First wash being planned, what would you suggest.

JettFuel

I have ordered parts and am starting to tig up my boiler and thought I should start thinking of what the first wash would be. What would you r suggestion be for a noob that has zero experience?

FullySilenced

sugar wash ... a birdwatchers maybe

JettFuel

@fullysilenced that is what I was thinking of.

FullySilenced

first run is a junkahol run anyway just to clean the system.. so do something fast and cheap...

Sadi

Like FS said, a sugar wash is simple and there are many recipes.

I have tried most of the recipes and I found that wheat germ and raisins are nutrients that yeasts likes a lot. Being generous in feeding the yeasts makes things easier. Put some sugar in that mix and yeasts does the work to produce alcohol without any problems mostly. As documented before most problems are due to less nutrients, low PH (high acidity), not enough yeast and low temperature, probably in that order.

I wish you a very good start. :)

Cheers

punkin

UjSM is a very good recipe and produces a great drink if there are bourbon and coke drinkers in the house.

Icefever

Now I'm a noobie....I've done the basic sugar wash for a while...then I came across the lentil wash and all I can say is wow....it comes out brilliant...as I said I'm a noobie.. ^:)^

JettFuel

Punkin now your talking!!

FullySilenced

You were talking first run... I wouldn't make UJ to throw it away...

have fun and happy stillin

FS

punkin

1. The first UJSM run is not as good as subsequent runs as there is no backset to get the sourness.
2. UJSM is nothing more than a sugar wash with some grains for flavour and nutrient.
3. A first run is not necessarily a cleaning run.
4. Even if it is a cleaning run, surely that cleaning is accomplished in the first litre or so.
5. The first litre is heads anyway.
6. If you do make ethanol as a cleaning run, don't throw it away. Keep it for when you next make modifications and feel the need to do another alcohol cleaning run and water it back down then.

JettFuel

Thanx for the input Punkin I would not have thought of keeping the wash for when I do a Phase 2 of design!

punkin

Happy to help.

FullySilenced

Punkin coined the term: Junkahol its his he owns it... :))

punkin

Strange thing to say.

FullySilenced

nothing negative with my last post .. punkin

CothermanDistilling

I see 'great white north', so I think you may find a brewery, winery, home winemaker, or a Brew On Premise and see if they have anything they are going to dump that they would let you 'recycle'... heck, back when i just had a 2" PDA-1, I got the drain tray runoff form a local craft beer bar, a full Sankey keg in a weekend.... it was OK for junkahol and nuetral practice...

grim

What, no listerine? Clip some coupons, and grab a case. Isn't it like 20-30%?

Probably makes a drink that's somewhere in between Altoids and Chernobyl.

(This is a joke)

FullySilenced

Used to have a guy here that drank listerine... drunk as a skunk but minty breath... LOL

CothermanDistilling

three days ago: Woman Charged with DWI After Getting Drunk on Vanilla Extract

AceNZ

Some brands of hand sanitizer in NZ are made with ethanol (and taxed accordingly). Some hospitals had to switch it out due to problems with patients getting drunk on the stuff.

Unsensibel

@AceNZ you don't need to even drink it! I had to do a 3 month internship once in the OR & you need to get sterile before. That's achieved by scrubbing hands for 5 minutes followed by another 5 minutes of generous alcohol hand sanitizing. Got pretty woozy the first time...

Mickiboi

Just put down my first TPW. Sugar and TP in the drum, I haven't pitched the yeast yet, just did a pH check and its 4.4, is this to low? I didn't want too high an alcohol content for my first run so I used 6kg of sugar and 400grams TP in 40ltrs of water. I have 2 yeasts to use, EC1118 and some Lowans Premium Bakers yeast which I have read on other forums is OK for low alcohol washes.

Kapea

4.4 pH is right where you want it to be, very close to ideal. Start to worry if it wanders down into the low 3 range. Less than 3 and the yeast will start to go dormant.

Mickiboi

@Kapea Thanks mate. I will add the yeast.

