Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi. I made up my first tpw.
8 lt of hot water to dissolve the sugar.
Mixed the 395g tomato paste into 5lt cold water
Added the sugar wash into my fermenting container. 110ml of lemon juice.
I then mixed 84g of dry yeast into a bowl with 1 lt of cold water.
22lt of cold water added to the tub.
It took about 1 hour to get the temp down to 29.5c
I added the yeast mix.
Temp. of the room stayed between 28c to overnight 19c back up to 29 today.
I put distilled water in the airlock but after 30 hours I'm not getting any bubbles through the the airlock.
This is my first sacrificial wash but doesn't look like its working. Am I just in a hurry or is this one buggered?

Looks like you added yeast to cold water from your description mate.
The yeast needs to be put into warm water usually, anywhere from 25 - 35 degrees. Cold water probably put it to sleep.

Open up the wash and give it good hard mixing for 5 minutes to get some oxygen into the wash then seal it back up again where it should start up nicely. Now if the airlock doesn't bubble you could have a leak and if so just take the lid off and see if there is any action happening. If Not just add some yeast in straight from the tin and give it a good mixing to give the yeast a good chance to breed.

Push down in the middle of the lid with 1 finger, if the water in the airlock doesn’t move you have a leak .
Remove lid and fix leak

The Stig wrote:Push down in the middle of the lid with 1 finger, if the water in the airlock doesn’t move you have a leak .
Remove lid and fix leak

But, whatever you do, DON’T use more than one finger!!!
Don’t even ask what could happen!

:laughing-rolling:

Thanks. I removed the lid and gave it a good stir.. didn't realise I'd have to do exercise with this hobby!..
Checked for leaks and the water moves when I pressed the lid. Temp of mix is 27c. I'll check it later for movement.
Roughly how long before i should see bubbles?
Also if not and I need more yeast.. how much?
Cheers

Should see action within 30mins. A good shake/sprinkle will do.

if there is no action, it might be worth hydrating your next yeast in 30c water first.
in about 15-30mins you should see the yeast go off, at least this will prove your yeast is ok.
get yourself a paint stirrer to give the wash a real good aeration.

If you took the lid off what did it look like? Should see it fizzing at least if it was still it ain’t fermenting

I made up a small amount in tepid water of yeast and sugar. Left it for 20 minutes and had a good raise. Put that into my tub and stirred it on . Left overnight but nothing this morning.
I might dispose of this and try again. It was a sacrificial wash anyway....

Do you have a ph meter?
That amount of tomato paste is unnecessary, a quarter of that would be fine in a little wash like that, the Citric amount seems high too, the citric is there to lower the ph a bit, you may have water that dosent need it, the paste might have lowered it a fair bit too, its pretty acidic

You may be able to save this one by using some garden lime - calcium carbonate
Have a bit of a search on here about PH buffers

Yea my thought were it could of been the town water if that was used but as said with the amount of tomato paste it was way too much, I only use one small tub of tomato paste to a 60 litre wash too and never had a problem. I do like to get the sg on my TPW wash to around 1075 to increase the yield on the strip run and it does take some time for the ferment to be done.

Have a look around for some ph papers as they are pretty cheap as it good insurance for a healthy start to a ferment when the ph is spot on for the yeasties to breed and produce that wash for our distilling.

Cheers Bryan

I never used the citric when I was doing TPW

How much sugar did you use? Cannot see it written anywhere

I used the birdwatchers calculator. For 35 liters of water.

https://birdwatchers.info/calculator/
7kg of sugar. Tap water too, but left it out in a sanitised bucket for about an hour.

I did find a leak though from the lid when I tipped the bin on its side. I'm just getting a seal for it.

I'll also check the ph level too. I didn't do that after making the wash

Ok.. so looks like the main issue was a leak. Replaced the container with a 20lt with a good seal. (Tested it with some water and held upside down for a couple of minutes!.. ) put the mix in, gave it a good airing with the wifes mixer- tested the ph which I think is low at 3.8, but I'm hoping that's because of the extra yeast I put in as per above.
Now bubbling away quiet happy.

As its a sacrificial wash, I'm not bothered about the qualityso hopefully it will carry on bubbling away for a week, but do I need to raise the ph level?
I guess I should for the practice.
Thanks

I called it :laughing-rolling:

The Stig wrote:I called it :laughing-rolling:

Thanks.. yep.. rookie mistake number 1.. LOL

Don’t beat yourself up about rookie mistakes Yorkie, some of us still make them, but that’s how we learn , or don’t learn as the case maybe :)