Recipe Discussion

[jdonly1]

Maybe because we used such large quantities in the bakery but we never had a problem(20 years or so)
It used to get well over 40deg C in there a lot of the time.Our suppliers never kept it refrigerated nor did the delivery companies.
Do the same at home,it goes in the cupboard,no problems
Fresh yeast is a totally different kettle of fish though :teasing-neener:

[MR-E]

Dried yeast should certainly be stored in the fridge.

It will extend it's shelf life considerably.

+1, I've had yeast in the fridge that was well past the use by date & still worked :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[unsub]

I was interested to see how Tandaco yeast from coles would go so I made a 20 L batch with 5 kg of sugar, 250 g of tomato paste, one teaspoon of epsom salts, quarter of a teaspoon of citric acid and the entire 84 g packet of yeast. Temp varied a little due to being in Victoria in winter but it went nuts after about an hour of pitching the yeast at 30 deg.

It fermented out in six days to 990 SG and smells very alcoholic but very sweet compared to the Lowans TPW's I have made, it also cleared up better. I haven't checked it with an alcohol meter but judging by the wash calculators it should be about 13 to 14% ABV where as the lowans one has been around 10% ABV after the same amount of time. I'm going to strip it tonight and see how it goes.

cheers

unsub

[MR-E]

I was interested to see how Tandaco yeast from coles would go so I made a 20 L batch with 5 kg of sugar, 250 g of tomato paste, one teaspoon of epsom salts, quarter of a teaspoon of citric acid and the entire 84 g packet of yeast. Temp varied a little due to being in Victoria in winter but it went nuts after about an hour of pitching the yeast at 30 deg.

It fermented out in six days to 990 SG and smells very alcoholic but very sweet compared to the Lowans TPW's I have made, it also cleared up better. I haven't checked it with an alcohol meter but judging by the wash calculators it should be about 13 to 14% ABV where as the lowans one has been around 10% ABV after the same amount of time. I'm going to strip it tonight and see how it goes.

cheers

unsub

That's an interesting result, I found the same thing when I used that yeast (couldn't remember the name when I posted the result)
That yeast is expensive compared to Lowans though.

Cheers :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[unsub]

Yeah it is expensive although my local Coles had it for $4.99 for the 84g box which is still expensive but I might try the next one with 70-75g of yeast so there is some left over. The big pain in the arse is that the 84g is split into 7g sachets that have to be cut open individually. There was also a larger yeast cake on the bottom of the fermenter than with Lowans.

[R-sole]

Two packs of dried yeast would be heaps for a 20l wash.

[siteoffice_shine]

My wash is still sitting at 1.01 for the 3rd day

Wtf does that mean?

HELP please

[Kimbo]

Hi sos,
We needa little bit more information, like temp, sg, amount of sugar etc :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[siteoffice_shine]

6kg sugar with 8g yeast sitting at 22deg in 25l wash sg is 1010
Just wondering whether it is ok to basically start distilling or not

[Kimbo]

Yeah, just run it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[R-sole]

Heat it up to restart would be one option.

[sambo]

Hi all,
I've been following this forum for a few months now, brilliant! :text-thankyoublue: :clap:
First, I would like to comment on siteoffice_shine's post; assuming it wasn't a typo you should use 80g of yeast, not 8g of yeast and the wash should start bubbling within the hour of sealing. ensure seal is tight, one of my TPW's didn't start while the other was gassing away, both exactly the same mix. the problem was that the lid on the quiet one wasn't screwed down hard enough. :violin: My TPW's are bubbling even when temp is down to 20 C.
i found the TPW recipe here (thanks McStill :handgestures-thumbupleft: ), made it 6 times so far without a problem, even in cold weather. Beats the turbo hands down and above all; cheap and easy to make. I make two lots of 25l at a time, after 4-5 weeks syphon into another container and put it through the T500 to get around 3.5l of 92% out of each 25l TPW. I found Coles or Black & Gold tomato paste work well as there is only tomato & salt in them, dry Lowans yeast and McKenzies baking citric acid (dehydrated/dry). The water I use is pure, filtered rainwater. about 2l in the middle is excellent for bourbons & scotches and the rest I use for other spirits like Trambuie, schnapps, even gin.
I chose the T500 as it's easy to use out of the box and easy to put away when not in use. The water cooling took some time to setup and ended up buying a separate small pump just for the booze making as our main pump has a 20l pressure tank and pressure fluctuated; high pressure when auto switch came on and gradually lower pressure torards the depletion of the 20l bladder.

[googe]

Air tight fermenters are a myth imo!, ive never used a airlock, dont see the reason to if things are working. Why would the new coppers fermenter not have an air lock?, cause they dont need one. I recon this if a chalenge for mythbusters haha. Anywho, my tom wash is at the same stage as yours siteoffice, still a little bubbling though, will it go much futher?.
Would stiring it help?

