Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

MacStill wrote:Oh no, not plums again.... :))

Tis the season. :D

well its up to you but its a lot of work to risk on wild yeast. As for adding sugar yeah I would but with those readings perhaps you could halve the quanity. it is a reasonable amount of work so a small yield will be disappointing

I'm with crow, when it comes to fruit there is a lot of work so take no risks with wild yeast, or with hoping there's enough natural sugar to get a decent yield.

Okay taking a hack at plums this year third filled a 60l fermenter with bursting ripe plums and mashed them up a bit then hit them with the paint stirrer added 4.5kg of sugar and topped off with water to about 50l mark.
Using gerven GV10 wine yeast. SG was hard to read
So will try again tomorrow when hopefully its separated a bit of liquid from the mush a will probably add more sugar if indicated
Hard to gather from the info on this thread do I need to add lime or calcium to alter the ph?

hard to say without knowing the pH , going by your ratio's I'd hazard a guess it wouldn't hurt ;) . Of course this depends on the tolerances of the yeast you're using

kiwikeg wrote:Okay taking a hack at plums this year third filled a 60l fermenter with bursting ripe plums and mashed them up a bit then hit them with the paint stirrer added 4.5kg of sugar and topped off with water to about 50l mark.
Using gerven GV10 wine yeast. SG was hard to read
So will try again tomorrow when hopefully its separated a bit of liquid from the mush a will probably add more sugar if indicated
Hard to gather from the info on this thread do I need to add lime or calcium to alter the ph?

The plum wash is bubbling away this afternoon. Got a Sg of 1050ish so added 5kg more of white dissolved in hot water, stirred that in with some foodgrade DAP and a half handful of foodgrade calcium carbonate.
Sg is now a more respectable 1070ish.
Giving me a potential alcohol of 11%ish

I used 25gms of EC1118 as per Crows recipe. If I double the wash size do I need to double the yeast or just deal with what I guess will be the slower ferment ?

I've got a pot and a T500 reflux what's the best way to still this ?

up to you less yeast will take longer to colonize but once it has the ferment will be the same :handgestures-thumbupleft:.
Picked plums today

I have 10 kgs of plums in 15 litres of water that have been sitting round in an airtight ( but large) barrel for a week while I dicked around getting 4 other wash barrels underway.

This evening I lifted the lid off the big barrel for a peek and there is a real solid bloom all over the surface . All from the natural yeasts I guess.

I plan on using topping it up to 50 litres and adding 10 kgs of sugar. For yeast I was going to use 50gms of EC1118 which I've read is a killer strain ( The Jerry lee Lewis of yeasts ? ^:)^ ) Do you reckon that will be enough to knock out this natural yeast? I guess my other options are campden tablets or just let the natural yeasts rip? What do you reckon?

that yeast will likely over come your natural yeast but if you are happy with the way the ferment is going and seeing it is well underway maybe let it go. Your call

I chickened out on using the wild yeast and dropped in 50gms of Ec1118 . Kicked of at 1.075. It took off like a train and the bubbler on the airlock didn't slow down for a week. I plan on leaving it locked down for a month or more. I took a deep inhale from one of my earlier batches to see if it was done. Bugger me ! Vertical takeoff ! Crikey like a nail up each nostril. Yeh it's still going... :))

Ran mine last night, it had hit 990 and sat for a month.
Easy enough to rack off the wash, the wash tasted pretty good but I think the 4 plates stripped too much flavour but that could have been operator error.
Will try it with only 3 plates next time, choosing which cuts to save was quite difficult as smells varied thru the rum but most tasted good except for last couple of jars.
Unsure of what to use to oak. I have some French oak wine barrel staves or American oak dominoes.
Just want a really light oak, so am thinking a half domino into a demijohn at 60%?

four plates should not strip to much out of this one :? , I'd be more inclined to run it a bit harder or back of the reflux a tad. 3 plates might just give you more of the flavors you don't want :-B

I'm running 22 litres of plum wash through a 25 litre pot still. Sat for a month till nice and dry on EC 1118. Began by halving the batch and fast stripping it. Collected round 4 litres which came through nice and clear. Tipped that in with the other half wash and when it got to temperature dialled it back to round 700 watts. Now it's coming through cloudy... What do think has happened ?

A puke maybe?

Thanks Kiwi. Is puking when the wash foams up into the collection point and out the arm? The wash racked off nice and clear, the boiler was less than 1/2 full and there wasn't any foam on top of the wash. Whatever the problem is its through the whole run ( 3 litres)

Either it puked or your into heavy tails, there is no other cause

Thanks Crow. I've got plenty of washes to go so I'll see if the problem persists.

kiwikeg wrote:Ran mine last night, it had hit 990 and sat for a month.
Easy enough to rack off the wash, the wash tasted pretty good but I think the 4 plates stripped too much flavour but that could have been operator error.
Will try it with only 3 plates next time, choosing which cuts to save was quite difficult as smells varied thru the rum but most tasted good except for last couple of jars.
Unsure of what to use to oak. I have some French oak wine barrel staves or American oak dominoes.
Just want a really light oak, so am thinking a half domino into a demijohn at 60%?

Okay ended up with it going @55% on 4 used half dominos tasting it today after two weeks it is obviously too much tails :angry-banghead: hopefully it will come right. Once diluted to 40% those tails will be bloody overpowering.

kiwikeg wrote:

kiwikeg wrote:choosing which cuts to save was quite difficult as smells varied thru the rum but most tasted good except for last couple of jars.

I'm sitting here with 60 small jars of mostly 90% plum brandy having the same problem. This being my first real bubbler run I'm tempted to just keep the middle third and be done with it. :angry-banghead: Hands down cuts are the hardest part of this enterprise. :think: