I’m definitely running both. Need a comparison. Would love to have it tested (like cannabis) to test for terps, heavy metals, pesticides, etc.
Wonder if any other breweries are doing that. Would definitely set us apart.
We distilled eons ago the old school way making rye and corn shine. And it was a bit of a learning curve but got pretty good at it. Now, wanna take it to a whole new level. Even down to my mash ins and fermentation. Skip 20/30 year old barrel aging and mellowing using UV degradation to break down the polymers in the woods.
Yah, you’d need a real cold condenser if you wanna stay below 40c or something (that’s probably where you’re gonna start to get some degredation of aromatics.
I was gonna build a vacuum still for some pisco. I think grain mashes aren’t going to have a ton of delicates compared to something fruit based.
Being an aluminum keg, I’d like to put a stir bar at the bottom but can’t seem to find a strong enough magnetic stirrer. I want to put the kegs on a stand (whatever height required) and have the stirrers under the boiler and thump keg.
I looked at overhead stirrers but won’t be feasible to do (copper coils and all in the tanks).
I made a batch of 130 proof Vodka using corn sugar and a EtOH Pro vacuum still to distill off the ethanol. I sampled it for taste, but subsequently redistilled it five more times and added mol sieve to turn it into 190 proof for cannabis alchemy, which was the purpose of the experiment…
Us’ns sampling for taste thought the 130 proof was very nice in small nips for taste, though a little concentrated for sipping. At around -20" Hg, it was cooked off at around 52 C.
When I tested the Extract Craft EtOH Pro and the MedXtract Essential vacuum stills, I made brandy with both of them and thought they were both delightful. One was from a Pinot Noir and the other a Pinot Grigio.
I also made some 130 proof lightning from 5% beer, but a lot of work and nothing special.
I used straight powdered corn sugar, which is dextrose (glucose), so had zip for heads. I couldn’t smell or taste methanol or ethyl acetate in the heads and when I flame tested it at 140 proof, the flame was clear with no yellow at the base.
It is fruticose and pectin that produce the methanol and granulated sugar is about half fruticose. Traditionally the first two ounces of the heads are pitched to get rid of the methanol.
If you’re going to make whiskey, you will ostensibly be running deeper into the bottoms than I did for flavor, so are likely to pick up more fusil oils.
I’m making some rum right now! Actually just started the fermentation today. Took a while to find a adequate barrel for aging (needed about a 10 gal) but got that and am ready to rumble!
Going to be doing my distillation on my rotovap and see how that goes. I’ll probably end up making a more conventional still but for this first batch I’m just using what I have on hand.
Should be interesting to say the least. Luckily I have the help of a friend who works in the islands at a rum distillery. Makes me feel much better about tackling this project.
Now I can’t wait to take my own rum out on my sailboat with me. Talk about peak pirate form!!
I really didn’t have a similar run in my pot still to compare it with, but the yield was good. What I noticed is that with the temperature set just above ethanols boiling point under vacuum, that the boiling dropped off close to zip at the end.
Each time I distilled it (5 total), when the alcohol was mostly gone, the boiling dropped off close to zip and I just poured off the mostly water that remained behind. You can sniff the pot when you open it and not get an alcohol vapor hit.
I distilled it one more time after drying with mol sieve and stopped short and poured off some to get rid of the mol sieve sludge. The pot was pungent to sniff that time, as it was 190 proof.
Now to try using filter plates in the column and use copper scrubbies and glass beads to see what a first pass with a thumper will pull.
Especially after a run and charging my thumper with first pass and whatever botanicals and flavors we try.
Never used a thumper keg and not sure how tall a packed column it takes under vacuum to reach the azeotropic balance at around 95% , but I have a small compound refluxing still that I think I will run some tests on, using my vacuum cooking test sled. I can also add another column section and pack it with stainless scrubbers to get some more height.
I built the test sled to see if cooking sauces and stocks at 160F would retain more more of the delicate individual flavors. Basically a modified pressure cooker sitting on a hot plate with a thermocouple in the pot and the hotplate controlled by a PID.
It uses a Gast DAA-P501-GB double diaphragm vacuum pump, which should still work if I pull it through a condenser and double trap first.
I’ve got a Derale 13700 remote fluid cooler on order to remove water vapor before dumping the pump exhaust into the room . It is a 16 pass copper tube with aluminum fins and a 650 cfm fan, so would ostensibly also work on alcohol as well.
I also am working on getting a 10" coil wound for an ice bath condenser, to use for alcohol recovery, that for sure should work with the refluxing still.
Got anyone that can coil copper tubing for me to drop in my boiler keg? Has to be 5” in diameter to be able to pullout with the head for cleaning the keg? I’m horrible at that stuff. Wanting to use my recirculating heater to heat the wash.
Also looking at adding a stir bar to the boiler and especially the thumper. Theoretically, it should help with pulling off the the flavonoids and other useful compounds I’m looking to pull from what I add to the thumper.
Also, thumpers I’ve used in the pass has given me about a 30% higher potency than without using one. Charge it with more mash was and anything you want carried over and it really makes the “first pass” very noticeable in flavor but, with a higher ABV.
With using the vac, I have another keg with a custom tri-cow coming that has isolation valves to be able to collect fractions to test before it drops in the 3rd keg in my hearts fraction.
The tall dry ice trap will mount to a flat-head with dual 2” riser tri-clamps. It’ll mount on one, then I’m going to run a second dry ice trap on the other hooked to a KF25 bellow hose to the pump (Edwards 30 with isolation valve). The system is also fitted with a screw bleaker valve to Avalon the ability to draw in air while the baca running to dial in the microns. All being monitored by a digivac. Have a thermo probe as well to monitor the wash while in flux with dual vape head thermometers on both risers from both kegs.
