Right on with your recommendation to make a good, high proof vodka and stockpile it. So nice to have a stock one can draw from to make whatever strikes your fancy.
Yep I like to do big batch of neutral too, I have one underway fermenting now and will ferment a couple more fermenters full before the spirit run too. I do however dilute some down to 40% after the spirit run so I don't have too much stored at 95% due to the fire risk. Its just guessing what I might want to use it for in future that I don't always get right so sometimes run low on the 95% stuff.
Man you're like the uncle i wished to have to teach me this stuff😅 because no one has this information in the country that i live and i just learned distilling by watching your videos and reading from different sources and i was able to make something i am proud of ... hope to see you someday body 👌
Depends on what you are using to make your spiri. With fruit, cutting varies. In example, we make mostly plum and pear destillate here in europe and plum especially is "tricky". Anything below 50% ABV in my opinon gets a sour aftertaste. Pear is different, you can safely go to 40% and in my experience speed and heat matter too, a lot :) If i am doing multiple destillations of the same spirit, i apply this "percentage and speed rule" only on the last run. That being said, most of the stuff around here is being done with a single destillation. One exception would be homemade cognac made out of left over wine. There it is required to do at least 2 runs as first one has a significant sulphur taste.
Thank you Jesse for reminding us why we're all here. To learn how to make the finest spirit we can! Making cuts on the final run is the best way, so thank you again for reminding us all.
Great video as always. A bit off topic. But have you ever thought of doing a video of a modification to do a continuous still? Enabling those with smaller boilers to run larger amounts of wash??
Jesse, a good discussion topic. The topic presupposes that one is making a large amount of neutral spirit. I have a pot still that is 24 liters and a cooler/ mash tun that is about 40 liters. I rarely have a batch size that makes it necessary to perform multiple distillations so all runs are spirit runs. I suspect there are a lot of chasers who work with similar volumes and equipment, particularly those who don’t have 220 VAC or entire days to run their still. So, Chasers, don’t think you have to make stripping runs unless your batch size requires it, or you like neutral spirit.
I had 10 gallons of rum wash that wouldnt fit in my still so I was forced to do 2 runs. I stripped the first run and dumped the low wines back into the second run and ran that as my final to keep some flavor. Turned out Great! is there a term for this?
I'd love to see some sort of cachaça style distillation. It'd be really cool to see if there is an alternative method you may try or suggest other than using sugar cane. Perhaps sugar cane juice or syrup? Great and insightful video, as always!
I can help with that. I make a pretty good faux rhum agricole, it's very similar. It's difficult to make a proper version of either for a lot of us, since it's made using fermented cane juice, and that is not an easy thing to get in a lot of places. You can fake a version by using evaporated cane sugar or similar (zulka moreno, turbinado, jaggery, muscovado, whatever you can find) Adding chopped up bits of raw sugar cane (you can find it in specialty grocery stores) gets a bit pricey, but definitely adds an earthier flavor. If you can't get your hands on evaporated cane sugar, you can fake that, too. Though it may take a few attempts to dial in your recipe. In this case a mixture of table sugar and either brown sugar or molasses can approximate the flavor of less refined sugars. You can add a bit of earthiness by adding some chopped raisins or figs to the wash just don't go overboard. Remember that Approximate is the key word. We're in "copy of a copy" territory here. It won't be quite the same, but still tasty. Also be very conservative with your cuts, stick tight to the hearts.
I agree with the botanical heads example with gin, I will be triple distilling a Buccaneer Bobs rum as I found most of the easters came out in the head section, likely due to the higher proof at that point. I had to start a new dunder pit, just waiting for that to come good and I'll give the esterification another crack, now that there is only ethanol (hearts) in there, haven't tried it before, but I think that will give me what i'm looking for :-)
Have you ever tried distilling a homemade wine? I gotta say it's super tasty. Highly recommend it. Whether you wanna do it the fast way(about a month), or the long way( wait for the age) it's worth a good batch
I never run more than a 10 gal US so there is really no need for me to do a stripping run. The exception is if I am doing a low abv. I also don’t generally keep anything coming off at lower than 100 proof. I really enjoy your videos and I totally get where you are coming from regarding cuts based on taste. Perhaps if I were better at it I would experiment more but again for the small volume that I run , it’s semi futile to pick through the tails. Everyone has there niche and techniques. Once again I would like to say thank you for being such a strong promoter of home distilling.
So if you screw up a blend from the run you can just run it again? Cant you? Also have you ever thought about taking a spirit that is not as good and distilling it with some thing that is better quality to get a better spirit out of it? Just curious if this would even be worth it...
At 3:11 you said that you do not take off foreshot. How do you calculate the foreshot to remove from spirit run? Would it not be better to remove foreshot of 28.4 ml/3.8 L (1 fl oz/gallon) of wash to be strip-run/1st distilling volume. This way it is out of the way and you can combine all strip runs for a bulk strip for spirit run. This way it is just heads, hearts and tails only.
Jessie, to triple distill let's say a whiskey would you stop to low wines then strip that again before a spirit or strip to low wines then run the remaining thru two spirit runs back to back?
I like making multiple cuts when making gin. Even if I'm gonna blended all of it, it's just kinda cool to taste the different botanicals coming through at diff'rent times. Also I use rum to make gin. Works bloody well. Cheers all!
Jesse - could you use the T500 with the reflux column to do the stripping run since it will basically give you the high ABV from start to finish. Than take the T500 with the Pot still option with the Gin basket? Or do I still need to do a stripping run with the reflux, run again for the cuts with the reflux column and than run the pot still with gin basket? I'm asking for a friend ;-)
Question from Sweden. Do you ever filter any of your Products through activated carbon? Our moonshine is basically clear alcohol about 90-95 % and then filtered min two times.
I have questions! At what percentage do you stop your stripping run? And what percentage do you make your spirit run at for neutral? I have a pot still and I usually go down to 20% before I stop the stripping run on a 5 gallon wash. That leaves me about 30-40% ABV final product. I've been advised (by the internet) to add some distilled water and bring it down to 20% then use that to do the spirit run. Can I go higher? Can I just dump the 40% back in my pot still and do a low and slow run making cuts? EDIT... I do everything outdoors!
From what I've heard is that up to 40% is good to run again any hotter and you should proof it down and from what I've gathered it's for safety so we don't go boom
Could somebody please help me, I am going to do a spirit run starting at 40%ABV in kettle, when finished and have some left in kettle, do I put into feints container or throw ?????
Another nice clip dude..... Why not just dump the tiny amount of heads on every striping run to lower the percentage of wet dog or cardboard heads on the final third or fourth run? Just a little loss 🤣
Yes those wet dog tails follow you around forever , I was down at aldi the other day and could smell tail up and down isles and thought hell I must have spilt some on my cloths last month LOL but it turned out to be someone from Nimbin getting a trolley full of sugar
Idea for a video: * take cheepest / crappyest factory vodka * dillute with distilled water, lets say to 20% * do spirit run * take best cuts, ajust proof and compare to the original
A stripping run is just the initial distillation to reduce the volume down, stripping the ethanol out of the fermented liquid that you are starting with. It's done because most home distillers don't have a still big enough to fit a decent sized mash in all at once, also you can do it fast. So first you do stripping runs to get a higher proof but otherwise "dirty" distillate. Then you combine all of that together and do your spirit run where more time and care is taken so that you make your cuts more accurately.
Jesse, I love your videos man but I disagree on your stance of not cutting in the stripping run. The start of your stripping run is such high purity heads it's a good opportunity to chuck some out without losing good stuff. That way in the spirit run you can cut the head sooner/higher and get flavours sooner with an acceptable level of jaggyness. Similar logic applies cutting deep tails from stripping or not going so low, unless doing rum etc.
strange and artistic point of view. usually when I prepare a base of grains, I rely on the nose for the head and the temperature for the tail. precisely because of the bonds of odors that are created. badly cut a head or tail and you lose by drinking ... butane 😅
Gin basket infusion video. Please.
Right on with your recommendation to make a good, high proof vodka and stockpile it. So nice to have a stock one can draw from to make whatever strikes your fancy.
Yep I like to do big batch of neutral too, I have one underway fermenting now and will ferment a couple more fermenters full before the spirit run too. I do however dilute some down to 40% after the spirit run so I don't have too much stored at 95% due to the fire risk. Its just guessing what I might want to use it for in future that I don't always get right so sometimes run low on the 95% stuff.
Man you're like the uncle i wished to have to teach me this stuff😅 because no one has this information in the country that i live and i just learned distilling by watching your videos and reading from different sources and i was able to make something i am proud of ... hope to see you someday body 👌
Best present I received for Christmas...
My Still it hoodie.👍😊🥃
Found myself nodding my head and saying "yup" through the whole video. Nice to know we're on the same page lol. Cheers!
Hey Jessie I think you do good job man I'm a Moonshiner my family has been doing it for over a hundred years you have a lot of good ideas
Love it Jesse
Had to give it a second listen cause I couldn’t pay attention while cooking
But it was intuitive the second time around
Depends on what you are using to make your spiri. With fruit, cutting varies. In example, we make mostly plum and pear destillate here in europe and plum especially is "tricky". Anything below 50% ABV in my opinon gets a sour aftertaste. Pear is different, you can safely go to 40% and in my experience speed and heat matter too, a lot :) If i am doing multiple destillations of the same spirit, i apply this "percentage and speed rule" only on the last run. That being said, most of the stuff around here is being done with a single destillation. One exception would be homemade cognac made out of left over wine. There it is required to do at least 2 runs as first one has a significant sulphur taste.
Thank you Jesse for reminding us why we're all here. To learn how to make the finest spirit we can! Making cuts on the final run is the best way, so thank you again for reminding us all.
Great video as always.
A bit off topic. But have you ever thought of doing a video of a modification to do a continuous still? Enabling those with smaller boilers to run larger amounts of wash??
Hello. First let me say I adore your way to communicate. Love how you play with flavors. Have you tried fruit distillation (wash and fruit)?
Jesse, a good discussion topic. The topic presupposes that one is making a large amount of neutral spirit. I have a pot still that is 24 liters and a cooler/ mash tun that is about 40 liters. I rarely have a batch size that makes it necessary to perform multiple distillations so all runs are spirit runs. I suspect there are a lot of chasers who work with similar volumes and equipment, particularly those who don’t have 220 VAC or entire days to run their still.
So, Chasers, don’t think you have to make stripping runs unless your batch size requires it, or you like neutral spirit.
I had 10 gallons of rum wash that wouldnt fit in my still so I was forced to do 2 runs. I stripped the first run and dumped the low wines back into the second run and ran that as my final to keep some flavor. Turned out Great! is there a term for this?
Thanks hope your all good and well
I'd love to see some sort of cachaça style distillation. It'd be really cool to see if there is an alternative method you may try or suggest other than using sugar cane. Perhaps sugar cane juice or syrup? Great and insightful video, as always!
Yes sugar cane, its used to make Appleton estate im keen to de this could only find a chinese on sold in Nz.
I can help with that. I make a pretty good faux rhum agricole, it's very similar. It's difficult to make a proper version of either for a lot of us, since it's made using fermented cane juice, and that is not an easy thing to get in a lot of places. You can fake a version by using evaporated cane sugar or similar (zulka moreno, turbinado, jaggery, muscovado, whatever you can find) Adding chopped up bits of raw sugar cane (you can find it in specialty grocery stores) gets a bit pricey, but definitely adds an earthier flavor.
If you can't get your hands on evaporated cane sugar, you can fake that, too. Though it may take a few attempts to dial in your recipe. In this case a mixture of table sugar and either brown sugar or molasses can approximate the flavor of less refined sugars. You can add a bit of earthiness by adding some chopped raisins or figs to the wash just don't go overboard. Remember that Approximate is the key word. We're in "copy of a copy" territory here. It won't be quite the same, but still tasty.
