Alcohol

[Mumbles]

Well, come April 12th or so I may try it out. I have some at home from when I attempted carbamide peroxide I believe. Knox brand. My fake birthday is on April 14th, and I'd like to have it ready for then. Thanks for the tip.

[asilentbob]

1.5g would take much longer. 15g of yeast is sufficient for 1-5gallons of whatever. I have used that kind of yeast before, its one of the original "killer" strains that are able to ferment pretty high, i think up to 18% if your careful. It keeps nice estery notes well and goes pretty fast.

 

I have used gelatin once or twice, and yeah it works pretty great. Last clarifier i used was bentonite and the sediment was a little too fluffy.

 

I ended up getting around 30g of stevia extract powder while i was out getting bottles and stuff. Its unfermentable. The bottle says that it contains around 905 servings. It was about $12 and 40mg or so in tea is sweet enough for me. I'm thinking for a test batch ill use it to make soda by adding it too whatever flavored water, then adding the ammount of normal sugar needed for priming and a little bit of yeast. It should be pretty neato. Then later ill try it in wine/mead/ale.

[hst45]

Mumbles, when you bottle your mead, take a small slice of fresh ginger root and place it in a bottle or two. The ginger adds an interesting bite. It's a good idea to "nuke" said slice in the microwave for about 30 seconds to kill any fellow-travelers before adding it.

 

Enjoy.

[Mumbles]

The ginger might be worth it to try in a small bottle of it. The batch that's going right now has oranges, a cinnamon stick, and two cloves. I think it's going to be quite fragrant as is. Might be worth it on the 2nd batch.

 

I think I am just going to start with 15g of yeast. It's roughly a dollar a 5g packet, so not a big financial investment. Worst case scenario, the excess dies when the alc % gets up there. The packet says 15% I believe, but 18% isn't that out of this world.

[FrankRizzo]

Not (2) whole cloves, right?

[Mumbles]

Oh no, 2 mini cloves. I think the container said ~3 minicloves to a full clove. 2 full sized cloves would be so strong. I remember my friends giving me a few clove cigarettes, very numbing as they were. A bit too tasty for my preference. Smoking isn't on my high list of things to start.

[FrankRizzo]

LOL..oh, good I added (2) whole cloves to a 5gal batch of beer a while back and was absolutely blown-over by the flavor. I ended-up letting it age in the keg for ~6 months before it had mellowed enough to be drinkable.

 

Clove cigarettes are indeed tasty. My buddy and I used to smoke one every once in a while back in HS. I don't smoke ciggys, but I do enjoy a good cigar with a glass of Chivas.

[asilentbob]

I too smoked my first clove cigarette a little while back and it had a nice sweetness to it at first, but then it just numbed my tounge a little too much for my taste. Plus i don't really smoke, so i was just trying it out.

 

Raisins are also used somewhat in the bottle... or maybe im thinking that thats in homemade soda...

 

I need to go ahead and start my blueberry mead pretty soon here...

 

I think that coopers ale yeast comes in 5g packets frequently, thats what my mom and I were using in our homemade rootbeer and citrusy thing.

 

Its 2:52am here... im off to bed.

 

Oh and i had some can draught guinness today, it wasn't as bitter as i had thought it would be...

[Mumbles]

I am racking the first batch of mead as we speak. I ended the fermentation about 2 weeks early, but it stopped bubbling anyway. It tastes pretty good. It's much less sweet than I had imagined. It's still a bit cloudy, but I'm adding some stabilizer and sterilizer to kill the yeast and hopefully clear it up pretty fast. I'm having a party I might hand out samples of this weekend, maybe a liter of the ~3-4L. The rest I'm going to let sit and fully clear and see about getting this "golden nectar" I hear about. I'll use gelatin after the weekend.

[maximusg]

Now that im at Uni, getti'n my 'still on is pretty much impossible, but a housemate of mine and I have gotten into home brewing Beer. It seems like a lot of effort for not much alcohol, but its working well.

 

We let the yeast, sugar and brew mix (Coopers Dry Lager) ferment for seven days, after it stopped bubbling we bottled it, about 26L. it was cloudy as hell and didnt taste so nice at that time, but its what i expected.

 

2 weeks after bottling it was clear and bubbly, thanks to the carbonation tablets we added when bottling (which is pretty much just a sugar tablet), It tastes damn fine for something so cheap.

 

We began brewing a Ginger Beer mix today... it smells mighty fine.

[asilentbob]

Brewed a one gallon blueberry melomel last week. 2lbs of blueberries and 2lbs of honey. Its going pretty good. It over flowed into the airlock once and i had to clean it out. Too much blueberry pulp... its just floating on the liquid. In the future ill either steep the blueberries in sulfited water for a good long time with pectic enzyme or use some sort of weighed down grain bag... if it will fit.

 

Bottled around 3/4ths of a gallon of hard cider into 12 oz beer bottles and used some kind of carbonation tablets on them. 2 low carbonation ones, 4 medium carbonation ones, and 2 high carbonation ones. Then capped them. My mom helped throughout. I love my mom.

