with a pot.

I never used to like brandy, but thats maybe because I stole mums cooking brandy as a kid, but I like my own.

Progress report: looks fab, starting to clear.

About to add bicarbonate soda as per bt1 suggestions.

Smells good, looks good.

The black floaties are stones. As per Empty Glass's suggestion I kept a heap of stones from round two.

yeah my first plum wash is bout done too jeez how fast hey :D

crow wrote:yeah my first plum wash is bout done too jeez how fast hey :D

I'll bet your looking forward to running that, to bad you missed the shop today :teasing-neener:

yeah bastards

Crow must give me video! Film this shit so us first timers can see what you're doing step by step!

Surely ya phone does some kinda vid?

:-)

yeah it does but i don't think they go that long. My hass is well 2 things one Prepaid shit would likely cost me $20 or more to post one 2 what I know about posting vids ya could write in one corner of a postage stamp :-|

Crow: just cracked the lid of the 200L fermenter of apricot wash. Was worried about doing that as I didn't want to dissipate the co2 cap keeping the nasties out but there's a slight white crust on top.

I punched it and aerated the wash and gave it a taste, slight sour smell but ehhh not too bad.

I'm at least 3-4 weeks from running this through Mr-E's bubbler which is coming my way:-)

Any thoughts/concerns on this going bad?

seal her up, not a lot else yo can do leave the cap there it will likely sink if not hmm maybe remove it. Of cause it might be better to leave the cap to protect it and just remove it before racking (I believe it will sink when its really ready to run) ;-)
Maybe post a picture of it

Pix a' coming! Will wait until tomorrow when she's settled.

Ok so this is the apricot wash. Quite a yeasty fine looking cap on top.



Looks exactly like powdered yeast? Here it is after a brief stir.



All tastes ok, and smells ok. Maybe a bit sour but not foul.

Anyone want to suggest if I try and skim it off or stir it in? Doesn't seem to be dropping even after a few days.

I reckon if you stir it in it will just seperate and float back up. And you will make the wash go cloudy for a day or two.
Just rack it. Poke the cane under the surface and above the settled flesh, syphon away.
You could scoop it off if it worries you.

Really I would leave it until you are going to run it. If the cap hasn't sunk say a day or two before the run, then maybe piss it off

WineGlass wrote:I reckon if you stir it in it will just seperate and float back up. And you will make the wash go cloudy for a day or two.
Just rack it. Poke the cane under the surface and above the settled flesh, syphon away.
You could scoop it off if it worries you.

Thanks, got some time before the still is set up so I reckon I'll rack as you suggest this weekend and go the beach towel wring to get the goodies out and leave it in a few cubes to settle a bit more.

It's about 100+ litres so time to clean up a few fermenters and racking cubes:-)

You'll get heaps of fluid out of the flesh.
If you got time, you could bypass the "squeeze" bit, you always get crap you dont need when forcing it through.
Hang it from the roof, but I reckon those egiptian sheets would work best.

So rack the easy juice, and get bundling the pulp into a sheet and tying it to a rafter over a fermenter/bucket eh?

Does going the squeeze method lead to scorching? That's my next worry, any pulp or fibres on the 2400w elements might burn/scorch.