The Big Dunder Pit Thread

FloridaCracker

I once tried the feed stuff with propionic acid and I couldn't get it off the ground. My yeast just wouldn't play ball with it. I know some have had success but early on in my rum attempts I fell flat on my face. Since I started using fancy molly or the stuff I use now I have had no problems.

I have never tried to reuse yeast for the reasons that Grim brought up. One bacterial soup per ferment is my motto. Another thing of note, I add the live dunder after the ferment slows considerably. Once I add it the ferment doesn't last much longer for whatever reason.

punkin

Boiling the wash? No of course not.

jacksonbrown

Not sure what you mean by that. I'm talking about the wash, not the wort i.e. pre ferment.
I could never be bothered but quite a lot of the molasses handling and pretreatment recommendations involve elevated temperatures that would kill off any bugs that come in on the truck.

grim

@FloridaCracker - I'd try to use less of it, augmenting with other molasses (maybe light/high test) or sugar. The existence of propionic acid in the wash is not the problem, it's the level. Remember the Army Corps of Engineers - The solution to pollution is dilution. Start with half the amount and re-evaluate, but really, its plenty easy to stall a ferment or not get it off the ground for other reasons, nutrients, pitch, yeast viability, starting gravity, etc etc.

grim

And I thought this was very interesting - propionate resistant yeast, and the fact that yeast will quickly adapt to propionic acid...

Propionate Resistant Yeast @ DrYeast

So maybe @jacksonbrown is onto something here, since the harvested yeast would have already adapted.

Perhaps something like this is the rationale behind Arroyo's later additions of dunder.

FloridaCracker

I always assumed that Arroyo added the live bugs after the yeast were off to the races so that very little could slow them down. I know that during the violent first part of my ferments, it looks like the yeast are unstoppable.

On my next wash I will maybe use 7 gallons instead of 8 and see what happens.

Smaug

Super interesting Grim.

Eucyblues

@FloridaCracker said: Another thing that I have consistently read is that rum needs to be off of oak for at least 6 months and one year is better.

You have me there Cracker- off oak for 6mths to 1 yr- where have you read that??

jacksonbrown

Bottle Shock from dilution?

Smaug

@Eucyblues said: You have me there Cracker- off oak for 6mths to 1 yr- where have you read that??

The Puerto Ricans oak on spent barrels for a year, carbon filter, and then finish on glass for a year.

FloridaCracker

@Eucyblues said: You have me there Cracker- off oak for 6mths to 1 yr- where have you read that??

Probably in some of the 143,378 threads that I have followed over the years. Fuck me if I can point to the exact locations. I know that Punkin himself has stated that rum needs at least a 6 months or a year to really come into its own.

My experience has shown that after coming either off of oak or out of oak, time away from oak benefits the rum greatly. Some of the "oakiness" wears off and more of the molasses flavors shine through. Case in point; I just took a liter out of my barrel to enjoy this weekend because my last generation is about gone. First impressions are that it will be the best that I have ever done, by leaps and bounds. Already has a shitload more depth and character than what I have gotten in the past. But, from past experience, I know that it will become excellent over the next 6 months. The last generation changed dramatically from the first that I drank up until the last.

"Time is your friend with rum", somebody once said.

"Time away from oak will improve your rum", said Florida Cracker.

punkin

Not me mate, although i have said a lot of times that rum seems to need more time on oak than say bourbon does, i've never played around with time off oak. But certainly it takes at least 6 months of oaking for the for the 'bourbon' flavour to settle and the mollasses to start to come back through IMO.

I usually leave a small amount of oak in all the time in spirits, even putting a small stick in at bottling has always been my trademark and how my mates know it's mine.

FloridaCracker

Maybe it was another @punkin I ran into somewhere else. There are dozens of you around....

popcorn

I recall the time off oak for rum from @punkin also, something about it tasting like a bourbon after dumping the barrel. Letting it rest out of the barrel helps it come back to tasting like a rum

popcorn

I bet we just Mis-interpreted what he was saying now that I read his prior statement above I bet that's what I did

punkin

who knows, maybe i misspoke. It's not something i ever remember noticing, but i drink.

Not saying it's not correct either, just that i don't remember observing it or hearing it elsewhere.

FloridaCracker

Maybe I just got it from me and my own observations. Damned if I will ever give anyone credit for my own findings again :))

Maybe its just an aging thing and not so much of an oak thing. I do know that from my experience, rum just off of oak still has a small oak thing going on which isn't a bad thing. Over time it seems to lose that and is replaced with more of the molasses flavor.

My rum trials, which have been documented on this thread, detail my personal search for a rum Holy Grail that I like. Doing the side by side of the stripped/not stripped, live dunder/no live dunder and a few other variations is something that I haven't seen on any other thread. I have read the internet twice and still haven't seen it so hopefully what I have done has and will help others.

BUT, Arroyo I ain't.

I wish some of you rum nuts were closer so that I could get more opinions. For now, it's just me and my friends/family.

grim

Screw top test tubes, a couple of wraps of electrical tape at the cap, and Fedex? Probably a bad idea, I haven't had any coffee yet.

FloridaCracker

Uhhh, I won't be shipping any.......

CothermanDistilling

of course you wont... but if someoen else were to, WLP yeast tubes work pretty good...

jacksonbrown

Just put it in a red wine bottle and seal it.
I'll pay the shipping ;)

FloridaCracker

Test tubes? What kind of cheap bastard do you guys think I am?

If I EVER send any, it will be in the bottle that it belongs. Didn't go to a bunch of trouble with the labels for nothing.

Eucyblues

@FloridaCracker said: If I EVER send any, it will be in the bottle that it belongs. Didn't go to a bunch of trouble with the labels for nothing.

