Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Turns out I have about 3-4 extra gallons of low wines from my big rum spirit run, so time to experiment! I'm going to try my hand at a high ester rum. I chopped up a handful of frozen brown bananas, shriveled oranges and bag of freezer burned raspberries mixed with some sugar and 2 gallons water and added yeast. When it's done fermenting I'll be mixing that with my low wines and about 5 gallons weird perfumey old dunder for a few days and then heating it all to 130F for a few hours and leaving overnight for some extra esterification before I run it. Filter it in the morning and save the fruit chunks and dregs. The heads from my spirit run will go into the thumper with some dunder and the fruit chunks and dregs, the filtered fruit ferment half with dunder into the boiler with the low wines and tails from the spirit run. Should be around 10 gallons in the boiler and around 3 in the thumper. I'm hoping to get a few gallons of high ester weird rum!

I'll be saving that dunder!


Any mistakes you see, or tweaks you would make? I have plenty of time for changes.

I did my big spirit run of normal rum the other day and made my cuts. I now have 10L of heads with lime juice in a jug and 10L of tails that I added to the low wines. The fruit ferment was kicked up a bit because I added a half an old bottle of pineapple juice I found in the back of the fridge. I also found some lacto plantarum tablets in the fridge and added a dozen or so to the ferment to get some acidity. I added a quarter cup of sugar to the old dunder and added the rest of the lacto tablets to it too. Everything is in my hot garage. I'm flying blind, just trying to up the acidity.

If you crash the ph hard it will not ferment, depending on the ratio of Dunder it should be well acidic enough, that’s half the point of the dunder

My re-filled dunder pit is already smelling perfect! Covered in a fuzzy and bubbly pellicle, SUPER fruity, a bit of acetone and funk. My old pit is still, the smell reminds me of a Flanders red ale. A little fruity sweet and sour. I might mix a bit of each pit together and see what happens.

Hey beerswimmer
I found this a while back and can attest to some of the methods to raise Esther production,
Cheers Maxxx

Thanks Maxxx :handgestures-thumbupleft: My fruit and molasses with sugar ferment slowed to a stop, last night I added some fresh dunder to it. I'll be adding all the old dunder to it in another few days and plan on distilling this weekend.

Good chart maxx :handgestures-thumbupleft: I have found hot temps produce tropical esters like a carribean rum under pitching yeast you get lot dark dried fruit flavours, sultanna prune etc.. mix two in one ferment produces a nice balanced rum :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Yet to try aged dunder..

bluc wrote:Yet to try aged dunder..

Welcome to Funky Town!! If, if it goes well it'll add some good funk. If it doesn't it can be nasty. A crapshoot that's well worth trying!

Yesterday I added 20L of my old dunder to the fruit ferment and will let it sit for 48hrs. Just letting the dunders mingle with a little alcohol for a while in my hot ass garage. Tomorrow night I'll fill my boiler with it, after straining the fruit and trub, and combining with my low wines and tails. The fresher dunder is going into the thump with the heads and fruit and trub. I'll light the fires and let it run on low heat and let the thumper work a while to get everything hot and some more heads into the thumper. Maybe even pull a bit of fores before I shut it off for the night to keep it hot until the next day when I do a slow spirit run.

Last night I transferred the low wines, tails, old dunder and fruit ferment to the boiler. The heads and fruit chunks and trub went into the thumper with some fresher dunder. I slowly heated it up over 3 hours to get the thumper thumping and hot and shut it down for 12 hours. Now I'm slowly heating it all back up for a slow spirit run.

Done with the spirit run. Hopefully I get about a gallon of something interesting! It smelled really good and pretty strong, just not to the level of DOK or HERR. But that's OK, I didn't use any chemicals, just what I had on hand. I'll get into the samples tonight when my nose is back to normal, it's still blown out from being next to the still and smelling the distillate all day.

I made my cuts this morning. VERY fruity, and only a little funky. Next time I will make a few changes to get more darker, dirty, funkiness. The thumper was too much, my keeper cut ended up being 2 gallons @83%! A bit too refined I think. I saved a bottle, the rest went with my other batch to fill my barrel for a year @78%. The next time I'll have more infected dunder on hand and use it all stages of the process, and only use the thumper for stripping. It'll take 2 spirit runs to fill a barrel. It's always a learning experience! :lol:

I saved the heads from this for future use. The heads are pure fruit citrus!