Louching of neutral grape spirit

[PeteB]

I am not into vodka production at all, but my Son has just opened the doors to his brewpub T-Bone Brewing Co and he wanted a few bottles.

I had 2 samples of an Australian (big commercial distillery) neutral grape spirit, one called Premium and another more expensive Ultra-premium so I diluted the Ultra to 40% with carbon filtered rain water and it went very cloudy. Left it overnight to see what would happen but no clearer. Thought it might have saponified because of rapid dilution so tried slow dilution, same cloudy result. Added more neutral and the cloudiness dissolved at roughly 60%abv. Typical louching.

Tried the cheaper Premium and no louching

Anyone heard of this happening with neutral?

[TheMechWarrior]

Peter, I know the company you are talking about. Have you raised this with them? I and I guess many others would be interested to hear their reply.

It doesn't sound Ultra Premium, it sounds like they either sent you the wrong product or there was a stuff-up in the manufacturing process at some stage...their internal testing should have picked up on this though. They have storage tanks over 100kL, I'd like to think a production error would have been picked up before it got you.

 

[PeteB]

Only discovered this problem Saturday, I will ring them Monday.

[PeteB]

It turned out to be the hoses I was syphoning with.

I had been using them for whisky spirit and it appears as if oils from the new-make has deposited on the inside of the hose. High proof neutral stripped it off into the 4 bottles I was cutting. Probably would not have caused an issue if I had done a much larger batch as the oil would have been diluted.

When I used the hose with the cheaper neutral there was no oil left in the hose so no issue.