Using stills to make RSO and brewing alcohol to make EverClear from scratch

Advanced Techniques
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LOL! Not laughing at you guys but the situation. I called two different brewer supply stores today and they gave me different advice except for one thing - LITFA!

They didnt use that term, but they both said I was opening the bucket and looking at or stirring the mix waaaay too often. They both agreed that that was my biggest problem by far. Neither one liked the heater in the tub either. I didnt follow the logic, but they thought it would kill the yeast? Plus, I need the bucket sealed much better - and dont open it to check!!!

One wanted me to buy three different add-ons, but he had never heard of the DADY yeast. He was a Turbo guy.

The other guys said, “Oh yeah, Red Star DADY yeast is fine for what you are doing. Very tolerant of issues and has a wide temp range. Plus it doesnt need any add-ons for what you are doing. It wont hurt to add some though if you want. BUT - - start the bucket then LITFA!!!” Watch the air lock and dont mess with it until the bubbles stop.

So, Im gonna try this shit again - plan C!

I got a 2 gallon bucket this time for a smaller batch. There seems to be a run on sugar at my local store??? WTF? Anyway, I need to do a smaller batch until I get this dialed in.

Two gallons should get me enough hi proof alcohol to do this current grow.

So, I just finished boiling the sugar water. While it cools, Im going to make a crude airlock so I can keep track of the process without opening the bucket.

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I forgot to ask you about this. Why is the first ounce or so toxic?

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Ok, third times the charm right??? :smiley:

Two gallon bucket, 4 grams of yiest, 4 pounds of sugar. Boiled the sugar water for about 8 minutes, let it cool, then added the yeast. Stir well, then seal the lid on and connect the tubing for the airlock. Its now sitting down in my root chamber outer section. It will stay around 72F in there and be completely dark.

Now its time for LITFA!!

Well, other than an occasional, tiny little, super quick, totally insignificant peak at the airlock to see if there are bubbles… :wink:

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Are you trying to make a wash?

If so here is a basic recipe that a lot of people use for their Turbo 500 don’t see why it wouldn’t work with other methods.

Found it on an aussie distiller forum

" it’s TPW, it’s a VERY forgiving recipe"

http://aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=8&p=37102#p37102

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I had no idea what a wash was until I looked it up. I think thats exactly what Im doing :slight_smile:

It looks like the only difference from what Im doing now is the tomato paste. What purpose does it serve? I read a few of the comments and it seems like its mainly for flavor?

I am not going to drink this stuff. Its purely to make Green Dragon tincture and then distill that down to RSO. Im hoping to recover a good % of the alcohol used in making the Green Dragon.

When this eventually finishes fermenting, the plan is to run it through the still as many times as needed to get it up to 190 proof.

Would the tomato paste help in some way other than flavor?

P.S. I just peaked and no bubbles so far. Temp is staying right around 76F

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It contains toxic compounds that gas off at lower temps than alcohol. It won’t be very much from a small run, I save it and use it as a fuel for my CO2 generator I use in the summer, when my flower room becomes semi sealed, in between my wine fermentations.

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That’s good, I didn’t realize you were looking at it with the lid off a lot. That’s why there is an air lock to stop too much oxygen and bacteria getting in it. I use a white fermentation bucket, it doesn’t need to be covered. When I do beer it finishes the fermentation in a glass carboy, so that needs to be covered.

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yes, the initial output is a great solvent, I use it for bong cleaner.

Cheers
G

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Good to know! Thanks guys! Glad I asked :slight_smile:

So, I have checked the airlock and there is still no active bubbling after about 12 hours. How much bubbling should there be? I watched for at least a full minute and no bubbles?

Temp in the space is around 71F and the bucket reads 72F

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OK you are obviously patience deficient lol, probably 48-72 hours before I see activity in my airlock but that will depend on the amount of free space in your bucket to fill with CO2 before it pressurizes the bucket. Just forget about it for a couple of days if you can lol, it will start.

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LOL You know me too well!!! Practicing LITFA is almost as hard for me as quitting smoking was! :smiley:
Ok, I will wait…

…are we there yet??? :smiley:

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More Weed!!!

+20 char :grin:

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According to the forum “The paste is a yeast nutrient”

Nothing to do with taste. This is used for a great neutral finish.

I was looking into a still about a year ago purely for GD also thats how I came across that thread. I would take the time to read through it as it seems to me its the gold standard for a very good base product.

In fact you’ve piqued my interest in doing this again. 190 proof is extremely expensive where I am I would get my money back pretty quickly with a still :+1:

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Well, @Shadey has shamed me into waiting at least a few more hours, so the tomato trial will have to want a bit :wink:

On the other hand, Im wondering if I just have old 1/2 dead yeast at this point. Tons of tutorials out there that just use plane sugar as the food with no other additives. Now thats mostly for making bio-fuel, but fermentation is fermentation I would think.

