Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

G'day all

I have had a productive day today.
I ran the stripping runs on my heavily peated ag whiskey.
It is made from 5 kg heavy peated barley, 3 kg otter malt and 2 kg choc malt.
I did also add 2 kg of light dme.
I did not ferment on the grain.
It was about a 40lt batch and after stripping I had about 11lt of about 38% low wine.
I was very brutal with the foreshot cuts on the strip run and took about 25ml from each.

I cleaned the boiler and still and put the low wine back in with about 2 lt of distilled water to make sure.
I turned the boiler on and when it started to boil I dropped the power to about 900 - 1000w.
It took me 3 1/2 hours to do both stripping runs and just on 4 hours for the spirit run.
I got rid of the first 250ml as foreshots and then collected the heads in 300ml jars.
After about 2 lt I started collecting the heart.
I got about 2 lt of heart at a combined abv of 75%
I then collected the tails in 300ml jars until I was down to about 10%.

I still have to go through the heads and tails tomorrow and see what gets added to the heart.
During distilling all after the 3rd jar of heads smelled bloody great but will confirm tomorrow with a fresh nose.
The wet dog appeared at about 35% in the tails.
The jars are glass with a cork stopper so should breath a bit as well.

I put about 15lt of juice from the stripping run into a bucket with 5kg of sugar and will add that back to the lees in the fermenter as I want to capture some of the peat taste that was in the boiler after stripping, even the wife loved the smell..

Hopefully it all works out.
Any advice you may have will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

Sounds like a great day to me. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Just on your cuts jars, using cork to seal them will probably inhibit the airing process. Whilst cork does breath a little bit, you're really only going to air the cuts for 24-48 hours so I would think the amount of "breathing" that occurs would be minimal. By airing the cuts you are aiming to let some of the more volatile components evaporate giving you a better chance to sniff the crossover between heads/hearts and tails. I air my cut jars with with a tissue held over the mouth of the jar by a rubber band and that is really only to keep the dust and bugs out. You will lose some product to the angels but not enough to worry about.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Thanks for the advice.
I will use tissue from now on to air them.

Cheers :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Coffee filters would be better :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Why would coffee filters be better than tissues for covering cut jars?

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Tissues drop lint and coffee filters are expensive. Paper towel is cheap and while it's not completely lint free I think it's a good compromise. Each to their own though.

Coffee filter just my robust and unbleached..remember alcohol is a solvent and will leach stuff out of a lot of different materials. Dyes perfumes chemicals etc..

Interesting points although I've not had issues with lint in my cuts jars from using plain unscented Coles brand tissues to cover them.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

I put a old thin bath towel over mine. Never had any lint.