My 200L Tomato Paste Wash (possible trigger warning)

[ADHD Brewer]

The Intro:
Ok so I thought it might be fun to share my two hundred litre tomato paste wash walkthrough.
Please be warned some of you may be triggered and frustrated by my process haha! We will see if my laziness and shortcuts end up screwing me over and we can debate it then
Hope this is the correct area to post

The Background:
You can skip this next paragraph, just background info
So I finally have got back into brewing after being away from it for a couple of years (since the floods) but got my still up and running and got the new parts again
I did a 200L tomato paste wash earlier on in the year set it on before I went overseas for a couple of months and then I let it sit there for another couple of months and I got my new setup and finally distilled it.
I had done 60L batches in the past quite a few times and recently found I'm ADHD as f*** so doing a much larger batch works much better for me as I can focus on it and get it all done in one weekend and have a stockpile for any time the inspiration hits me to make a new liqueur or gift

The Process:

First: prepare your tools, in my case a drill with paint mixer attachment for mixing obviously haha and day hose attached brush
I gave my barrel a brush out (don't worry I hosed off the brush before using it :D ) and then a hose out
I also hosed off the paint mixer :D

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Second: you need your wash container and for this batch I did 200L again (maybe 220L?)
I got a 220L food grade plastic container with a screw top for easy cleaning and dumping in of ingredients
Still currently cold in northern NSW so went to the op shop and grabbed a scraps quilt and mattress protectors wrapped them around the barrel and chucked a large garbage bag over the whole thing to prevent extra air transfer and to keep it insulated
I do have a heat belt wrap around it just in case
Please note the super hygienic and controlled workspace :))

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Third: prepare your ingredients in my case I had 50kg of sugar from Aldi in 25 x 2kg packs
4 x 500G cheapest woolies tomato paste
2 x 500ml lemon juice, only used 670ml of it tho (its reconstituted juice because I could not be assed finding anything else and this was cheap) from woolies only
2 x 280g Bakers used from Woolies again the cheapest
And that's the list of ingredients because, again, im lazy and cheap

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Fourth: filling up with water, to take out three birds with one stone I put my barrel in a downstairs shower then ingeniously connected some plumbing and a hose to the shower outlet
Started filling the barrel to about halfway checking the temperature of the Stream so I didn't have to mess around with temperatures later as much
Did I feel with hot water straight from the water heater? Yes!
Did I let the water sit for a day to air off and dechlorinate? No!
Why? Because, again, I'm lazy and focused on getting it done

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Fith: now with the time to unceremoniously dump in the bags of sugar while flogging it with a paint mixer to get the whole thing spinning and well you know perfectionists need the sugar completely diluted in there haha
I dumped in 46kg of sugar and figured I can adjust it later
important step: fish out paint stirrer that dropped out of the drill

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Sixth: I pre-mixed the tomato paste in a separate container first and then dumped it into the main drum along with more water to bring it to the 200L Mark

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Seventh: once the drum is full I checked the starting temperature, added in the lemon juice, gave it a good mix and for once I actually checked the SG mostly out of curiosity (I often dont bother)

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Eighth: (I struggled with spelling 'eighth' just then!) now I gave it a good flogging with the mixer to create a vortex and consistently poured the yeast in getting it all in there ' nice and deep like' :))
Only left a quarter of a container to sprinkle over the top when it's not spinning as fast
Chuck the lid on top but not screwed down
And that's pretty much it

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An hour later had a few centimetres of foam on top and it was bubbling and moving like The Blob, I couldn't add in the video of it

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Next Day decided to check on it today gave it a mix to keep the paste a bit more suspended off the bottom and check the SG, still bubbling away like crazy, again couldn't add in the video

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Note:
OK I did a lot of this via speech to text and haven't particularly reread it all to check spelling mistakes because I'm lazy.
Is there a lot of things that I could have done better? YES!
Do I particularly care? Nope!
Should I be a role model for anyone else to follow? Definitely not!
Will I keep everybody updated on this? I like to think that I will have the attention span to update if anyone cares

[RuddyCrazy]

Welcome to the rabbit hole mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Now go jump into the Welcome Centre and do your introductory post mate as it is custom and honestly this post does belong in the TPW discussion thread not here.

Cheers Bryan

[The Stig]

I moved this to the sugar wash area, now as Bryan said shoot over to the welcome area and say G'Day

[ADHD Brewer]

Yeah I had to get this write up out of the way while I had enthusiasm and is fresh in my brain. Otherwise it would sit on the back burner and never get done
We'll get around to the introductory place soon

[Bullrout]

ive done basically the same thing, 9 months later i checked em n all the water was gone out the air locks, that was afew years back now. they still slowly bubble. will run it next time i get a chance, just ben busy