Roger

Brilliant !

His plan may have actually worked 10 years ago. Now he's behind 800 other made up stories about people's great grandpapies mothers aunt on their fathers side moonshine recipe that was consumed by the founding fathers during the signing of the Independence. Which can be magically replicated by only him, mixing warmed up NGS with local wonder-water. i'll wait for the paperback.

Fixed it. I take no position on antibiotics in water used post NGS distillation. Other than the crap in our nations water supply, lakes and rivers, of course.

Huh ? You're not aware of the battle between big ethanol and the FDA over the use of antibiotics ? It's what you do instead of keeping your equipment clean, and then the grain is sold into the domestic food chain. You know, instead of the hours you spend cleaning inside your fermenters, mash tuns and stills keeping the bacteria at bay? Followed by the painstaking process of following strict operating protocols, but still lose 5% + to other organisms feasting on the sugars that you choose not to kill with synthetic chemical antibiotics? Hopefully most or all of the antibiotics are killed in the vapor carry over at 95+%, but that can't be said for everything that is added thereafter when water is added with unknown contaminants that are pushed over as low as 80 proof. But boy, it sure is cheap !

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could buy some piece of magic equipment that would make commercial bio-ethanol into something other than what it is, but unfortunately it's just not so. it will always be warmed up fuel, made from mash more than likely treated with mass doses of antibiotics, delivered to your door with the faint odor of a PVC Tote. Actually that would be a pretty good Craft brand name: TOTE-VODKA "I love the smell of plastic in my Martini" Prost

How many gallons of wash ?

Heat trasfer is most efficient when there is a large difference in temperatures. Because your heat is at the bottom in one small area, the heat trasfer to the top of your wash is very slow. If you were rolling the wash over, you would be putting it all in closer proximity to your heat source. Keep at it. It's good to see people actually distill their spirits, vs buying it in totes and warming it up.

Throw in a bunch of corn, potatoes, lobsters clams etc.. Make it a party.

The viscosity of your mash may be dissipating the heat, and or you may be building a mash insulating layer on the still walls. I don't see any stirring mechanism which would also help.

Fill the still with just water, and repeat the test. how long to boil (or 175 degrees)?

You're forgetting about extra special magic water, that makes bio-ethanol into "Super Premium, Craft, Single Batch, Artesian, Ad Naseum Vodka. It's really, really special and expensive. What a load of crap. Blending and aging on the other hand is a legitimate industry. Bacardi was never known as a distillery, they became famous as blenders who aged various rums in caves. That industry is a whole different ball game than fake vodka and gin re-heaters. Do I have to amend my DSP to add the serial number of my Kurig, if I use it to warm up NGS and claim I hand made Vodka in it ?

First and foremost we congratulate you on actually making your own Vodka. As for the equipment, where's the Flux Capacitator ? ?

On the off chance that "who wouldn't want the .22c vodka" is not rhetorical, I will say that the person/s that don't want it, are those who have spent the time to search out and discover non national brands, who end up paying a craft premium price for warmed up industrial ethanol. Its hard to determine which is actually worse for our industry a )vodka warmers who charge a craft premium for a commodity product b ) vodka warmers who put "hand crafted by my sweet old granmother" on a tilted label, who then wholesale at $8.00 per, and it sits on a shelf beside a much more expensive actual craft distilled products that can't be brought to market for NGS price. Take your pick, but neither are good for anything other than individual businesses that care little about the integrity of the industry and the price points that will allow actual independent distillers to survive. Private label has been practiced since industry inception, but it was very seldom sold as "hand crafted" so as to carry a premium price. We must now be careful that the excess capacity building in our industry does not flood the market with inferior or low priced "pretend craft" product. Large established distillers generally have the financial backing and marketing machines to take their brands in multiple directions, and at varied price points. In a typical small craft distillery we however have only one main marketing strategy "hand made" . If you don't understand that, and strongly defend it, you are either not looking at it closely enough, or a practitioner of a or b.

Yep, the days of putting junky equipment in junky buildings is coming to an end. Now we have gleaming equipment in gleaming buildings, where "distillers" re-bubble and squeak other companies alcohol. what seems to be happening is that most new distillers find it much easier to buy their product in bulk, do the minimum required to label it as their own, and dupe the market with craft price. as this goes away, the real craft market will continue to flourish. It just depends on what you want to be when you grow up.

