Greeting from South Australia

by **BackyardBrewer** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:24 am

Hello distillers. I'm a long time homebrewer who started back in highschool when my mates and I read that you could make booze by mixing orange juice and yeast together.

Tasted like turd but gave you a buzz. Then I realised you could filter the pulp and gunk through a coffee filter and mix it with fanta and it didn't taste as bad. Then I realised you could just use sugar and water (cheaper than orange juice!) and add the fanta afterwards... That was our year 11 and 12 staple party juice.

At uni I got into beer brewing and I've been a hops and yeast snob ever since.

I always wanted to distill but it wasn't until the missus and I bought a place in the leafy eastern suburbs of adelaide with a huge block and loads of fruit trees and an old italian couple living next door with grape vines a plenty.

I was turning our pears into pear cider but even still we had more than we could eat or ferment. Last autumn the neighbours came over with some home made wine after harvest. Blurgh! Too sweet and not tasty at all. I politely said no to more this year as it was too hard to drink - they suggested adding lemonade to it! As if it wasn't bad enough.

Well then I laughingly said "You should just run it all though a still and make grappa!"... They looked at each other and the old Italian guy said "Ahh you like-a de strong drink eh?" He winked and disappeared into the shed and came back with a tomato paste jar filled with clear liquid...

I think you all know where this is going by now. Sweet burning high alc grappa! He and his chronies had a copper pot still head floating around between their group of grape growers and after each harvest. They fired this thing up over an open fire in a 44 gallon drum with bloody tonnes of low quality wine and grape stems etc and I was hooked.

So this year the missus got me an Ultra Pure Still and I've done 2 runs so far. Very happy with the quality of the information here on this forum and having been ripped off by overpriced LHBS over the years I take all their advice with a grain of salt.

My learnings so far:
1- Don't Be Greedy. First run I did I just wanted more more more and was not nearly ruthless enough with turfing heads. I took way more than the recommend 150mls and the first stuff was way rougher than the middle run of hearts. Next run I turfed the foreshots at 250 mls and then turfed another 250mls of the first heads and still had a shitload of spirits. Next run I could comfortably turf even more I reckon as I now know what 'hearts' taste and smell like compared to heads and tails.
2 - Allocate More Time. From pulling the wash out of the fermenter to switching off and cleaning up and leaving everything in the proofing jars to air took 5 hours and 4.5 hours respectively. It's a whole day job so don't start after work.
3 - Water it down to 45% ABV or less. Yeah I had to taste booze at 60-80% ABV, yeah that's why we're making moonshine right? The strong stuff! Wrong. It's quick trip to drunk town with a headache and sore throat quaffing anything higher than 45% or so.
4 - The Internet knows better than the homebrew shop. I feel for the homebrew guys, the shop I bought my still at said this is now 50% of his business - selling spirit flavourings and turbo yeast and stills. But he doesn't know nearly as much about distilling as he does about brewing. Asking him about TPW and bakers yeast and he looked shocked and confused. I said "you know like more than 50% of distillers are all talking up the TPW?". Looked at me blankly. I just put my first TPW down for about $9 all up including sugar, yeast tomato paste and citric. Cost to do the same from HBS supplies? $11 yeast, $15 for fermentables, $6 for turbo clear so $32 VS 8$. Even I f have to do two runs to get the same amount of booze it's a quarter or half the price of HBS ingredients.
5 - Keep a fermenter full of wash all the time. Much like homebrewing to make it pay you need something in place at every stage of production: Racked and clearing in secondary, maturing in the cupboard and a full fermenter waiting for racking or bottling. Same thing for me here - have liquor ready all the time.

Anyway I have loads of questions and this site gives loads of answers. Still not sure how it's legal to sell a 30L distilling system but not legal to own or use for anything other than distilling water, but I'm enjoying the ride.

by **Kimbo** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:01 am

Gday Backyard,
Brilliant intro mate, sounds like youve got it half sussed already.
Welcome to the forum mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

by **maheel** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:03 pm

welcome BYB

more than a few beer guys here as well :) i all-grain beer as well

thought you might be the same BYB from AHB ?

anyways welcome and have fun

by **BackyardBrewer** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 1:38 pm

Nahh on AHB I'm Interloper (BackYard Brewer was taken).

I'm a Kits and Bits guy usually. Done a fair whack of AG beers but tend to cheat a bit and lash out on hops and yeast and bit of grain steeped for body.

by **Sam.** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:35 pm

Welcome mate good to see another adelaidian on the site!

by **Frank** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 4:55 pm

Nice intro Mr Brewer
I esp love the bit in your learnings number 4. I agree that its (kind of) 'weird' that LHBS owners selling most things distilling claim ignorance when you ask about something as 'simple' as TPW ( :roll: Hmmmmmm, no prizes for guessing why this may be though :laughing-rolling:).
Anyway, welcome and enjoy :handgestures-thumbupleft:

by **grumpthehermit** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:45 am

G'day BYB.

Welcome to the fold. :-D

I have the same Pure Distilling rig that you have and have only just got started in this hobby myself.

I find the TPW works really well for me, so long as I only take off quite slowly I get a good result. ( 200ml every 15 mins or so, just crack the ball valve open a little, don't run fully open )

Based on 6kg's of sugar in a 25L wash I normally take 150ml of Foreshots which get thrown away then get something along the lines of 400ml of heads, 2400-2600ml of hearts and 600-800ml of tails.

Not sure if your familiar with the idea of keeping the heads and tails for your next run, keep them in in a demijohn then simply pour them back in on your next run and get a wider hearts cut. My volumes mentioned above include having run with 1200ml of heads and tails poured back in from a previous run.

There is heaps of good reading here, going through it all a few times over has helped me get my head around allot of things I had no clue about. :D

Cheers
GTH

by **Kal** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:58 am

G'day mate, nice intro & welcome to the forum :handgestures-thumbupleft:

by **hoppy** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:26 pm

Welcome to the forum BRB top intro go the :dance: Croweaters :))

Cheers Hoppy :mrgreen:

by **BackyardBrewer** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:20 pm

grumpthehermit wrote:Not sure if your familiar with the idea of keeping the heads and tails for your next run, keep them in in a demijohn then simply pour them back in on your next run and get a wider hearts cut.

Yeah, cheers. Have saved two runs worth of turbo yeast heads and tails and will add them into this weekend's TPW wash to bump up the ABV before distilling and improving.