Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

100 watt aquarium heaters are under $30 (even cheaper on EBay) which are about half the price of a heat pad. As for sterilizing them use Star san in a spray bottle once you have washed them. Pop them in and use glad wrap over the mouth of the fermenter held in place with rubber bands.

This is how I do all my washes and have not had a problem yet.

The amount of CO2 that the yeast gives off will kill any nasties that try to get in to the fermenter. CO2 is heavier than air so it will sit on top of your wash.

Nino wrote:100 watt aquarium heaters are under $30 (even cheaper on EBay) which are about half the price of a heat pad. As for sterilizing them use Star san in a spray bottle once you have washed them. Pop them in and use glad wrap over the mouth of the fermenter held in place with rubber bands.

This is how I do all my washes and have not had a problem yet.

The amount of CO2 that the yeast gives off will kill any nasties that try to get in to the fermenter. CO2 is heavier than air so it will sit on top of your wash.

something like this?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2X-Aquarium- ... 2548.l4275

Bundaboy wrote:

Nino wrote:100 watt aquarium heaters are under $30 (even cheaper on EBay) which are about half the price of a heat pad. As for sterilizing them use Star san in a spray bottle once you have washed them. Pop them in and use glad wrap over the mouth of the fermenter held in place with rubber bands.

This is how I do all my washes and have not had a problem yet.

The amount of CO2 that the yeast gives off will kill any nasties that try to get in to the fermenter. CO2 is heavier than air so it will sit on top of your wash.

something like this?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2X-Aquarium- ... 2548.l4275

Yep they are the ones 2 for $22 is pretty good price. You still need insulate the fermenters so that they don't run all the time. The 100 watt ones will do. They are also good for 60lt washes as well, you may want to invest in a couple of 60lt fermenters down the track. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Nino wrote:Yep they are the ones 2 for $22 is pretty good price. You still need insulate the fermenters so that they don't run all the time. The 100 watt ones will do. They are also good for 60lt washes as well, you may want to invest in a couple of 60lt fermenters down the track. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

It seems a price too good to be true but it's worth a try I suppose.

Yes knowing what I know now that is the obvious way to go (60L) - newbies take note - I DO have a 160L fermenter which *should* solve all my problems (and hence why I am a bit reluctant to invest in things that *may* become redundant) but I am holding back on it until warmer weather.

I have ordered 2, will report back on how they go.

Just for the record, I have finally found a way to aerate the wash, using a hand blender, that works for me.

It's a bit of a no brainer really, but if I had thought of it earlier (and I should have as it's a bit of a nick) it would have saved me quite a bit of grief. I simply place some glad wrap over say 90% of the fermenter opening and then follow Peregian's method given earlier in this thread (which I initially totally missed for some reason).

This allows one to keep the blade end of the blender well under the glad wrap and hence contain the spray (if any).

This may be of some use to others who only have 25L open mouth fermenters.

Hi guys,

Just quick one and i know it would been asked (cant see it) But what is the yield? and how much % ?

So like with TPW out of a T500 im getting approx 2.5-3 L at 93%? Whats the average results on this wash?

Thanks in advance !

Bender

Most washes will yield about the same percentage of alcohol.

Most of the T&P recipes end up at about 8-12% ABV.

The key is to take SG and FG readings so that you know what to expect and when its done fermenting.

bender wrote:Hi guys,

Just quick one and i know it would been asked (cant see it) But what is the yield? and how much % ?

So like with TPW out of a T500 im getting approx 2.5-3 L at 93%? Whats the average results on this wash?

Thanks in advance !

Bender

Having done a lot of these now (some even properly), and because I did a stripping run just yesterday (a long day) I can be a little more specific.

In general this recipe, providing you allow it to ferment out (which is not hard because it only takes 4 days) it performs, within any reasonable margin of error, exactly as the mathematics predict (say by using the calculators available on most forums).

For me yesterday, I had approx 66 L of wash plus a litre and a half of 90 odd % feints that gave me about 25L of 30 odd % low wines after a stripping run (2 actually as my boiler is only 50L).

This was then run yesterday to give about 8 litres (including heads through to tails) at 94% (falling off to ~50% right at the end) - I went to 95C.

