Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

It's a strange one mate that's for sure

I really hope it just doesn't go away without getting to the bottom of it.

Yeah I agree , but I think this thread is a good culmination of symptoms and remedies and will become the answer to the problem,.. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I'm going to stick my neck out here and diagnose it.

My still gets filthy pretty quick when doing rums, and believe the cause is the vapor isn't crystal clear when leaving the boiler, the first tee ends up filthy progressively getting better up the column as the purifying is happening the tees become cleaner.

If your still was made entirely of copper all these impurities are sucked into the column rather than just creating a film of scum and nasty shit, a solvent like the fores & heads would be removing some of this crap on the next run, and if not refluxing this for a length of time could result in a little color coming through at the start.

I guess it opens some debate as to best materials, but that's not the point here...... run strategies are.

For a sparkly clean bling bit of SS still I like to start out on the most neutral of my runs, low wines, feints etc working my way through the wash's until I get to the manky black rum wash... I'm sure you's get the drift. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

So then (being that rum is my passion) I'll run my most common and filthiest shit through the column until I'm done, then strip down, clean etc. and the cycle begins again :handgestures-thumbupleft:

If I'm just dribbling shit doing a half arsed drunken job of trying to sound intelligent I'm sure you'll all get a laugh at least, but who knows if I'm right I could win an element & ya gotta be innit to winnit :teasing-blah:

I don't know anything about the green daemon of which you all speak but I can agree with Mac in as much as I've only done 1 (100L) rum run and after that 1 run I was not happy to do another without doing a thorough clean. The first 2 plates in particular were noticeably like the "Great Unclean Daemon of Chaos" himself.
One swipe of the finger over the copper and I got that unmistakable effluvium....sulfides!

I sent forth the Inquisitors and they bathed the daemon in an acid bath bath of Holy Retribution (aka Citric acid), and it was good.

Now with the VM and neutrals I was happy to run for months without a decent clean so it all depends on your product as to how often you'll need to clean.
Inspect after each run and clean as often as you need :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cheers,

Mech.
aka "The Black Templar - Emperor's Champion"

Ok I have seemed to have narrowed it down to the one wash.

This wash was a uj variant, the only difference being 2kg of pilsner malt and a sour corn starter.

Maybe the gren rum was carry over from this? Anyway... I'm going to try to replicate it either way.

I still haven't ran the rum that was coming out green but it was definitely lighter colour than this uj stuff.

All good mate,

If you manage to replicate it let us know so we can all start working on what the root cause might be, failing a definitive solution one of us will replicate your "Tried and Proven" Green Spirit recipe ;-) Then perhaps along the way one of us may stumble upon the solution.

Cheers and good luck.

Mech.

Yeah thanks mate. I can't see pilsner malt being a problem as it's from a very reputable supplier.

But this next few months will be a process of elimination, removing/adding one ingredient at a time until it appears again. Im pretty sure it's not bacterial so I just hope I can get to the bottom of it

I just noticed while washing out my cuts jars that one of the brands has a green tinge in the glass at the base but the others don't :-B

Might be worth a check, prob not the cause but can't hurt :handgestures-thumbupleft:

This was one of my very first thoughts S&L but I use a variety of stubbies and the tinge is throughout all of them.

Even green in a carona bottle and a clear glass jar as well as a schooner glass too :handgestures-thumbdown: