HomebrewandBeer.com forum

can any one give me some tips, i have just started home brewing spirits and don't think its going that well.
i have run one wash through the still but it appears to have an unusual smel about it, is this standard for home brew??

Are you making cuts?

What are you making?

You can get a lot of smell from trying to get too much from your still

not sure what cuts are?

have just made a standard wash of sugar ( 8kg), water (25lts) and yeast ( Turbo).

the smell is almost like a vanila type aroma.

the sprit was only at about 83% from the Still.

i cut it back to 40 % and then ran it through a charcoal filter ( one of the inline type ones) but the vinila type smell is stil there.

what are the effects if the temps during distilling are either too high or too low ?

could this cause this ?

You would struggle to get temps too low cos if you pump too much cooling water through you get whats called an air lock and nothing will come out and oh if this goes on unnoticed then explosion could be inament ( not good but very unlikely). Most of the time its the opposite, ppl trying to run the still too quickly by dropping the cooling water rate down which results in a much quicker runoff but of lesser quality. Try to aim somewhere in the middle and when you get to the point where its proving difficult to keep the still temp down at desired level and notice the rate of runoff dropping dramatically then turn it off and be happy with what you have, anything collected after this time will be of very poor quality and could tarnish the rest of your batch with off smells and flavours..