 

Actually, its been a week since we bottled it, and in a few hours im going to move them to the fridge and give them a week or so before popping one open and testing it.

 

I tasted some of the hard cider that i had left uncarbonated in the fridge for a month or so and it was a bit different. Not a unplesant scent when opened, and at first taste i couldn't even tell that it was cider. It was kinda weird. Not bad weird. Just weird.

 

I bought yet another gallon of heat pasturized apple cider from the grocery store last week and added some of it to the 1/4 of a gallon of hard cider that was left in the fermenter. So i have used the same yeast 3 times previously. The cake on the bottom is getting thick.

 

I'm thinking about taking the cake out after this next gallon is done fermenting and killing off all the yeast in it through boiling. Then possibly using it as yeast nutrient in future batches or using it as a source of B-complex vitamins... just like the dead brewers yeast you can buy at grocery stores. Supposed to help the metabolites of alcohol be dealt with faster, hence not so bad of a hangover. Or something like that.

 

I have a gallon of pyment from 2lbs of honey and 1 can of welches SO2 preserved grape juice concentrate... its been done fermenting for a while... ready to bottle... I'm running really low on wine bottles though... I'm thinking that i might bottle and carbonate a bit in the 12oz beer bottles, then go to my uncles and use his wine bottles and corker to save the rest. He actually has a wine fridge too or something like that, so ill probably leave some with him.

 

My mom needs to finish re-finishing this cabinet, then i should be able to use it to store wines in, out of the light. Right now my wines are just in the pantry hidden under a black trash bag lol.

 

So yeah a bit of stuff... My mom and I are going to brew some kind of beer sometime soon too, but we haven't really decided on the style... it will be an ale with pretty low hoppyness.

[Mumbles]

Oh man, the sterilizer and stabilizer I added last night made a world of difference. It was a little weird tasting last night, but still good. Today the odd flavor has faded and it tastes much sweeter now. It is delicious. Not really cleared too much, a bit more sediment has fallen out though. Hopefully it should be fully cleared in a week.

[evilgecko]

A recently new product on the NZ market is a yeast which can brew up to 23%. Its called Power23 and is one of the Turbo Yeasts by the company StillSpirits.

 

Proberly not suitable for mead, beer or cider though because of it has additives added which help the yeast.

[asilentbob]

Thats pretty interesting... there is a US "beer" thats really high concentrion...

 

I think its "Utopias" and is around 35-40%

 

I wonder how long before that yeast strain gets out... now that would be cool... probably way to much attention craving for proper fermentation under homebrewer attention, but damn would that be cool if you could get consistenly really high concentrations.

 

I hope they get that 23% over here sometime soon.

[Mumbles]

Utopias is 24-25% abv. I read somewhere how they did it. I think it was a mixture of very strong yeasts. I also think they made it themselves just by positive selection. The whatever doesn't kill it makes it stronger type of thing.

[_Po_]

I used the Power23 stuff. Fairly common in Australia even though it's illegal to distill spirits without licence. I think it was 23% with dextrose or 18% with plain sugar. We used sugar because a 10kg bag was cheaper than 8kg of dextrose. Don't quote me on any of these numbers, it's been a while. I've still got about 10L of the wash left for distillation. I threw out most things and dismantled others while I was in trouble recently, so I might not ever get back to it and just tip it out. All up I think the 25L of 18% was around the $30 mark. Once again though, I can't remember exactly.

 

Edit: Hahaha, back a page is all the information. It was 24% with dextrose and 20.5% with sugar.

 

Edit again: I got the high-yeild yeast from eBay.

[markx]

Pushing a mash beyond 12% alcohol content has little practical use for distilling. The thinner the wort the cleaner and quicker the fermentation. Rum and tequila are often distilled from mashes containing only 3-5% alcohol. Past the 12% limit you stress the yeasts and they produce mostly congeners instead of ethanol. Getting rid of these nasties requires multiple distillation runs even with a high end reflux system. So you just spend twice as much time and effort on purifying your product not to mention that you could complete two regular fermentations during the time you wait for your superyeast to push it past 20%.

[evilgecko]

Markx that is very interesting. I have been trying to make good spirits for years and always thought my downfall was the refluxing and filtering.

 

But the lowest % wash I've ever used is 18% and quoted by StillSpirits is the cleanest wash you could ever produce. This still does not produce very nice rum and the alcohol can only really be used in liquers which hide the off-flavours.

 

After reading that I'm keen to go back to basics and try the "authentic" route. What would you recommend fermenting?

[asilentbob]

I thought you were supposed to clarify, siphon off, give it some time for any extra crap to fall out of soln. Siphon off, distill, dilute and run through a carbon snake, then distill again for very little off flavors and such.

