Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Is it normal for this to take hours to cook down to the 30 deg so I can put the yeast in?

Depends how many litres, just point a fan at it... :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I only did half volume, so 23ltr Ish

Ah just point half a fan at it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

sam_and_liv wrote:Ah just point half a fan at it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Haha thanks mate,

I've got two of these washes going now, one for the sacrificial run and one for my me :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Now I just need my still :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I'm keen to give this a go. Anyone who has also done a corn/sugar head type like to comment on the flavor difference to this.

stretch69 wrote:Is it normal for this to take hours to cook down to the 30 deg so I can put the yeast in?

It's a bit of a balancing act, after a few washes mixing your hot and cold water you will soon find out how much of the both you need to get the temp to pitching temp. what temp did it start at?

Need your help lads. I cooked up a batch of this on Wednesday following the original recipe. The only thing I did different was use HBS turbo yeast (the heat wave one). So I cooked it all up. Made it to 42 litres as per the destructions on the yeast packets. Waited for the temp to drop to 40 and chucked in the 2 packets of yeast(also as per destructions).

Within around a couple hours it was bubbling away and by the next morning (thursday) it was going flat out. And by flat out I mean so much that I had to take some of the water out of the air lock as it was bubbling so hard water was splashing out everywhere it sat pretty well on 30 degrees the whole time.

Went like that until Thursday night when it started cooling down and slowing down bubbling a bit. Now friday arvo it's stopped bubbling. And it's doing nothing sitting on around 26 degrees and slowly dropping.

I Measured the SG and it's dead on 1.000. Is it possible that it's done already? Or have I screwed it up with the yeast?? Any help would be awesome lads. Hopefully I've given all the correct info.

If it's at 1.000, it's done... You've fucked up a bit with the yeast though, turbo yeast isn't designed to be used in anything but plain sugar washes...

I wouldn't expect anything spectacular out of this wash... Try it again with Lowan's Bakers Yeast :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Run this wash, it might be alright, especially if you haven't added heaps of sugar...

Righto. As it's only the first wash will it be alirght if I change yeast? Or am I better off starting again?

I'd probably start again mate... You're gunna have some shit tasting stuff left in the grain bed from the turbo yeast...

Why not just drop the hot dunder on It to kill the existing yeast and they jut turn into nutrients for the new yeast

Going to run this though my 4 plater probably sunday, hoping I get a decent flavour profile coming through as the TPW I ran last night is pretty neutral (one run no packed section)

Will report back :p

That will work, but I'm just thinking of all of the yeast shit that they've been pumping out because they're so stressed...

Yep good call. Cheers for that Zak. Will have another crack next break. It will give me a chance to have a play with the new still head an boiler control. Would I be able to use the backset or would that be the same you think.

So I'm currently running my fucked up version of this whilst at the sametime getting my next batch of CFW as per the recipie in my fermenter. Would it be a good idea to chuck the backset for the run I'm doing in the fermenter as well?

Guys can someone tell where I fucked up

Made a half size batch of this, went to run it through the bubbler yesterday... Bled off 150ml of fores and swapped jars... Within 500ml ABV dropped to below 80% and it was well into tails.

What on earth did I do wrong? Didn't take any gravity readings with this one, just halved the recipe.....

Spewing as I was keen to try this

timboss wrote:What on earth did I do wrong?

This is only a stab in the dark, But I think your running your bubbler wrong, if its down to 80% it sounds to me like not enough reflux going on, That or your take of speed is too fast. Even well in tails a bubbler should be able to pull 90%+ from my experience.
Its a balancing act between heat input , take off speed , and reflux, one can be made to compensate for the other once you have a feel for them.
Bubblers are great but they cant preform miracles without the right input.

timboss wrote:Guys can someone tell where I fucked up

I would suspect you had some form of acetobactor infection that was turning your alcohol into vinegar.

Or more likely it hadn't fermented out fully.

Or what SBB said... How much power were you throwing at it?

A half batch being 22ish litres ?

That's not a lot of goodness for a big still to process, A wash at 10% has a maximum of 2.2L @ 100% extractable alcohol.

Your still in neutralizer mode would probably hold a 3rd ? :think: of that within the column, and you cant really get 100% efficiency either, so I'd say you could be just starving the still of alcohol rather than doing anything drastically wrong. :think: