The ingredients were 'Turbo Yeast' based recipes (more about that later)
I will document my experiences here, as much for me as anyone else.
First thing that struck me is how simple it was:
Sugar
Yeast & Nutrient
A sachet of Carbon.
Top up to 10l and your done.
Compared to the lengths I go to when making beer this is like a walk in the park.
So after about 10 days the wash was feremnted so I added the finings and waited for 24 hours for it to settle.
Then put 4l in the still plugged it in and stepped back to watch.
After about an hour I got a trickle of some (nail polish remover smelling) noxious liquid.
I had done a bit of reading so I knew what to expect.
After about 60 ml had come out I took away the first container (poured on weeds) and added another one to collect my hooch.
I took the next 700ml, topped it up with good water to 1l and put it through the carbon filter.
I then refilled the still and kicked off the rest of my batch.
After the first one had finished filtering I poured it into a glass bottle and added Top Shelf Vodka essence.
It didn't smell too good. A bit like a fermenting rubbish bin or rotting veg.
It tasted ok though, no real taste at all maybe a bit of sweetness but not unpleasant. A perfect mixer, apart from the smell. It was so bad that you have to try not to breathe when you drink it.
So I refiltered it, and refiltered and then refiltered it again.
4 times through the carbon filter to get rid of the foul smell for each batch.
This smell is caused by Turbo yeast and not a reflection of the Air Still.
Turbo Yeast (I have read) was developed for rapid conversion and maximum yield of alcohol for the purposes of bio-fuel, not a food.
A lot of LHBS sell Turbo Yeast and advise it's use, I can't really comment on that, but it's expensive.
After multiple filtering the resulting spirit is good, I made vodka and a coconut rum (Malibu) and my Mrs is loving it.
The Air Still itself is a great little unit, very happy with it. I really don't get why people are so against them. It's tidy, clean easy to use. Ideal.
So I have run the second batch of Turbo which came with my kit, this time I discarded the first 80ml.
Same foul smell from each batch so they have been repeatedly filtered (this takes days) before I had a clean sprit.
So I did a bit more research on creating a cleaner wash.
I created an account on an great Aussie based distilling site
, and have found a lot of good information from there, including the recipe for a basic Tomato Paste Wash.Sugar
Tomato Paste
Citric Acid
bakers yeast
Water
All from Coles and cheap.
This is supposed to produce a good clean spirit without any of the foulness of Turbo products.
I mixed it up to 25l, pitched yeast and covered the fermenter with glad wrap.
The bakers yeast are hungry, fermentation had begun within minutes. Having spent a few years making beer (czech pils yeast, starters etc etc) this was jaw dropping to witness.
The glad wrap formed a good bubble and it remained like that for about 12 days. Then it was finished so I racked it off the trub and it has been in a secondary clearing a little bit more. It is a light orangey pink colour and smells like a very sweet wine, but not unpleasant.
I am planning on running my first TP wash through the still tonight.
...to be continued.
)