Anyway, I dont want @Shadey spanking me again, so Im gonna be a good boy and LITFA some more… :wink:

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Depends how clean you want the alcohol. If the yeast aren’t happy they produce more ‘off products’ during the ferment. The fuel guys don’t care, the moonshine guys do.

Cheers
G

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Ah ha! That make sense. I will be distilling the Green Dragon down to RSO, but I still probably dont want other nasty crap in there.

Ok, so I just realized there is another brewing term I dont understand and probably should. Actually two of them.

I keep seeing the term “pitching” yeast. I assumed that just meant pitching/tossing the yeast in the container and be done with it. Thats how the fuel guys do it. I just dumped it in the container and did a quick stir,

From quick Google it looks like that can mean a whole range of things. Most of them involve careful re-hydrating and gentle stirring until it makes a head, then mix it into the sugar mixture.

What do you guys do? Should I be doing the more involved “pitching”?

The next thing in that tomato thread is they talk about “cuts”. I cant find any definition of cuts that has to do with brewing?

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You can get away with tossing the yeast in dry, I admit to doing that to cheap beer kits. An expensive win kit OTH I add the yeast to warmed up distilled water and add a pinch of sugar. Let it sit 20 min and it will be showing so signs of life then add to the must or wort (more terms :wink:)

Cuts are a whole nother can of worms.
During the fermentation process the yeast eat the sugars and make mostly ethanol. But there are other compounds formed too, just them congeners
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congener_(beverages)

Basically the output of a still changes as it runs. Initially you get ethanol along with the lighter congeners then ethanol then later ethanol with the heavier products.
Some of those products add to the flavour of whiskey etc.
so the first off the still is referred feints, then fores then hearts then tails.
Feints are a great solvent, you won’t want to drink that as it smells of acetone.
I collect the fores for tincture, it has a bit of a ‘twang’ to it but it adds an interesting flavour to the THC chocolates we make. The hearts go great with OJ (what I’m drinking right now)
The early tails can be used for tincture. I just sample the output and make my cuts based on taste.

Sorry this is long but you are right about all of the new terms in this hobby. I have to build up to a simple answer… :sleeping:

Cheers
G

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OH MY GOD! You just made me realize I have started a new hobby! I didnt want a new full time job just learning 10,000 new strange terms, acronyms, abbreviations, and weird, twisted meanings for everyday words!!! LOL :wink:

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There is lots more, spend a little time checking out still design sometime.
barrel aging, flavour profiles of different woods… it goes on and on.

Cheers
G

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Shhhhhhhh! Dont anyone tell @Shadey, but I couldnt take it any more. My palms were sweaty, my fingers were itching, my eyes wouldnt focus and I needed chocolate really really bad :wink:

Thats only partly true. Well, maybe more than partly :smiley:

I have been doing more reading about pitching yeast, and ran across several references to re-hydrating dry yeast before pitching it. I had already been wondering if my yeast was dead, so I decided to try re-hydrating some per a couple of videos I found.

Basically, you take a small amount of almost hot, sterile tap water with a pinch of sugar in it. Then add the yeast and wait a while. I found suggestions of anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. Then stir gently and wait another 15 minutes. Then stir one more time and add to the wort.

So I tried that but didnt bother with the sterile part, and it worked great! I got a really nice foamy top in no time at all, and it smelled like fresh bread and beer :slight_smile: So my yeast is good.

That was when my LITFA failed me. It had been about 27 hours and 3 minutes since I started the bucket and still no bubbles, so I broke down and opened the bucket. Zero foam, zero bubbles. It looked dead.

So I figured what the heck and dumped my re-hydrated yeast in and closed it back up.

Within 30 minutes I had bubbles!! WooHoo!!!

Its now been almost 5 hours and the bubbles are going strong. About every 3 to 5 seconds there is a nice big blurp of bubbles showing up in the airlock.

From one site, I read that in some cases if you have a heavy sugar load in the wort, the yeast can have a hard time getting started. It seems like in the early growing stages yeast likes less sugar and more water, but I didnt try to follow the explanation beyond that. Something about osmosis, cell walls and blah, blah, blah etc :smiley: Some sort of biology crap which I dont do. Biology is like botany - neither one is a real science :smiley: :smiley:

Anyway, it seems to be off to a good start now - finally! I just hope it keeps it up.

Now I need to find out what the next step is. Do I filter this stuff before dumping it into the still or just put it in as is? I assume at least a rough filtering would be a good idea, but I dont have a clue how fine it needs to be. Coffee filter, cheese cloth, simple kitchen strainer, or?

Now I also need to finalize the details of the still. Im ‘still’ working on that part :wink:

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