Beerstripper

10 4, thanks! Definitely passing the info along. Out of curiosity, was your spirit neutral coming off the still? At this distillery, the owner will take some of the collection from a bourbon or molasses run to filter, I'm wondering if this is why it takes that high amount carbon to strip the flavor out.

No offense taken! I suppose some of the results could be subjective. I could run 100G of our bourbon bill thru a few cups of carbon, but I wouldn't be expecting a neutral tasting product from it. I should add that the owner likes to run extra product from AG runs thru the carbon filter to make vodka. I'm assuming that this is why we get the results that we do.

We're able to filter about 6G of 100 proof using 5.5lb of carbon. Up until the 5th or 6th gallon, the product is tasting very neutral and towards the end, the flavor from our grain bill starts to pull thru. Make sure you rinse your carbon first, fill up a bucket with desired amount, use hot water to rinse, stir, and allow to sit for a bit. Most of the carbon will settle at the bottom, pour off the liquid from the top of the carbon, refill ( a couple inches above where the solids sit ), stir, and add carbon/water to whatever vessel you are using as the filter system. We have a 6 foot, 3" diamater column with a hopper on top, coffee filters on the bottom held by a giant hose clamp. Once the water from the top of the hopper has dropped, start adding your alcohol. I use hot water as you can tell by feel when the water is starting to turn in to alcohol. Of course, I go by taste too. The first jar will be a little diluted but everything after should start drippingg out good and neutral. It is a time consuming process but it works depending on how much you need to filter. I've noticed that the higher the proof, the more flavor pulls thru, so I definitely proof down to 100 or less. Any other tips I can think of besides carbon filtering- make sure your cuts are on point add more hieght, packing, or plates to your still

Hello everyone and thanks for the responses. I distill for the OP. The inteded use for the distilled spirit is to be bottled as white corn whiskey. With prior issues of cloudy spirit now resolved- we think it was due to wide cuts and leftover fusels from those wide cuts as they weren't able to bottle anything less that 42%. The proper water was/is being used to dilute. I have never relied on the alcohol meter making cuts. I make cuts purely on taste/smell/texture. I believe cuts are purely subjective, though IMO, there is some very defined flavors between fore's/heads/hearts/tails. We are making corn whiskey, usually a single pass run, I tune the 2 plate system to 80% ABV or just under usually by the time I'm half way thru heads- the still runs steady thru hearts ( tune meaning adjusting dephleg and minor heat ). Once I taste the smoothness of hearts fading, I turn up the heat a little bit to crank out the remeaining hearts and prepare to start collecting the more watered down tasting tails. We save all feints and run as a queen's share run. When I hit tails, I turn off dephleg and run to about 28% using only the final condenser ( running as a pot still ) This, IMO, offers a deeper flavor when we do run those queen's shares. I am able to pull off some wider cuts if we are adding product to barrels, though these cuts arent much wider and don't add much to the final volume. IMO, too much tails is too much tails and can ruin your product, though I always set aside some tastier tails for blending should there be a "hotter" tasting final product. While I am not a part of the mashing process, there are a few things I plan on contributing once I am involved. These are open top ferments. From temp regulation, enzyme use and PH levels, to grain consistency, I have a few ideas to help get the most out of the mash. Thanks for reading and looking forward to hearing back from you folks.