Also be very conservative with your cuts, stick tight to the hearts.
I agree with the botanical heads example with gin, I will be triple distilling a Buccaneer Bobs rum as I found most of the easters came out in the head section, likely due to the higher proof at that point. I had to start a new dunder pit, just waiting for that to come good and I'll give the esterification another crack, now that there is only ethanol (hearts) in there, haven't tried it before, but I think that will give me what i'm looking for :-)
Nice summary on cuts.
Awesome video Jesse! Thanks! I literally am about to make a neutrals cut for the express purpose for a gin! ... or gins :-)
Have you ever tried distilling a homemade wine? I gotta say it's super tasty. Highly recommend it. Whether you wanna do it the fast way(about a month), or the long way( wait for the age) it's worth a good batch
Another Great Video mate
Making Gin is on my to do list for this year and this video has answered the questions I had.
Cheers Bro
I never run more than a 10 gal US so there is really no need for me to do a stripping run. The exception is if I am doing a low abv. I also don’t generally keep anything coming off at lower than 100 proof.
I really enjoy your videos and I totally get where you are coming from regarding cuts based on taste. Perhaps if I were better at it I would experiment more but again for the small volume that I run , it’s semi futile to pick through the tails.
Everyone has there niche and techniques.
Once again I would like to say thank you for being such a strong promoter of home distilling.
Great video! It was informative and is really helpful video.Thanks for your information.
So if you screw up a blend from the run you can just run it again? Cant you? Also have you ever thought about taking a spirit that is not as good and distilling it with some thing that is better quality to get a better spirit out of it? Just curious if this would even be worth it...
At 3:11 you said that you do not take off foreshot. How do you calculate the foreshot to remove from spirit run? Would it not be better to remove foreshot of 28.4 ml/3.8 L (1 fl oz/gallon) of wash to be strip-run/1st distilling volume. This way it is out of the way and you can combine all strip runs for a bulk strip for spirit run. This way it is just heads, hearts and tails only.
Gr8 Channel
Gr8 Lessons
Keep it Real
Many Smiling
Fans in
East Tennessee😎
Jessie, to triple distill let's say a whiskey would you stop to low wines then strip that again before a spirit or strip to low wines then run the remaining thru two spirit runs back to back?
Can you recommend a good book out there that teaches practical distilling and refining for flavour?
I like making multiple cuts when making gin. Even if I'm gonna blended all of it, it's just kinda cool to taste the different botanicals coming through at diff'rent times. Also I use rum to make gin. Works bloody well. Cheers all!
What u think about 1.5 distilling? Its when u strip and fill the boiler with a fresh mash and do the spirit run
Happy New Year Mate
If your ever bored there’s a great pod cast called Chase The Craft.... don’t no who makes it but it’s pretty cool 😂👍
Jesse - could you use the T500 with the reflux column to do the stripping run since it will basically give you the high ABV from start to finish. Than take the T500 with the Pot still option with the Gin basket? Or do I still need to do a stripping run with the reflux, run again for the cuts with the reflux column and than run the pot still with gin basket? I'm asking for a friend ;-)
Question from Sweden. Do you ever filter any of your Products through activated carbon? Our moonshine is basically clear alcohol about 90-95 % and then filtered min two times.
This videos make things Sooooooooo much easier 😉
I have questions! At what percentage do you stop your stripping run? And what percentage do you make your spirit run at for neutral? I have a pot still and I usually go down to 20% before I stop the stripping run on a 5 gallon wash. That leaves me about 30-40% ABV final product. I've been advised (by the internet) to add some distilled water and bring it down to 20% then use that to do the spirit run. Can I go higher? Can I just dump the 40% back in my pot still and do a low and slow run making cuts? EDIT... I do everything outdoors!
From what I've heard is that up to 40% is good to run again any hotter and you should proof it down and from what I've gathered it's for safety so we don't go boom
I believe 10 percent is a good point to stop at
I will usually add half the volume in water so no boom on the second run does not alter flavors
@@jackpotgaming420 Thanks for the advice!