I'm not on here to argue. Everybody needs to do their own thing. I'm just saying that if you keep redistilling a product that has already been taken to azeotrope, you can't make it into, Supertrope ? You can however change it back to a less than pure product with water, and the stuff that's stuck in the joints of your distillation equipment, and pull that off in the next round (or 50 rounds) of distillation, and extract some of those added impurities in the re-distillation process, that smells like a head. You can even add things in that water that you can't get out at 88% like lime that gives your redistilling spirit a different mouth feel, that makes you think it is "more pure" but it's really more of a mask. if you do however have a still that can make NGS better than NGS, I would love to see the specs. All of that said, when we make a vodka out of wine, vs for example wheat, we control our proofs to the minimum of the legal requirement to intentionally leave flavor and aroma nuance in the product. To me, NGS is just too ordinary. Prost

what do you mean, you take heads and tail cuts in NGS with a pot still ? You can't take a head cut in something that has been distilled above 96, with a still that only goes to 88. All of the "heads and tails have already been taken out, which is why they call it NGS. what might be happening is that the water you are mixing it with so you don't blow up your pot still, is tainted. I've always wondered about water quality in re-bubbled NGS mixed with new water. If the equipment and technique can not seperate the dewatered ethanol to 96+, does it instead carry over the minerals and other impurities that might be in the water, becuase the ethanol is "lifting if off" at 173+ degrees? some re-bubblers use RO water in their dilution process, but even RO doesn't take out all impurities like mirex,heavy metals, etc. the best bet would be to RO then put that water into your pot and carry it over as just steam (212degrees). Then use that water to dilute your NGS , heat it up, follow up with charcoal filter, and presto. Handmade Craft Vodka .

Several of our Canadian customers have told us similar stories about when they were young they would get dumped barrels from various Canadian whiskey distilleries and put a couple gallons of water in each one. They would roll them around and rock the barrels for a while and let it sit for a few days. After that they would re-dump the barrels, filter through fabric and call it "Swish". It was apparently very common, and I think you can buy it now called, "Devils Cut".

I read yet another newspaper article yesterday about a new "Brand X" distillery opening and selling vodka and gin that they "improve" by re-distilling NGS. They told the reporter "we do it because a lot of other distilleries do it." So in other words, re-bubbler X claims that its ok to re-bubble NGS becuase re-bubbler Y is doing it, and re-bubbler Y is saying exactally the same thing about re-bubbler X. What a joke. In most cases these guys don't even posses the correct equipment to boil off the impurities that they are adding back into their NGS by using local water. Note to bubblers : if it's coming over at less than azetrope, you are potentially carrying over chemicals and impurities from the water you added that the real distiller spent a lot of time and money on equipment to remove. Yeah, re-bubbled swamp water, that sounds just yummy.

Claiming that you are "distilling" someone else's GNS into Vodka in a pot still is like putting a Hungry Man TV dinner in a microwave, and telling your customers that you are a chef. The whole concept of re-distilling initiated back when farmers were trying to convert the majority of their crops into low wine stripping runs at the end of the harvest season. Then they would re-distill thier low wines into finished spirits over the winter or they would sell off their low wines to others for final spirit distillation. This has now evolved into a marketing bonanza for pretend distillers who run GNS through pots and little columns that have virtually zero effect on the end product, while claiming they are "craft distillers". As the industry of US based distillers continues to evolve, these issues will become more visible to the consumers, and that may well change how you wish to ultimately proceed. Customers aren't easily deceived for long in an open market place.

I think this is genius. I can see it now, the Kougreg of spirits. Little cups of pre ferment mash that you pop in the machine. Caffe frappe latte's for breakfast, and double drip gin in the evenings, after a strenuous 17 hours of playing minecraft. Yeah, that it. That's the ticket. Yeah . Christ...

Perhaps that's why this is called the American Distiling Institute

how many gallon beer ?

Proof Gallon

You should get aprox 5.1 PG per bushel of grain (56# corn for example) that will be broken out between heads/hearts/tails. You can generally rerun your tails to extract maximum efficiency

How many gallon beer ?