I took this off in 24 jars @ 250mL except for 2 jars @ 1L and 2 jars@ 750mL right in the middle of the hearts (at least what should be hearts after about a dozen runs of this now I should be able to guess it correctly).

The break up by dynamic testing should be about 15-20% heads, 45-50% hearts, 25% tails, although I can't be sure until proper testing tonight if I am luck as it will need to wait until Tuesday otherwise. All in all I should have around (no worse than) 8-9L of 40%, and possibly better.

I have done several of these and highly recommend it as a neutral wash it performs very well and consistent it definitely is an alternative to tomato wash?

I've added this one to the Tried and Proven recipes. Well done Teddysad, it's obviously doing the job for a few blokes here :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I've given the name a bit of a spin, 'TLCTA' doesn't have much of a ring to it :laughing-rolling:

:laughing-rolling:

Well done teddy :clap:

Finally earned a star well done ttlca? :happy-partydance:

Yeah this looks like a great next recipe to try !

Well done teddy, for anyone that may be interested I'll give it a crack off the exact recipe. Then put through the T500 and do the basic cuts, then post my full results of all the measurements.

Love to taste test this against the TPW.

Hi all I was sorting out my stash ( first time since moving house ) and i found a Teddys I had put away to see how it aged!. It was ran through the t500 spirit run, as I had not had the neautralizer at that stage!
This was my first spirit run(previously stripped on pot for t500 boiler), So I put about 4 litres on oak @95abv,80 grams of oak. I just had a taste of it and compared to a Bwko that was put down at the same time ( Bwko was better, but not a fair fight as soaking was different as it was made up of previously used oak and some new so not the same )
Although, the Teddys was a surprisingly good flavour ( I was not immediately aware it was 92% abv and it was nice to taste with a moderate burn you would expect from near azeotrope so I am impressed probably not a bourbon Thorobred but maybe a great scotch cordial option and of course vodka anyway bit of info for those interested :-B

Fast fermenting vodka is better than that dreaded turbo word.

Also better to age at a lower ABV than azeo.
65% is a good start.

scythe wrote:Also better to age at a lower ABV than azeo.
65% is a good start.

Absolutely correct that was only done as one off :handgestures-thumbupleft:

In my last run of 66L FFV thought I was getting less hearts than I should be with a very long tail and this time I was extra careful to take small cuts, aired for 2 days, then did a blind test with a neighbour, and yeah I seem to get only only about 2 litres of (obvious) hearts out of 7 litres @94% - so only about 30% - I think I could stretch that to 40% with filtering ( used to filter everything but of late I have allowed some significant clearing time - so I can't compare apples with apples).

This was with 2 stripping runs (33L & 33L) with no packing in my MacBoka and a spirit run with full copper packing. I allowed 45 minutes of full reflux, threw away 250-300 mL of fores and collected in 250 mL jars (1 litre for hearts).

I do smell and taste test when I think I am getting into hearts.

I also think I am getting better at detecting tails than I used to be so I can't be totally sure this run was worse than previous runs.

Any thoughts on whether that is a significantly low yield?

Bundaboy wrote:In my last run of 66L FFV thought I was getting less hearts than I should be with a very long tail and this time I was extra careful to take small cuts, aired for 2 days, then did a blind test with a neighbour, and yeah I seem to get only only about 2 litres of (obvious) hearts out of 7 litres @94% - so only about 30% - I think I could stretch that to 40% with filtering ( used to filter everything but of late I have allowed some significant clearing time - so I can't compare apples with apples).

This was with 2 stripping runs (33L & 33L) with no packing in my MacBoka and a spirit run with full copper packing. I allowed 45 minutes of full reflux, threw away 250-300 mL of fores and collected in 250 mL jars (1 litre for hearts).

I do smell and taste test when I think I am getting into hearts.

I also think I am getting better at detecting tails than I used to be so I can't be totally sure this run was worse than previous runs.

Any thoughts on whether that is a significantly low yield?

Just to answer my own question, I was being much too heavy handed on the cuts, this is mainly because I have a hard time judging the heads and was playing safe - ridiculously. Fortunately it all went back into the next run which gave a fantastic yield.