Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Cheers as always for the helpful advice BR! Just waiting for two barrels to cool down and then I will pitch the yeast...

one thing I have found very frustrating about the subsequent batches is how thick the liquid gets. My magnetic pump (which needs to be primed) is constantly getting stuck even with stocking on the inlet pipe.

I have found that the only way I can get it transferred to my boiler in a reasonable amount of time, is to strain it using a normal kitchen strainer, then using a Japanese stock skimmer (Daiso) which is much finer. Even then, I have to get the sediment of the skimmer every five minutes. Any tips on getting around this?

Sounds like your wash needs more time to settle?
If you leave it long enough, it will go pretty much clear with a slight yellow tint.
A taller, narrow, fermenter can help with that.
Are you taking from the top with the pump or the bottom?
An large cage over the intake can let you use more square area of filter material to get the flow rate up and reduce blockages.
Have you tried racking to another vessel for a few days? Even overnight can make a difference if you can seperate the bulk of the grain bed from the wash.

I put a block of wood under the front of the fermenter so it’s tilted back away from the tap .
All the flakes settle back and yea RC is correct , leave it a week or longer now it’s cooling off and she’ll settle out cleaner

good ideas - thanks RC/Stig. I will see what I can figure out.

yeah you were right crew. I gave it a few days to settle, and had no trouble using my magnetic pump right down to the sediment.Thanks for the tips.

I also work out that my particular pump seems to work well if I put both the outlet and inlet hose into a bucket and let it run for a few minutes to get rid of any air in the lines/pump plus gives it a clean. Another good tip I found is to use one of those one-way fish tank valves I got with my Marina Air pump to get of the air. Once she's all primed, I turn pump off, and move the inlet hose to the fermenter. I then turn pump on, take the valve out, and away she goes!

That brings me to another question: when you are doing the final slow spirit run, should you mix some of the sediment from the fermenter into the boiler for extra flavour, or not required? Or is this like everything else and completely up to the brewer?

Happy Anzac Day All!

Just wondering if it is critical to do a Stripping and then Spirit runs on a CFW or could I try going straight to Spirit, discarding the first 200mls as I would a TPW for neutral.

Cheers

:techie-typing:

If pot stilling would recomend strip then spirit run.

See below

Power controller? :think:

warramungas wrote:Power controller? :think:

:text-+1:

The Stig wrote:

warramungas wrote:Power controller? :think:

:text-+1:

Thanks @warramungas and @The Stig - I agree thats a good idea. Mind you I cant believe the build quality of this dome, you can see on the photos the amount of paste i need to stop not only vapour but also in out water point leakages and we have only done 5 runs. It has done a good job tho for what it is, sipping on a N grain whisky right now.

I will be in touch Stig as to next steps. I had spoken to MacStill

Thanks

Just stillit. Definitely look at a power controller mate. I started out with a pot still and love it and just want to echo Blucs point about stripping runs then a spirit run. Doing it this way will make the cuts a little easier because there is more starting alcohol in the boiler. Don’t forget to dilute back to 40% abv if needed. It will also mean you end up with higher abv final product. Happy distilling :)

slow spirit run - I typically have the setting to max until the column gets up to temperature, and then dial back to around 100v (2k boiler) and look for the stream, drip drip, rate others have mentioned.

Is there such a thing as too slow? or is it more how much time you have to complete the run? Can you safely switch off the boiler in the middle of a run and resume it another day?

With this recipe, is it only the process and ageing on oak that mainly use to get flavour or is there are other tricks? I am enjoying it so far - seems to get better after 3 months of aeration on oak.

Does anyone char their oak on a BBQ with flame or wrapped in foil (I have the american/French 5Star ones) to get a smokey taste for whiskey?

No such thing as too slow, within reason.

As long as you have a drip every few, seconds then it's not too slow, it's a compromise to find the slowest setting you can get away with and not have it take an unreasonable amount of time to finish a run.

that's what I have found too, particularly now as the weather is getting chilly! Thanks Bob9863 :)

Plus one to what Bob said mate.

Can’t help with the charring as I have not done any, my understanding of the smokiness is that it comes from the smoked grains you use in the wash and not the wood chips. The extra charcoal from charring the dominoes will give more filtration over time not a Smokey flavour. But that is just my interpretation which has been wrong many times before 8-}

ok smoked grains.. that sounds interesting. Do you smoke the grains yourself, or buy them that way.

Next batch I will try adding some LME too

stillts wrote: Can you safely switch off the boiler in the middle of a run and resume it another day?

Yep, not a problem, let it settle at full reflux for 10 mins, slowly draw off 50-100ml as a "just in case" fores cut and then go back to what you were doing.

Happens more often than you would think, not every run goes smoothly, lols