Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

The Rum wash is back to about 1 "BLOOP" a minute....SG is down to 1010..though that might not be accurate due to impurities from the molasses. Wondering what a safe amount of wash to put in a 50L keg is if I dont want to experience my first puke :? :? minute.....from what Ive read 30 seems safe or maybe 35 with butter added????
A rough Idea of what sort of yield I can expect would be handy too.

35L is about right..... S.T.R.E.T.C.H......... to 40 but add a little cooking oil to be safe ;)

1010 FG...... run it :dance:

Stripped the 60L wash made from this recipe and ended up with 10L of low wines. This smells pretty sweet and molassie. Decided to take it down to 10% and kept everything below 20% in a separate bottle, about 4L of it. This 4L has a very distinct, but but good smell, I dont think I can wait 5 generations to do run my first rum :lol: as soon as the next wash is ready its all going in the boiler together :dance:

Good plan mate, you'll end up with some good rum through your bubbler doing this :dance:

Thanks for the Recipe, I'm about to give this recipe a burl in my 60l fermenter, how essential is adding Epsom salts as I don't have any to hand, also on the 2nd gen was do you ad another 6l molasses and 6kg sugar for 50l wash? Sounds like a lot, and expensive by fifth gen. How many liters of drinkable 60% abv do you get by your final 5th gen wash? Cheers

Each generation is another wash, so if you think about it it's not any more expensive than doing single generations.

From a 120L wash I'll get about 10L of 90% ABV, so once watered down it's a shit load of rum, but I don't drink it at 60% and wouldn't recommend anyone else do it either ;)

If you base your wash at 10% ABV and times 60L x 5 it's not too hard to work out how much you'll get, but you need to run your still to figure out where your cuts will be & these will be a proportion of that amount of extractable alcohol that varies from still to still, and even how you run each still/wash.

Once you've done a few runs you'll soon figure it all out.

Cheers.

Cheers McStill, was having a bit of a brain fart not taking into consideration the drinkable cuts from the 1st Gen..what ABV do you normally start collecting for low wines? or is it just by smell till you find the tails of the run then put the rest in the bucket for the final run when you get enough low wines?..I know it depends on equipment to an extent.
Epsom salts? Is it worth the 40 min round trip to the store if i don't have any?
thanks

The still I use I only need to do single runs and it comes off the still at 90 + %

For pot stills however,

Low wines is everything that comes off the still during a stripping (the 1st) run, you can discard fore shots here or on the spirit run.

Water your low wines to 40% ABV before re running them too, just to be on the safe side.

You could get away without epsom salts, I haven't been using them at all for a few months and haven't noticed any adverse effects.

Cheers.

bundyftw wrote:Cheers McStill, was having a bit of a brain fart not taking into consideration the drinkable cuts from the 1st Gen..what ABV do you normally start collecting for low wines? or is it just by smell till you find the tails of the run then put the rest in the bucket for the final run when you get enough low wines?..I know it depends on equipment to an extent.
Epsom salts? Is it worth the 40 min round trip to the store if i don't have any?
thanks

I hope you are not thinking about adding your strip back to the fermenter?

All the strip is kept seperate until you have enough to make a full boiler charge.

bundyftw,

Here's all the info you need on stripping runs & low wines

https://www.google.com/search?q=strippi ... ler.com.au

Just to clear things up in case you're thinking as 5Star suggested.

Cheers.

I'm on my 3rd gen wash and it's stalled at the starting blocks. the SG hasn't changed at all since i put in the dunder, mollasses and sugar. There's a big cap on the wash which i assumed was dead yeast, i left it a week before checking and i suspect it's infected with something. thinking back, i might have put the dunder in while it was too warm but the finger thermometer method hasn't failed me till now. I have put a big pinch of epsom salts in with each gen if that makes any difference.

I tried aerating and adding more yeast yesterday in the heat of the day so the wash temp was probally around 30 and since then nadda reaction. The previous 2 gens got down to 1020 and have pulled some decent rum and low wines.

Any ideas how i can salvage this wash, or go forward? It would be a shame to lose the dunder and start again as it was starting to smell great.

I think that my mollasses might have preservatives in it as it never really exploded when i first pitched the yeast and has been pretty slow to ferment every time since , by chance, has anyone used mollasses from haigslea stockfeed before?.
here's a photo of the cap, i broke it up a little before thought to take a pic.



all advice appreciated.

bundyftw wrote:all advice appreciated.

To me that looks like yeast trying to get started on something with too high SG. First thing I'd try is splitting into two buckets and adding water. If that doesn't work you might have to boil it to kill whatever is ailing it and save the sugars.

That looks like an infection. The one where it gets the dry dusty white stuff in bubbles on top.

Boiling may kill it, but the tang will still be there. If it hasn't been going long, the tang may not be too bad.


As far as the aussie feed mollasses, i'm positive it has preservatives. I've always had probs pitching on the lees of previous ferments it get's slowe and slower and after 3 gens won't fire at all.

I had a rum wash stick recently - was using a load of aged dunder and it took off okay but stalled after eating about half the sugar.
I watered it down and couldn't get it going again :crying-yellow: , ended up stripping off the alcohol, was worried about burning, but had minimal problems with scorching.

I watered down the sugary dunder (didn't taste sweet as was a heavy taste - but there must still be a load of sugar in it) - checking the PH it was down at 3 - so I adjusted the PH to 5 added a bit more sugar, and got it going again with a fresh starter.
I went easy on the sugar, and planned on step feeding it over a few days - forgot how much it foams up when you add sugar, and had to go get the mop, and some clean trousers :? what a fuckin mess - the wash did fine though.

I normally don't worry about PH, but I wonder if the aging make it really acidic - does anyone know?

do you have to use bakers yeast or can one use hi alcohol tolerant yeast or is that a personal preference

What do you mean by hi alcohol tolerant yeast ?

I wouldnt use a HBS turbo yeast if that's what you're asking :think:

Turbos wl make it smell like shit :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I'm pretty sure mini uses a turbo at half strength for his rum washes and he's happy with it.

No doubt that he knows his stuff.


There's plenty of yeasts out there better suited than bread yeast. :shock:

5Star wrote:I'm pretty sure mini uses a turbo at half strength for his rum washes and he's happy with it.

No doubt that he knows his stuff.


There's plenty of yeasts out there better suited than bread yeast. :shock:

That's right, I do use Alcotec 48. I never go over 14% potential and I get awesome results on my packed column. I don't find much difference between Turbo's and any other yeast.........just more nutrients in the turbos.

I use ec1118 if I'm pot stilling. Mainly because it clears easier and I don't have to use sparkaloid powder.

So after only ever using Home Brew shop flavourings for rum I tried this recipe following it exactly. Only put some oak chips in 2 days ago and being an impatient sort of person and being my first batch and all I thought it would be safe to at least have a little sample. All I can say is ..HOLY SHIT.The flavour and body of the rum in comparison to the weak tasting watery flavourings was night and day. If thats how it tastes in 2 days I can't wait to try it after 3 months. Unfortunately I can't see it lasting that long. If it gets to 3 weeks it will be some kind of hell freezing over minor miracle. Got the second generation wash sealed up in the fermenter right now. I'm hooked. Haven't been able to source any oak staves or sticks up here in Townsville yet so for now I am stuk using plantation chips...shortly I will shell out for an oak barrel or 2 I am thinking. So thanks for the recipe and for adding a little bit more aging to this rum drinkers liver :D