Vodka wash

[bradsgonetrekkin]

Now I’m back stilling again I decided to get cracking with a neutral wash first to build up the vodka stocks before chrissy.

This is for a 180 litre wash. Using the site calculators it should end up around 11.8% alcohol.

After reading Ace Highs foolproof neutral recipe on AD heres the version I put down last night:-

Ingredients
* 36 kg white sugar
* 35g citric acid
* 1 kg six row malted light lager grain
* 10 teaspoons Epsom salts
* half a cup of red star premium cuvee wine yeast
* water

Method
* Dissolve sugar with boiling water and add citric acid (I did this in batches of around 6kg of sugar mixed up in a ss stockpot, then added to fermenter when dissolved)
* Fill up to around 140 litre mark with water, stirring heaps
*Add grain, epsom salts and yeast, stir some more while topping up to 180 litre mark with more water.

Checked today and its fizzing and popping away nicely. Not super aggressive, just doing its thing...
Will let you know how it goes.. :)

[Kimbo]

Thats a hellova Vodka wash there BGT :o

[Sam.]

Did you get a real weird look when you bought all that sugar? :D

[bradsgonetrekkin]

Yeah I did get a few stares.

I've been checking the wash each day and giving it a bit of a stir now and again.

Measured the sg yesterday at around 1.040. Its still fizzing away after 16 days. Wash smells a bit like the champagne my wife drinks!

Temp in the shed has been a bit lower than normal for this time of year at around 20 -25 degrees c.

I hope it be close to finishing soon so I can get it stripped and run through the column before chrissy. :P

[Tracker]

Yep, I have found that the higher the potential alcohol, the longer it takes to ferment out. I recon that 2 ferments of 5% take less than 1/2 the time of a 10% one.


Cheers.

[evildrakey]

When I buy the sugar, I buy a packet of jamsetta... They work out quickly that I'm making 'jam' :P

[SBB]

A shopping trolly full of raw sugar always gets wierd looks......but hell couldnt I just be making home brew beer :angelic-cyan:

[bradsgonetrekkin]

This brew is still fizzing away!!! :o SG now around 1.010, hopefully will stop in the next few days so I can start stripping....

[bradsgonetrekkin]

Checked the wash this morning. Its finished bubbling, looks a bit clearer and the SG is around .995.Had a little sip and its got a fairly dry taste, not sweet like it was during early ferment.

I've missed my aim for chrissy vodka but will start stripping tommorrow. Will do 3 lots of 50-60 litre pot strips then 1 big spirit run through the vm column. New years vodka hopefully!

[bradsgonetrekkin]

Ended up doing 2 stipping runs of 70 - 74 litres a run and getting around 33 litres of low vines.

Still had around 20 litres of wash that I couldn't be arsed stripping so it all went in the boiler with the low vines and run through the vm column.

After an epic 15 hour spirit run I got around 20 x 750ml bottles of high ABV spirit. I could have got more but I was over it by then and shut the still down.

After reasonably conservative cuts bottles 4 - 16 were kept as hearts and 1 - 3 and 17 - 20 were kept as feints. Once I get better at running my vm and doing cuts I will probably be able to keep a bit more.

Watered down to 40% I ended up with around 30 x 750ml bottles of nice neutral, plus aound 4.9 litres of 95% feints to add to another run.

Overall pretty happy with the results :dance: .

Next time I would probably tweak the recipe and operation a little now that I'm a bit more used to running my boiler, pot and vm columns:-
* Reduce the amount of sugar to around 9%. The original wash was around 11.8%, which is why it took a long time to ferment (plus ambient temperatures here unseasonably low for summer).
According to the calculators if I add 31 kg sugar and top up to 200 litres I should get around 9.1% ABV wash.
* By increasing the size of the wash I'll be able to do 3 full stripping runs of around 63 - 65 litres (I probably should have done a separate strip for the 20 litres of wash I had left over from the 140 litre wash, but the final product I got is pretty good so it will only get better with full double distillation).
* Get set up for the final spirit run the day before (charge boiler, connect coolant / outlet lines etc) and get up REALLY EARLY on the day of the final spirit run (with my current setup and the above volumes it was around 15 hours). Plus have a good book, laptop or a DVD player so you don't get too bored watching drips / streams and changing bottles!

Now I'm thinking about a massive batch of home made kahula, theres heaps of blueberries and strawberries in season at the moment, peppermint schnapps plus the lollypop vodkas sound awesome as well.. 8-)

[Al Qaemist]

Brad, had you done that wash on a smaller scale before the big one? I'll often push 11ABV and don't have a problem with it taking for ever, could be a temp and or nutrient issue. Never done one on that scale personally - will do 165l a time, but split it over 3 x 60l fermenters, but getting a lot of air into the wash before pitching, and breading up the yeasties to get a good colony a few days before putting the wash down gets you off the mark.

Personally I wouldn't run any wash on the VM when shooting for neutral - if you didn't want to strip it, you could have just added more water and sugar and got it fermenting again on the yeast you had already grown (I'll do 3 washes on the same yeast before starting fresh - seem to run into issues other wise and haven't figured out why)
Also i now prefer to take off heads the evening before a large run, I do a better job of running slow as the main even is the next day so your in no rush, with an insulated boiler you get up to temp in no time, and your ready to start pulling hearts from the off.

Different stokes for different folks - glad your run went well mate. :clap:

[bradsgonetrekkin]

Good feedback and tips AQ. I've done a few different sugar type washes before (birdwatchers, weetbix/allbran) but not this one. And yeah I realise now I should have left out the wash from the vm run but I was too impatient. After taking a LONG time to research and actually get the stilling gear built and tested I just wanted to get wash done, do multiple strips with the pot still and get the vm beast fired up before xmas, then new years...Turns out I missed both but I am starting to realise in this game that sometimes there is no point trying to rush things. Its all part of the learning process I guess. I like the idea of doing the run over 2 days as well. Might try it next time. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[R-sole]

All good tips there from Al 8-)

[wynnum1]

How did you clear the wash after it finished .

[bradsgonetrekkin]

I didn't clear it Wynnum, just left it for a few days after it finished fermenting to let it settle. Scooped some floating grains off top then siphoned to still. Wasn't totally clear, kinda piss coloured...