[markx]

Evilgecko, an 18% wash is definately not the cleanest one that can be produced. A clean wash is produced in dilute environment where the yeast is not stressed by the shortage of nutrients and the overabundance of alcohol. All the special nutrients and yeast fertilizers coupled with bad-ass strains may produce a heavier wash, but it mostly contains crap that has to be removed afterwards. And very often it can't be removed by distillation at all. In this case a carbon filter is the solution.

 

My suggestion, when aiming for neutral spirits, would be to drop all the turbo yeasts, fertilzers and high yield recipes. Go with the all natural light sugar wash and regular bakers yeast. It's simple, quick and forgiving. My recipe for 30L neutral quality sugar wash is as follows:

 

take a clean sanitized fermenter and add:

 

4.5-5kg sugar

 

~250-500g bakers yeast (dissolve in sugar water and add as the last component) the amount is not critical, but more yeast equals a faster fermentation with shorter startup time.

 

250ml preservative free tomato paste (optional)

 

top up to 30L mark with warm water (~35C)

 

Attach an air lock and let 'er rip. Fermentation is very fast and vigorous thanks to the large amount of yeast. It also reduces the risk of infections as the yeasts get the upper hand very quickly. In average the wash has depleted itself in 5 days and is ready for distillation. The ABV remains in the safe region around 11-12%. I have found no significant need to completely remove the yeast from the wash before distillation. Just let the heavier stuff sink to the bottom, decant the rest to the boiler and run.

 

I have a 1.8m reflux column and 2 runs with properly made cuts through it produces a very nice 95% ABV neutral alcohol that needs no carbon filtering or aftertreatment of any kind. Of course if you have a shorter column or a pot still type of sytem you may have to conduct more than 2 runs to get the desired neutral quality spirit.

[evilgecko]

Woah a 1.8m reflux still...top class. What type of head does your reflux still have. Is it a nixon stone (condenser is offset and higher than the column) or the other type (pipes run through the sides of the column to regulate the temperature). I brought a essentia reflux still for NZ$500 (including a carbon filtering system) and its refluxing section is about 150mm high and filled with a copper scrubber.

 

I'm surprised you get good quality product from bakers yeast! Baker's yeast has been known to produce many other quirky higher alcoholes and phenols and esters to.

 

I was wondering if instead of using refined sugar using fruits and sorts to ferment. The blue agave is used to produce tequila and the subtle flavours come from the aromas in the agave. Rum I think is produced from molasses of sugar cane, so that is not really different from refined sugar. But most of the flavour comes from aging it in oak barrels.

[markx]

There are pictures of my setup on the current thread a few pages back (5th page I believe). It's an inline design with a transparent section below the head. I basically built and designed it from scratch so it's kind of none of the designs avalable on the net these days.

 

Bakers yeast and bakers yeast have a huge diffrence really Best results are obtained with fresh unfrozen yeast. Fresh frozen yeast is second best. But it all depends on how old the batch is. The older the yeast the lower the purity of the resulting wash. Dryed bakers yeast produces a terrible abomination and should be avoided when possible. Of course, when available, one could use a wine or champagne strand instead of bakers yeast. For example EC-1118 is a highly favored strand amongst hobby distillers. Unfortunately it's not available in my neck o' the woods.

 

Fruits and grains are introduced into the wash when aiming for flavoured products: rum, brandy, tequila or calvados. And they work great, but when neutral is your goal then nothing beats the plain old sugar wash. The main idea is: the less crap you put into your fermeter the less of it remains there to get rid of after the fermentation. So it rewards to keep things simple with neutral spirits.

[Draco_Aster]

Turns out my still produces 93-95ish percent flavourless odorles ethanol. I'll get some pics up soon and maybe a .dwg file if anyone wants one (PM me and ill get round to it).

[Mumbles]

So just an overall meading experience before I get onto other things. The first batch was amazing, though may have been a bit under fermented. It seemed to still be quite sweet. The second batch turned out much more like a wine. It is quite clear, but has a rather aweful odor to it. It's been in the primary fermentor for going on 6 months. I think some air got in, and made some vinegar and nasties. I may try to wash it with a little activated carbon to get out some of the shitty flavor.

 

Anyway, on to beer. As I mentioned somewhere else I am thinking about giving my hand at some beer brewing. There happens to be a brew shop just up the street. I am thinking about starting out with a kit or two, before giving anything serious a try. It seems like there is some serious equiptment available, but perhaps not always neccesary, or at least improviseable. I am thinking a hefeweizen will be the starting beer. Updates will be given as available.

[asilentbob]

Same on the kit note... id like to do partial mash where i have some malted grains in there that arn't from a kit... like perhaps home malted amaranth or whatever... but havn't been able to find a really cheap grain mill until recently... saw one online for around $60.

 

I'll probably start with some sort of Bock or Texas Bock kit made by my local brew supply... then probably make something that is high in alcohol and really shines after a few years yet is still made from malted grains... the name escapes me...

 

I'm big on the whole make a bunch of things that take along time to mature early on... and make a bunch of things that mature fast like hard cider ... thing.