[siteoffice_shine]

I'm in the process of running it through my air still, yield is a little low but is still producin about 600ml @55% from 4l runs

[Granpappy]

Yes siteoffice - that's about what I got with mine too - I didn't bother running it through again just stuck it in some bourbon chips for 10 days as was (after breaking it down to 36%) - result wasn't all that bad

[zwagerman9]

With the airstill my best advice is to:
Run your whole batch through over a few nights, days etc.
Take 50ml foreshots and throw in the direction of the weeds in the back yard.
Then collect 1litre.

Repeat this process.

And then redistill, take cuts, and good drinking.

My interpretation of the airstill

http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/viewt ... =42&t=1535

Cheers :handgestures-thumbupleft:



My turn for a question!

The general consensus for TPW for a neutral I'm guessing is to strip via potstill, and re-run as low wines through my new dual slant bok ?:O
More so my question is, low wines at 40% or less?

Cheers

Rae

[SBB]

40% is considered the maximum safe ABV to put in your boiler, if that is what you are asking. If you strip you wash down to 20% the resulting average of the low wines should be very close to 40%. If not just add a little water before adding them back to the boiler.

[nb0s]

By doing the get more hooch thing your yeast might struggle to get through all that sugar, and when yeast stress they can produce bad flavors in your final product, giving you mediocre booze.

Keep your next wash ABV% low, 12% at the most and you'll start to notice a big improvement in your final product.

I started doing experiments fot high ABV and sure it is possible to produce 15% ABV TPW but not without time and trouble. AND where is the advantage each kilo of sugar produces a set amount of alcohol if fermentation is carried to completion. I noted the commercial distilleries only aim for 7-9% ABV and reasoned that they would have researched the optimum time v output a long time ago. SO with this in mind and giving consideration to the fact that the home distiller uses a smaller still my wash consists of

4 kgs of sugar
23 litre ferment
130 grams Tomato Paste
80 grams bread yeast.

I do look after my yeast I bring it out of the refrigerator 24 hours before use to stabilize at room temp I rehydrate with adequate 38c water and make sure the yeast is never shocked by a more than 8c change in temp. The initial wash is oxygenated for 48 hours to grow the yeast colony to the optimum size (the aerobic phase) and then capped off with an airlock (beginning the anaerobic phase in which ethanol is produced). All this fiddling to grow the optimum yeast colony is only needed for the first wash as will be seen. Subsequent washes need no additional yeast.

This produces a wash with a starting SG of !069 and ends very near to 990 for a 10.25% ABV. Now the easy part (always remembering the 8c yeast shock rule) I drain off the wash leaving the lees dump some more water and tomato paste on top and then another 4 kilos of inverted sugar in water, top off to 23/25 litres no new yeast and within half an hour it is bubbling away nicely. No stressed yeast no funny tastes just continuos clean alcohol production. With the wash at 20c, I harvest every 10 days and produce nearly 2 litres of 95% ABV. I throw the first 150 mls no heads to worry about and on my stillI stop harvesting when the ABV falls to 70%. No feints no feint runs.

Simple and Neutral - yes with a capital N.

Need more alcohol - add another fermenter to the process.

[ledgenko]

I read the comment about Turbo yeastes etc .. I am curious as to the effect of using sugar and turbo yeast and the TPW with turbo clear and without ... I am obviously happy to trial but would love advise on it ... others opinions ... I am aiming at making clean and sweet neutral ... then working on home made flavours ... but so far I am pretty happy with the gin I am turning out .... and so is the boss !!! so I have some space to play in ...

[grumpthehermit]

Turbo's have a place I think, but it depends on what your after.

If you want it pretty quickly and you want a high volume of it then you might go for 8kg of sugar and a turbo or similar. You could even double run it through your rig to make it more neutral but you may not get a taste your happy with if a really clean neutral is what you really want.

The TPW works really well and it's cheap, but it's not really about putting the wash on today and running it on the weekend. The best bet is to put it on when you can then leave it to do it's thing knowing that at 25 - 30 degrees it will ferment out in about a week then start to clear on it's own and will be ok to run the following week if your keen or if time is on your side, leave it for three or more weeks ( or longer ) to clear right up. Just make sure you keep your airlock topped up with water if your using one.

I only ran a turbo once, tried tomato paste and never bought another one, I also bought the turbo clear and used it once and never bought another of those either. But its all up to you. If you don't try it for yourself your just taking my word for it. It's good to experiment I think.

Cuts of course are very important too, no matter what wash your running.

Cheers
GTH