"Ahhhhh a clue.........you said when you added water??? Is it sink water? You may need to buy water if thats the prob - try useing differnet source water in the next run and see what happens.
What is your fermenter made of??? Is it plastic that could leach??

I bet these folks can help you figger it out,"

This will also see a lot of your alcohol evaporate.

It is actually more likely that the plastic smells are formed during fermentation. They can be chlorophenols or other byproducts formed during fermentation, which are more noticeable in the diluted product. Chlorinated water can cause chlorophenos (depending on the other ingredients in your wash), and stress on the yeast / yeast selection can result in increased byproduct production. Keep in mind that EC-1118 is a wine yeast, and as such will enhance certain characters. It is one of the more neutral wine yeasts, but is still a wine yeast and not a 'neutral' yeast. It can be as simple as poor or improper nutrition for the yeast, or residual nutrients.

It can also be something picked up during distillation, although I would consider that to be less likely.

"I think that's mostly nonsense from people who never actually used it ... or are applying it incorrectly. I wouldn't pay much attention to the bad mouthing. And some of that bad mouthing comes from those who are fermenting at temps well above 80 F AND with high gravity washes ... which may be fine for fuel ... but not for a good drinking neutral. If you follow the starting directions, keep the temp at 70 F or below, provide adequate nutrition, and don't get greedy with your SG, it's neutral.

--JB"

"

This water is indeed ""Tap water"" from the mountains of the pacific Northwest. It's actually considered some of the best water in the world, but they do chlorinate it.

I did consider this option yesterday and boiled some water, which would remove the chlorine. Again, I proofed it, and the rubber latex type smell was still there.

I also considered sulfur compounds, diluted the solution and added small amount of copper sulfate. No cigar...

However, I do have to say that during fermentation, the sugar wash (Not far at all from Wineo's famous recipe) smelled slightly sulfurous, and did again as well once the wash had cleared. When I added a drop of copper sulfate to that the sulfur smell disappeared.

One other note is that the third fraction does not smell as offensive. Even when diluted, it smells floral and sweet, but still somewhat like rubber and latex again.

Keep in mind my cuts were strict - there is no smearing. The heads were compressed well and smell like faux bananas.

I am going to clean my still out and tell you all again if it stays like it is."

I just pulled my still apart. The copper packing smells like what the distillate does when diluted with water - chemical, acrid, headache inducing. I'm about to run concentrated acetic acid through my still as well as cleaning it out. We'll see what happens.

I'm distilling the vinegar now. Something just occured to me. I used new copper packing on the batch that smelled funny. Is it covered with some form of anti-rusting protection? I should have read ahead.

Ok could be the water I guess. Regarding the possibility of packing being an issue..never heard of any rust proof coatings on real food grade copper. Know it can tarnish and get a bit stinky but is rust proof to start with as far as I know. In fact just added a couple of new plugs using an unopened bag of the the copper mesh which come with my hooch maker kit and did not give it much prep. Seems to be just fine. Could see some possibilities of trouble with less than 100% copper packing such as pot scrubbers. Have heard quite a few precautionary notes on using those...but then thought it had been previously established the odor began in the fermenter which would seem to rule out the copper as a suspect. This is a puzzler.

Well best check your hole card here. You sure them scrubbers are 100% copper? If not it could be a causative factor. Some which are labled as copper are actually copper plated base metals. If thats the case there could even be some health issues involved with drinking the distillate. I would start out the curative phase by getting rid of the scrubbers. Think somebody on here had give a brand of some fairly commonly available pure copper scrubbers but now I forget what they said. Seems like maybe the Dutch Boy paint store or something like that. Might run it through the search function to make sure.

Hi,new member here and i'm struggling with the exact same problem.MDH did you find the answer after all?