Hello all -
Trust everyone is keeping safe.
I am from the country outside Bendigo, newly retired, and am ramping up my hobby. As have so many, I started out with a T500 tower and alembic pot. I now have moved on to a 5 plate bubbler with reflux column. I am still learning to run it at its best, and will have a lot of questions.
At the moment I am working on a batch of BWKO, up to Gen5. I pulled a lot of the grain bed this gen and replaced it with rye this batch. I have about 20 litres 60% on oak at the moment, and will add this batch hoping to get a bit of rye kick. Hope I do not stuff it.
I have even making a lot of gin. It is a raving success so far. It disappears faster than I can make it. Mostly I run hearts through the alembic pot with a gin basket, but will use my gin basket with my big boiler next time, running it through the PC. Eventually I will try running a clean wash through the bubbler/column with the gin basket last. Each batch is different, of course, which is part of the charm.
Next up is getting a couple TPWs going, to keep the neutral coming, to get some limoncello/Kahlua etc underway plus more gin.
And I need to get some more rum underway. The last batches went great. I am one of those that left insufficient head space on my first rum ferment, and things got exciting fast. You can send a rocket into space with that ferment.
I am in a small panic as I am rapidly running out of my cornflake whiskey I put down a few years ago. It was ok, then about 4 months ago I re-oaked it, and it did wonders for it. Went from good as a mixer to a good sipping whiskey. I will have to dip into my BWKO too early I fear. Will be asking for help on how to get some of that up to drinking quality fast.
One issue I am having is that I am getting no where near the ABV on the bubbler/column that I expected after reading posts here. My queries to an expert indicated that it would be difficult to achieve 95%, and that 92% or so take off at reasonable speed is more probable - which is what I am getting for neutral, and around 85-88 for the BWKO. Any advice is appreciated. I have checked a lot of the standard issues (leaks, levels, column packing) and next on the list to go through is to check seating of the plates as the bottom 2 plates are not bubbling as I would have expected.
That seems more than enough for a first post. I appreciate the opportunity to join and be part of the site.