Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

I might look like a dufus but gotta ask how do you "siphon off at the end" i reakon i have about 2/3rds of wanted volume of liquid in mash tun until I sparge and lucky if fluid is 1/2" above grain. Perhaps drain through false bottom but with all the yeast falling into grain bed I am not confident it would drain even then...forgive me if I am missing something..

I'm not sure how other guys do it but with my UJ I syphon off all the liquid I can (I do 100 liter washes) into the boiler without stirring up the yeast or grain bed. That comes later.
When I've got all the liquid I can I dig down one side to the bottom of the barrel. I have long arms but you may need a tool to do that. When I'm at the bottom i stick my auto syphon in the hole and start sucking up anything else that I can. I don't get every drop and i usually only do this when I want to empty the barre or refresh the grain bed significantly. When I'm going to refill it i don't bother trying to get it all and only go down to the top of the grain bed.

Ahhh uj sorry my bad I was thinking all grain :-B

warramungas wrote:I'm not sure how other guys do it but with my UJ I syphon off all the liquid I can (I do 100 liter washes) into the boiler without stirring up the yeast or grain bed. That comes later.
When I've got all the liquid I can I dig down one side to the bottom of the barrel. I have long arms but you may need a tool to do that. When I'm at the bottom i stick my auto syphon in the hole and start sucking up anything else that I can. I don't get every drop and i usually only do this when I want to empty the barre or refresh the grain bed significantly. When I'm going to refill it i don't bother trying to get it all and only go down to the top of the grain bed.

That’s clever! It reminds me when I tried the Appalachian Moonshine, after scooping and squeezing 60-70% of the grain and putting it on an angle, I noticed that the grain drained naturally...

Hey all - it seems I am doing something wrong but I'm not sure what.

I halved all the ingredients in Zak's recipe except for the lemon juice, which I substituted with citric acid for a pH of 6. The starting SG was 1.060. It bubbled along nicely then on the third day it stuck. I checked the SG which had only dropped to 1.055 but the pH had plummeted to 3.5. I brought it back up to 5.0 with calcium carbonate and away it went again.

Two days later it stopped again. SG now 1.040 and pH 4.4, which seemed ok to me, so I added more yeast and it's been going great guns since. pH has been 4.0 for the last 2 days and the SG is down to 1.005 and it's still bubbling along nicely, but I have no idea why it stuck twice. Any ideas?

What makes you say it was stuck? Are you relying on a airlock bubbling to tell you it's fermenting? If so they are unreliable. Put your ear against the side and listen for fizzing. Were there bubbles on the top when you opened it? If so more than likely it was fine :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Stevejb what temp is your fermenter? Could be a lacto infection what does the cap look like also how much backset?

Thanks for the replies guys.

Woodduck, I'm fairly sure it was stuck at day 3 as the airlock had stopped bubbling and when I opened the fermenter there was no sign of any activity. Also the SG had only dropped by 0.005 after 3 days. Why do you say airlocks are an unreliable indicator?

Bluc, there was no backset as this was my first run with CFW. Also, no indication of an infection, and the fermenter temp was 28C from the start to the end.

Sometimes your fermenter lid doesn't seal properly and lets the gas out easier than pushing through your air lock. I don't trust them, they are a good indicator but not 100% reliable. I just put my ear to the side of the fermenter and listen for fizzing noises. You may be right in saying it stalled but for a first gen it would be unlikely especially if your temp was 28deg and your ph was ok.

Stevejb wrote:Hey all - it seems I am doing something wrong but I'm not sure what.

I halved all the ingredients in Zak's recipe except for the lemon juice, which I substituted with citric acid for a pH of 6.

How much citric acid did you use?? I usually use one quarter to one half teaspoon in a FIFTY LITRE 1st gen...

A pH of 6 wont stall a wash either.
The yeast will drop the pH as well, they like it in the 5 range.
So unless the pH is really low like 2 or 3 it shouldnt stall.

Split the fermenter, dilute, adjest pH if necessary and re-pitch some more yeast.

Dig Brinker - I used around 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid and measured the pH which was 6 at the start of the ferment.

scythe - The pH dropped to 3.5 when the wash stalled. I did adjust it back to 5 and ended up adding more yeast. It has since completed fermentation with the final SG 0.885 and now I'm just waiting for it to clear. I just wondered why this happened. It will be interesting to see how the second generation goes.

Hi Guys,
Just looking for a bit of guidance.
I have recently done my first spirit run of CFW after completing 5 gens. It was run through my 25L boiler with pelican pot, with power controller running at about 160 Volts.
I didn't start keeping anything until the ABV was at 75% & stopped collecting at 55% - not worrying about feints at the moment. Ended up with 18 jars @ 400ml/jar (the run was 25 litres @ 30%).
I'm not highly experienced with cuts & first try with CFW.
It's been airing for 7 days while I was away at work & it's smelling much better than any TPW I've ever done :handgestures-thumbupleft:
From smell, probably the first 4-5 jars are definitely out, apart from that I'm not discerning any major differences from jars 6 to 18. Does this seem reasonable or do I need to be harsher with my cuts?
Any & all input gratefully accepted.

Cheers,
Hooky

Hard to say mate, how many faints did you end up with?
I did a few very quick calcs and you should have ended up with around 10ltrs of (average 65%) alc and your 18 jars total about 7 so there's 2 or 3 ltrs unaccounted for. They could be in those heads you said you didn't collect or in the tails you didn't collect. Hard to say so I would go with your nose and try it and see how it goes. Worse comes to worse you can just re run it. Did you water the samples down when testing for cuts? This will bring out the tails.

Thanks for your reply woodduck. Thus far I have just smelt the jars at the abv they came off the still at.
When you say the tails come out when diluted, is that by taste, smell or both?

Cheers,
Hooky

Trick I was told was to start testing in the middle because you have a greater chance that it is Hearts!

I've always had it easy finding Tails, but the only way I found heads was in the taste (prickly on my tongue - thats how I describe it). As time goes on, you'll learn to smell the heads - it'll get easier and theres no substitute for experience! So you'll just have to suffer thru it by doing lots of washes... :happy-partydance:

When you work your way out from the centre, you'll pick up on the 'Nail-polish' remover smell and thats your heads or the beginning of! Neither Heads nor Tails are just that (as in just the components of heads, then suddenly it switched to hearts, and then later on it suddenly switches to tails) they "smear" into the next section. Tails have been described as "wet-dog' or 'wet-cardboard' neither of which worked for me. I smelled wet-dog once (don't recall which recipe) but I find tails to be smelling like the wash with something very very unattractive mixed in (I'd venture as far as to say vomit, but it seems to be different for everyone).

Things I'm learning now is that some tails (and I mean SOME!) can be a good thing, but not if you want to drink it straight away! Tails needs time on Oak... and again, thats my opinion, not everyone here does tails.

I can't think of any reason to include heads! Good to go into an all feints run or with the next wash...

Yep the smell comes out once watered down.

EziTasting wrote:Trick I was told was to start testing in the middle because you have a greater chance that it is Hearts!

I've always had it easy finding Tails, but the only way I found heads was in the taste (prickly on my tongue - thats how I describe it). As time goes on, you'll learn to smell the heads - it'll get easier and theres no substitute for experience! So you'll just have to suffer thru it by doing lots of washes... :happy-partydance:

When you work your way out from the centre, you'll pick up on the 'Nail-polish' remover smell and thats your heads or the beginning of! Neither Heads nor Tails are just that (as in just the components of heads, then suddenly it switched to hearts, and then later on it suddenly switches to tails) they "smear" into the next section. Tails have been described as "wet-dog' or 'wet-cardboard' neither of which worked for me. I smelled wet-dog once (don't recall which recipe) but I find tails to be smelling like the wash with something very very unattractive mixed in (I'd venture as far as to say vomit, but it seems to be different for everyone).

Things I'm learning now is that some tails (and I mean SOME!) can be a good thing, but not if you want to drink it straight away! Tails needs time on Oak... and again, thats my opinion, not everyone here does tails.

I can't think of any reason to include heads! Good to go into an all feints run or with the next wash...

Thanks for that Ezi, some good info there :handgestures-thumbupleft:

woodduck wrote:Yep the smell comes out once watered down.

:text-thankyoublue:

Well today was D-Day.
So, jars 1-4 were removed along with jars 17 & 18 (not sure why, just had a feeling) 8-}
Jar 9 is 'Distillers Privilege' (& it's not bloody bad either, hope the 4L on oak now gets better with some time).

Cheers,

Hooky