Strewth!! - If that's a selfie taken after drinking- don't send me any !! :)) - On second thoughts I'll shut my eyes while swigging (oops sipping) ...

PS - My finding is 12 months on oak minimum is needed - EXCEPT for the batch I heat treated for 6 days in July last year - that accelerated the process so much that I happily started drinking it after a week or so of settling down - then it just kept improving - now it's disappearing alarmingly - great @ 63% on the rocks - I recommend trying this process - the thread is here.

PSPS - rum involved was a combination of 2 runs with different methods - the first involved a 2 step process trying to generate some bacterial action (ingredients as for the second batch below)

The second was a simpler one step wash with the following recipe:

• 6L refinery molasses
• 6L old dunder (not heated-festy bits skimmed off (Punkin please note- maybe you should dip your festy little finger in my dunder - it'll probably fix it ))
• 5Tbsp Bicarb
• Hot water to 25L
• 1 Tbsp DAP
• 3 banana skins
• Brix 23
• EDV493 yeast (hydrated)
• Aquarium heater used to keep temp @ 32-33 deg C
• Day 2 - 3kg raw sugar and water to 42L
• Day 4 - banana skins removed

Both batches stripped resulting in a combined 24L @ 33% approx (dash with no plates- no water to deph)

A TWIST - instead of watering down to 30 or so - I fresh dundered down to end up with 30L @ 26.5%

Spirit run - 3 plates - added 1L rum heads and 0.45L tails (all I had)

Ended up with:

• Fores 400mls tossed
• Heads 1L@86%
• Hearts 6L@82% (collected down to 74%)

• Tails 2.8L@43% (collected down to 24%)

  :ar!

Eucyblues

@FloridaCracker said: I wish some of you rum nuts were closer so that I could get more opinions. For now, it's just me and my friends/family.

+1 Cracker - the only people I know who like rum have been warned off it by wives who disapprove of the after-mayhem - (it's well known as an angry drink in Aus)

FloridaCracker

My wife swears that my rum makes me sleepy. She complains that when I drink it I want to go to bed by 9 PM. Of course that is after about 4 hours of drinking it. I haven't ever mixed it with anything since I started making it which is nice because I don't have to take a leak during the night. On the rocks with maybe a drip of simple syrup ala Smaug.

My days of drunken mayhem are behind me. Days of disapproving wife, well...............

Smaug

Bring some. I'll take you to lunch at a super cool place.......

FloridaCracker

Would be hard to beat the place where we had the $million burgers.

I do need to get you a bottle. I understand that without a barcode you can't have it on your sample table but you might have a place on your shelf at home?

Smaug

This other lunch place is mo battuh

Guanabanas- Waterfront Restaurant & bar in Jupiter, Florida

Pseudo

Not exactly dunder pit related per say, but experienced something similar to some of the experiences described above...

1500L (400 gallon) rum wash, fairly low starting gravity (around 1.055, we were experimenting a bit based on same data from a previous ferment), had a starting pH of 5.15. We pitched a few pails of yeast off the bottom of the previous ferment that we cleaned out the day before, added some DAP and let it go.

Fermented down to 1.018 in about 48 hours at 24C, but I noticed it was starting to take on a "sick" smell. About 24 hours after that it was a very pungent cheese smell (possibly vomit? depends what your vomit smells like, right? haha). The gravity also had stopped at 1.014, with a pH of 4.7.

After 4.5 full days, we started running it through our 200L Stilldragon, despite not getting down closer to 1.000. The smell was getting worse, to the point that our landlord showed up and was like "what the f**k?". The clothes I was wearing on the 5th day's runs smelled disgusting when I got home, to the point where I almost just threw them out. On the 6th day the smell started to subside, hmmmm...

It's now day 7, and the last few hundred L of wash smells AMAZING. The cheese smell is gone and it's now taken on an apple-cranberry juice kind of smell. The gravity is still stuck at 1.014, but it smells fantastic. The low wines so far as pretty sweet smelling.

So not exactly sure what happened. I can't imagine it was lacto infection, there was no white film and the pH didn't take a dive. Any thoughts?

grim

The carboxylic acids are all very unpleasant smelling, terrible, awful things.

When I walk in the door, if I so much as touched a vial of butyric acid, 6 hours ago, and just to move it over on the shelf, she knows it immediately.

Propionibacterium in a 2l on the stir plate in my basement workshop pretty much made the entire basement smell like a I was aging stinky cheese down there. Or, probably closer, that I somehow acquired the socks of everyone that just ran the ironman and hung them all up, rank and wet. It's really that bad.

If you spill a single drop of butyric on the floor, you'll know it for a week.

Butyric and Propionic are pretty different. Butyric is undeniable once you know it (pick up a tiny bottle of each on amazon or eBay) though. It's absolutely, undeniably, vomit. Propionic - if you close your eyes, it's aged cheese, parmesan, extra stinky, with overtones of BO.

I've brewed lactic using the White Labs lactobacterium, definitely not vomit or cheese. Closer to sour, milky, maybe little yogurty.

The esters they all create though, are amazing. It's kind of like mixing Sodium and Chloride - sodium a dangerous metal, and chloride a poisonous gas - but together you get tasty table salt.

Apple is usually acetaldehyde - but there are a couple of other esters that smell like apple (ethyl caproate, etc). The cranberry could be a bit of the acidic odor coming through on top of fruity. But, I believe benzaldehyde (almond/cherry) is part of the aroma of cranberry, and is a fermentation byproduct. Are you getting any almond in the distillate? That would be really interesting.

Very cool, I hope you can replicate. You might want to harvest the yeast and bacteria again, and break it down into smaller samples and freeze it in a glycerine mix.

You fermenting open top?