"Im a newbie to the distilling world, I only have a few runs under my belt. I am getting ready to return home from Iraq at the end of the month. While I have been deployed I have had a lot of time to read up on the mistakes I have been making and am very eager to get home and start a new run with my new found knowledge.

Right now I am working on sugar washes as they are more basic than grain mash and I want to gain some more experince before I go that direction.

One of the things that I have been reading about it making a better nuetral wash by using bakers yeast instead of turbos and also inverting the sugar.

My rig is a 8gal boiler (electric) and can be used as a reflux or pot still.

My questions are:

Is there a formula for how much bakers yeast to use by sugar volume?

I read that some people use a combination of inverted and plain white sugar, is there a specific ratio?

I am making a good reflux run (40-60min) before collecting; would I be better to collapse a few stripped runs and then do a spirit run or just reflux like I have been and collect during the same run?

I am ignorant of the term ""cuts"" I hear people saying not to make ""tight cuts"" or to make ""good cuts"" - Can someone explain this to me?

Thanks in advance for any help, this is a great site with a lot of experience and I hope to get better at the trade under its wing!"

"the website is telling me i can not send pms-- i tried a bunch of times. it even said i couldnt post to the forum but it worked this time

dap here
http://www.northernbrewer.com/w...nium-phosphate-4-oz.html"

"I recon a good clean ratio would be 8 to 10 pounds of sugar to a 20 liter ferment.

If you keep your abv within your wash at 14% or below, you will get a cleaner product.

You can also use less yeast or more yeast.
4 oz of bakers yeast and a cup of crushed corn flakes or all bran cereal will supply your yeast with plenty of nutes.
Try this and ramp your yeast back after a couple of batches.

The extra yeast will help power thru the ferment rather quickly thus insuring a quick finish with almost zero risk of infection.

The yeast profile will likely be evident but not bad at all. And if you strip first then dilute to 40% and reflux,,,,it will be rather nice.

MW2 is correct that EC1118 is a really good work horse for lots of gents.
There is no set amount as such.

Just gotta get a bunch of runs under your belt so that you can develope your own point of view.

Collect your distillate in small jars (250 ml to 300 ml) to isolate the transitions during your spirit run.
Let it airon the bench with a rubber band and paper cover to keep the critters out. Next day will be better to evaluate once some of the volitile nasties have evaporated.

*First 50 ml (or so) will ""Fores"". This is poison. DO NOT DRINK. Pour it on the ground.
*Next couple 100 mls will be ""Heads"". All the ground pounding headaches live in heads. Heads smell sweet and also astringent at the same time. Do not be decived. Heads are not for me.
*Next comes ""Hearts"". This here is what all of us are after.
* Finally ""Tails"" smells like wet dog, wet card board, old shoe, dirty butt.
Some gents add early tails for flavor.

I throw heads and tails into the feins jug an re-run with the next batch as there is plenty good alcohol remaining."

"So as previously mentioned,,,if you collect with small jars you will be able to more precisely isolate your transitions.

So depending on your quantity of jars available, you may have 8 to 12 or so small jars collected.

When evaluating, start at the center jar (or so) and work your way out from either side by smelling the content. Be careful not to burn your nose out by smelling too hard.

If your a nuetral man then your gonna want to eliminate any thing that has an odor (I assume). You may find that means that you have quite a bit of likker to toss into your feins jug for re-run. That can be hard for some fellers to do as they get to focused on the greed of makin as much as possible.........Then they spring for spending more cash on carbon filtering supplies to clean up bad cuts that can be avoided by good stilling......and then they spend on clearing agents......and mo money mo money mo money.

You can beat this by being patient and building your drinking stock to the point where you don't have to be in a rush cuz your out of booze.

Best way is to get three fermenters going. One batch fermenting,,,,one batch clearing,,,,,and one batch ready to charge your boiler.
If you can run a batch at your leisure,,,,,,, any given day of the week,,,it gets much easier to be very discriminating about the quality of the booze your makin.

Once you get your cycle going,,,ya only need to touch it for just a few minutes a day on average. It's not that bad. Unless your doing a full on mash."

"I just use the small mason jars. They are bout 6 bucks for a dozen from the local grocer. Can certainly use recycled glass too.

I collect enough in each jar to roughly fill the testing vessel for my alcometer.
Bout 250 ml to 300 is prolly fine. But I recon 200 ml would really dial in the transition. I don't have the patience for 200 at a time

But I don't make cuts with the alcometer mind you. Or that is to say,,I don't make cuts by measuring ABV.

Make cuts by smell,taste and feel.

When you get familiar with your ""go to"" recipe and your still......you can collect in larger vessels as you will learn about where your cuts need to be.

And of course as time passes and you get your stock built up, you can easily toss anything questionable into your feins jug for a re-run later."

"Indeed MW2.

The buzz is a good quality buzz but not heavy or tiresome......Or cloudy.

Prolly shouldn't move past the 50% mark when serving folks that may not understand what they are drinking though.
50 got plenty of giddie yap

BTW I should also point out that I'm always a bit hard on the carbon filter talk as I do not really drink nuetral. Nor am I ever trying to make a martini grade or gin grade nuetral. I'm a potstiller.

My apologies for sounding like a pontificating likker geek know it all."

"


Mw,

Can you explain this a little to me? How much carbon are you putting in per Qt?

Are you using a standard kitchen style strainer lined with coffee filter?

I am interested in this method....It gets kinda old filtering the hooch through a column filter like I have...

I think eventually I want to have my wash to the point where I dont need to filter it. Im sure this will just come with experience making the wash and cuts."

"MW,

Thanks for the welcome and the info!

Ill keep ya posted on my progress and asks lot more questions!

Glad to hear your daughter is back!"