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MDH

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Everything posted by MDH

  1. MDH
    Yes. Chlorine reacts with organic matter, including some important micronutrients. This is how it prevents microbes from reproducing in your drinking water. This reacted organic matter is also well known in public pools as "disinfection byproducts". The smell and taste of them is unpleasant. My only recommendation is that you find a way to warm and vigorously aerate the water. You can also add a small amount of ascorbic acid solution to your water, then proceed to add baking soda. This reaction yields dehydroascorbic acid and salt. This is the government recommended method of removing chlorine from water. That being said, I can't speak for the effects of the new acid on your spirit... Any organic reactant open's the pandora's box with something as complicated as fermentation.
  2. MDH
    Likely pediococcus damnosus. Unfortunately this is an anaerobic bacteria which does not form a discernable pellicle, so it's difficult to identify. It ruins your ferments from inside out. This is one of the worst of the infections you can have. Anything it has touched should be extremely well sanitized.
  3. MDH
    Second this. Do a run without increasing the heat as you get into the hearts.
  4. MDH
    I have to say, I just saw some equipment from this company at a distillery less than twenty miles from them, and it looked very well made.
  5. MDH
    Start a few spontaneous fermentations from separate small crushes. Ferment the juice completely with each one. Measure the S.G. and use good old "olfactory sciences" to measure the aromatic quality. In my opinion, and in the opinion of most Calvados producers, a good brandy is made through carefully controlled spontaneous fermentation. Just keep oxygen out and the pH reasonably low and you should be fine to do it that way.
  6. MDH
    I think that depending on the product you want to vat and then bottle, you will need to let it rest longer solely based on the acidity of the most acidic product you've made which is being blended into the final product. So, if you have one product which was allowed a very extended malolactic fermentation, such as a sourmash, you will want to glass or bottle age your product for a long time before selling, versus one with a more straightforward fermentation allowing no time for extended lactic acid. Aging certainly does occur without oak. If you observe the practices of distilleries in Alsace and the neighboring Black Forest, you'll notice that they almost universally age their eaux de vie in glass "balloons" or demijons, often with a thick cotton cloth stuffed into the lid to allow permeability similar to a barrel.
  7. MDH
    Yes. The char level will add increasing levels of caramel and vanilla, and the porous nature of the charcoal will absorb some degree of flavor. It also produces some acids that will react with the spirit over time.
  8. MDH
    Lees always in. You can choose to distill on or off grain, but even the scots will distill their sparged beer with lees still in after fermentation finishes. I can understand that in some "niche" scenarios, such as with honey, you may want to clear the ferment first. This will let you distill into the tails a little more without flavors that would otherwise clash with the flavor. In Whiskey, the lees are practically necessary.
  9. MDH
    I think there are two fast approaches to the market... One is to have a smaller heartcut, age in a warm environment with good airflow and decent humidity for a younger (2-3) year spirit. The second is to make wide cuts and age for a long time. In my opinion the latter approach invariably yields a more complex tasting spirit. Some try to bypass both approaches by using very small barrels, or other "oaking" solutions that respect the integration of oak and spirit but not the chemistry behind how they interact once mixed. I think this is what Hubert is trying to convey with this post - there is no substitute for decently wide, but not too wide cuts, and a good long aging time, when it comes to flavor. I trust his opinion based on what I've tasted from GR distillery in the past.
  10. MDH
    For a basic pot (e.g. in the style of Scotland) the heart cut can vary hugely. Macallan keeps 15% of collected spirit as hearts. I have seen some keep 60% as hearts using a fairly fast distillation speed and a basic pot, but these need a long time to age. Throw in four plates and a dephlegmator and you can keep an immense amount as hearts but personally I don't like the resulting style.
  11. MDH