Mickiboi

Bubbling away like Mt Vesuvius. I will check the pH everyday and keep a record of what happens. If it does go up what do I need to buy to drop the pH?

grim

If you routinely have issues with pH falling too low, you need to check your source water alkalinity, and perhaps raise it before you mash. If you have issues with pH staying too high, check the pH of your water and you might find you need to bring it down a bit with an acid before mashing.

In a pinch, baking soda (mixed with water) will raise the pH, and lemon juice will drop it. But they will not make a big impact, unless in larger volumes. Easier is to use small volumes of food grade sodium hydroxide to raise the pH, or a food grade acid like citric or lactic to drop it.

I would not recommend trying to drop the pH of a mash once it has started fermenting. You are probably jumping the gun if you try to do it, and inevitably you'll be facing a pH that is too low at the end of the ferment, and be worrying about going the other way.

However, there are situations where you want to raise the pH of a mash after it has started fermenting, for the reasons that @Kapea mentioned. Infected mashes are notorious for pushing the pH lower than what you would see with yeast alone. We're talking last-resort save-the-mash actions here. This isn't something you should be fiddling with every day.

If you find yourself struggling with pH, go back to the source water, it's nearly always the problem.

I routinely need to add additional buffer to my mash water, I use calcium carbonate (chalk), as well as use lactic acid to take the pH down prior to starting the mashing process.

Mickiboi

@grim thank you. I thought about sodium hydroxide as I can get pharmaceutical grade for free. I think I better do more measuring as I do the mash. Water, water and sugar, water, sugar and TP. From there I can work out from my finishing pH what my starting water should be. Am I after a finishing pH of 5.0?

Kapea

I think you are over-thinking it.

If the pH gets down below 3.5 add a small bit of NaOH. How much depends on the concentration of your NaOH solution. I use 8N KOH (potassium hydroxide) because I have it on hand for titrating water hardness. It is essentially the same as NaOH. 15mL - 20mL of 8N KOH in 25L of WPOSW will raise the pH from 3.5 to around 4.2. If you are mixing your NaOH solution yourself, be very careful. It is an extremely exothermic reaction. If it spatters into your eyes the damage done is significant and irreversible. Wear proper PPE!

I use rainwater for my ferments. It is basically sun-distilled water. No harness, TDS or buffering in rainwater. Rainwater has a natural pH of around 5.5 due to dissolved carbon dioxide from the air. But its acidity is way low due to no buffering. I like to joke that all you have to do is whisper "base" over a bucket of rainwater and the pH jumps from 5.5 to 8.5.

Mickiboi

Checked pH and it's 3.3 but still bubbling away quite rapidly. Should I do anything? When we are fermenting wine we aim for 3.23, 99% of the time it ends up there all by itself, we add nothing. Seems like my wash is doing the same thing.

Kapea

If it starts to slow down before reaching a specific gravity of less than 1.000 raise the pH with some NaOH.
3.3 is getting towards the low end, but it sounds like your yeast are still pretty happy.

fadge

I bought a digital ph meter to check washes, but the funny thing is I've used it once and never bothered again. In my experience we are just getting a product to distill, not like wine that is an end product and does in fact need good control, same as beer.

Some washes are ready to run after a week with the "right" temps and all, others take longer its just the way it is.

I make up tpw on a regular basis, most times I'm using hot back set to invert the sugar for the next batch rather than refill the boiler with fresh water or use another water heating urn. I just use the minimum to do the job then water from the tap to top it up, add the paste, look at the temp strip, anywhere between 20c-35c and I chuck in the bakers yeast, it takes off and works fine. Do not add too much sugar is the advice I will add, sometimes less is better, getting to greedy will slow the process down. I could just be lucky with my method and my water, but I reckon we can sometimes over-think or worry about minor issues like ph for nothing.

I do check SG most times prior to running and taste the wash as well, tastes like cheap wine then its ok, too sweet and its not ready. Normally just by looking at the wash and how it has cleared or settled is a good benchmark, place your ear against the fermenter to hear the bubbling hiss is another indicator, at times some air locks are not sealed or appear not to be working.

That's just my thoughts and I don't knock anyone that checks and adjusts washes or uses other methods.

fadge