Alcohol
POT stills enable you to produce a product that will have some of the charateristics (flavours) of the mash eg. Schnapps and Whisky etc.
REFLUX or FRACTIONATING stills are what we BORROW to make neutral tasteless alcohol that we flavour later.
What we did...
Cleansed our 25l fermenter
Added 8kg of the cheapest sugar we could buy
Dissolved the sugar by adding boiling water until fully dissolved
Added tap water to make up a total of 20l
The adding of the yeast/nutrient is not as critical as beer/wine brewing/making BUT we did ensure that the 'wash' temp. was below 30C
The initial specific gravity (SG) was around 1.06 - 1.07
Ferment the wash at +25oC -30oC until airlock stops bubbling- gotta love the bubble both for sound and smell.
Let settle for a day, then syphon carefully into the still
We plugged in the still and started heating...
Start the cooling water- we use the rainwater water tank water and pumped it back into the tank. Gotta love our council for subsidising our still!
The heated water will be cooled by the condensor once the temp. gets to about 50-60oC, then once it has started distilling; discard the first 50 mL's, this may contain some methanol, we would LOVE to try this in the car!
Collect the distillate
Kept any left overs (wash) & distillate which smells (yucky) to be added to the next wash. Never waste a drop, it can be cleaned up then.
The 'neutral spirit' is diluted down to 30-50 % purity.
Filter through activated charcol/carbon to help clean up any flavours or colours still present.
Dilute it down to drinking strength (20-40%) It's WAY too strong even after just one distillation.
Then the spirit is aged and flavoured using either commercial essences, oak chips, fruits, botanicals etc..
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