    Grassy, vinyl flavor

    MDH replied to rtshfd's topic in Rum

    Firstly, does your source of water have any free halogens? Secondly, have you tried any pilot batches with other yeasts?
  12. MDH
    I'm a huge advocate of this style too. It's the same with fruits - I've tried a few pretty bland apple and pear Eaux de Vie recently which were made in a heavily refluxed column sort of environment; yet hands down, the best spirits I've ever tasted were made in basic pots and aged for a long period of time. Calvados and Cognac are made in basic pots and are given time. If you look at distilleries like Lagavulin or Ardbeg, their stills are similarly very short, and are run to no more than 72% alcohol by volume. Such an environment is rife with smearing of the tails, hearts and heads, but the end product is beautifully complex. I wouldn't take Scotch any other way.
  13. MDH
    What kind of fermentation and fruit processing equipment do you have available? You can mash the plums into a fine pulp, add some water - no more than 10-20% by volume, then remove the pits (most of which will sink to the bottom) before fermentation proceeds. With plums, you can either ferment the plums by simply allowing them to begin fermenting by themselves. This is the best method in my opinion when it comes to clarity of fruit taste - the only caveat with using wild yeast is that you must distill immediately after the fermentation finishes. Or, you can use a commercial yeast like Red Star Cote de Blancs. In all cases, you will want to make sure the fermentation is not allowed access to open air. This is because the fruit will form a cap during fermentation, and this cap can become infected if allowed access to oxygen. Best of luck.
  14. MDH
    Some of the best advice here. In today's social media world, opinions spread like wildfire. If you aren't being as ambitious as possible, with the best information you have, you're going to fall to the wayside.
  15. MDH
    Reiner, what kind of fruit are you trying to mash?
  16. MDH
    I can't possibly fathom why either. Especially the glut of new distilleries who seem bent on turning perfectly good fruits into an odorless, colorless spirit. There is so much potential for great brandy out there and it is not being taken advantage of, and when we come to realize there are far more brands of vodka than most consumers or bartenders could possibly think of ways to use, we'll go back and wish we had made something good all that time ago, and were just now pulling the mature product out of the barrel.
  17. MDH
    As I have never tried to market Vodka, I cannot comment with any complex insight on this issue. However, it would seem to me that the Vodka market is tired, and ultimately the focus is on mixing the cheapest brands possible. The age of the vodka connoisseur is long over. People are not itching at the bit to try new Vodka brands. The best way to enter any market is to be different, rather than compete for an established market using the same approach and only differing by brand name. Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation comes to mind as one example, as Tito's Vodka - which started, like many of us, as a microdistillery. His Vodka had an unassuming, homemade looking label and cost less than $20, a stark contrast to the myriad of brands seeking to claim a stake in Grey Goose's share of the market - but who laughed his way to the bank at the end of it?
  18. MDH
    Come on now! You could make a case for post-harvest terroir. "Fond memories of the garage return with hints of aldehydes, biodiesel and motor oil on the finish"... From my own position, what carbon absorbs from the air is inconsequential, because the amount it absorbs from the air is minute compared to the amount of compounds it will be absorbing when you pass a spirit through it. It does not impart anything it has bound from the air. You can also double-bag your carbon and keep it tightly shut. This is how I store it, and I have never had any issues with strange smell, aside from carbon filtering at too high of a temperature (Which does result in some off flavors).
  19. MDH
    Ruins? I'd argue some of the best cane juice rums are fermented spontaneously. If wild fermentation starts, don't worry - add your domesticated strain in sufficient quantities and you will have a solid fermentation. You may want to acidify the juice slightly using malic or tartaric acid.
  20. MDH
    According to a publication I've read, Dupont used to produce an enzyme which converted inulin to fructose. You might try contacting them. I am just curious, if you have a boiler (for your still), why not try to steam/pressure roast the agave in some way? Do you think that would cost more than ordering a specialty enzyme?
  21. MDH
    Like Simon has said, the amount of alcohol extracted from a grain will diminish the influence of other volatile compounds as the yields of ethanol increase. Think of it like diluting juice with water. This is part of the reason that Cognac is expensive - grapes are harvested on the acid side of the acid-brix balance, so more terpenes, esters, fatty aldehydes etc are present in any given volume of alcohol. Though this is entirely speculation on my part, it may also be that variations in kilning temperature allowed some grains to encounter more of what is known as the "maillard reaction". One of the finest samples of newmake spirit I have had in recent memory was made with Munich Malt kilned to 20 Lovibonds (a measurement of roasting related color used in brewing).
  22. MDH
    Personally, I think many distilleries fail because they aim to compete with big brands in terms of their target market. They make products that have already been made to death and are forgettable, instead of making products that are novel, unique and carry through to execution in terms of promise.
  23. MDH
    I would avoid water rich in chlorine. Chlorine works as a disinfectant because of the way it reacts with organic matter. Needless to say it will react with your spirit. You can boil water or aerate it at a warm temperature to get rid of most of the chlorine, but this is energy consuming. You can get rid of chlorine through a two step chemical reaction: First adding vitamin C, which will turn the chlorine into HCl - and then reacting that with sodium hydroxide, which will turn it to sodium chloride and dehydroascorbic acid. Be aware that you have to watch the stoichometry of this reaction closely, as excess ascorbic acid or sodium hydroxide will react with your spirit in ways potentially unwanted.
  24. MDH
    An excellent post by Denver. The most expensive ingredient in any operation is time.
  25. MDH
    I'm not certain what specific setup you have, but if the basket is very close to (or aligned with) the condenser and you distill very vigorously, you may be getting color. At least copper is no longer a worry.
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