@@jasonslezak150 Thank you!
Would you add water to your spirit run?
Is the t 500 a good still,, if not what do you recommend
I've been toying with the idea of getting into distilling my Mead. I'm kind of glad I didn't spend a bunch for something that doesn't work.
I distilled mead a while back it worked great 👍
@@StillIt Gotta wonder if a distilling expert thinks that multiple passes of distilling water would actually purify it more... Thoughts?
How do I do a double distillation of an oil that I distilled using the MH-DA4B Still for Alcohol & Essential Oil Making
Stripping Run? Is that like what we call Streaking in the States?
I'll see myself out.
I am told a thumper is a way of doing double distillation in one run. Recommended? If so what to fill the thumper with?
Awesome, thanks once again Jesse
Great video Jessie 👌
Love your work, fabulous talk on stripping and next runs etc, etc, I am loving this hobby , cheers.
Malted corn with gin botanicals cloves etc is a amazing flavour
My 4th wash run ever and it came out cloudy. Any ideas why?
Question can yo pause a run to continue at a later daye
Yep no problem 👍🏻
Great video mate.
Could somebody please help me, I am going to do a spirit run starting at 40%ABV in kettle, when finished and have some left in kettle, do I put into feints container or throw ?????
The perspective, insight, and guidance is much appreciated.
Have you made soju from choengju?
Makes mw think that for the ultinate gin you might want to run all the botanicals seperately to get each flavor optimal.
Another nice clip dude..... Why not just dump the tiny amount of heads on every striping run to lower the percentage of wet dog or cardboard heads on the final third or fourth run? Just a little loss 🤣
Thats some great advice
Thank you.
What about if you do keep some of the wet dog tails and let it sit for a while, will the tails smell/taste disappear?
No, it hangs around
Yes those wet dog tails follow you around forever , I was down at aldi the other day and could smell tail up and down isles and thought hell I must have spilt some on my cloths last month LOL but it turned out to be someone from Nimbin getting a trolley full of sugar
Good information
What is a cut.. I'm new to brewing spirts
Hey Jesse, What is your shirt size? I have a distilling shirt for you from a company you've never heard of that I'd like to send you.
Idea for a video:
* take cheepest / crappyest factory vodka
* dillute with distilled water, lets say to 20%
* do spirit run
* take best cuts, ajust proof and compare to the original
sounds interestingly expensive ..
Can you explain what is a Stripping Run and how it differs from the Spririt Run? Never heard these terms before so please help out a newbie :)
A stripping run is just the initial distillation to reduce the volume down, stripping the ethanol out of the fermented liquid that you are starting with. It's done because most home distillers don't have a still big enough to fit a decent sized mash in all at once, also you can do it fast. So first you do stripping runs to get a higher proof but otherwise "dirty" distillate. Then you combine all of that together and do your spirit run where more time and care is taken so that you make your cuts more accurately.
@@siggyincr7447 Thanks for all the great information. Great schooling video!
Jesse, I love your videos man but I disagree on your stance of not cutting in the stripping run. The start of your stripping run is such high purity heads it's a good opportunity to chuck some out without losing good stuff. That way in the spirit run you can cut the head sooner/higher and get flavours sooner with an acceptable level of jaggyness. Similar logic applies cutting deep tails from stripping or not going so low, unless doing rum etc.
The first cut is the deepest, baby I know !
Rod Stewart, better than Cheryl Crow version
There's a simple old saying that applies to lots of finished projects.
"Junk in = Junk out.
mate, ya gotta start washing your beard, you've got noodles in it that makes it look like you have grey hairs :)
How to subscribe again once you allready a subscriber? 😄😄
strange and artistic point of view. usually when I prepare a base of grains, I rely on the nose for the head and the temperature for the tail. precisely because of the bonds of odors that are created. badly cut a head or tail and you lose by drinking ... butane 😅
If ya doin triple cuts, the power usage, water usage comes into play.
Subbing, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
pfew... not an emo-kid video!
More talking videos