Brewing and Fermentation

[Montegriffo]

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine strain in this Turbo Yeast is ethanol tolerant up to 18% ABV and capable of fermenting between 10—35°C liquid temperature (note: ethanol tolerance is significantly reduced above 26°C).

SPL Founder, Philip Jones first developed turbo yeasts and brought them to market over 20 years ago. Turbo Yeast is a range of fast fermenting yeasts combined with unique nutrition complexes for use in the production of alcoholic beverages.

They can be used to produce 96% potable alcohol, or can be used to create spirits, liqueurs or various flavoured alcoholic beverages (FABs) and have proved popular in creating products for the RTD category.

Combined with complete nutrition, our High Alcohol Turbo Yeast range contains products suited to various fermentation conditions, facilities, sugar sources and ABV requirements; no matter your needs, we’re confident we have a suitable product for you.

https://spl-int.com/yeast-products/high ... rbo-yeast/

So according to this, with temps between 10-26 C and the most tolerant yeast on the market you can ferment to a maximum of 18% alcohol.
If you want to increase the strength further you could try a little freeze distilling.
Water freezes at a higher temp' than alcohol so if you put it in your freezer for a few hours you can remove the ice which will be water and increase the % of what you leave behind.

[doc_loliday]

My father in law makes moonshine on the regular, with no science behind it at all. I'm pretty sure his method for removing methanol (he doesn't even know that word) and whatever other horrible chemicals that might be in there, is to pour out the first shot that comes out of the drip. I'm pretty sure he only does that because of tradition, not because of any technical knowledge of distilling. I've drank tons of it, but I can't help but wonder what kind of awful shit I might be ingesting. On the other hand he's been doing it for a long time and hundreds of people having drank a of lot of it without any ill effect, so maybe he's doing something right. Its good stuff though and it's strong enough to peel the paint of your walls. Anyway, somebody tell me if there's a good reason why I should never touch the stuff again.

Anyway, I'm excited to see how the mead turns out. I've always wanted to try brewing.

[brewster]

My father in law makes moonshine on the regular, with no science behind it at all. I'm pretty sure his method for removing methanol (he doesn't even know that word) and whatever other horrible chemicals that might be in there, is to pour out the first shot that comes out of the drip. I'm pretty sure he only does that because of tradition, not because of any technical knowledge of distilling. I've drank tons of it, but I can't help but wonder what kind of awful shit I might be ingesting. On the other hand he's been doing it for a long time and hundreds of people having drank a of lot of it without any ill effect, so maybe he's doing something right. Its good stuff though and it's strong enough to peel the paint of your walls. Anyway, somebody tell me if there's a good reason why I should never touch the stuff again.

Anyway, I'm excited to see how the mead turns out. I've always wanted to try brewing.

What I've heard is to ditch the 1st 1/5 of the distillation and the last 1/5. The problem comes when people selling it see that as money lost, and cheat. At the distillery they said they run it through with variations repeatedly till they literally have acetone left, and then sell that off.

EDIT: Found this https://www.clawhammersupply.com/blogs/ ... ind?page=2

How to Remove Methanol from Moonshine
One way to determine the presence of methanol is to monitor still temperature. If anything is produced by the still before wash temperature reaches 174 degrees, it's methanol. Discard it. Again, methanol boils at a lower temperature than ethanol and will concentrate at the beginning of distillation runs. Additionally, experienced distillers have determined that simply discarding a standard amount per batch, based on batch size, is enough to keep things safe. The rule of thumb is to discard 1/3 of a pint jar for every 5 gallons of wash being distilled.

How much initial product to discard:

1 gallon batch - discard the first 2/3 of a shot glass
5 gallon batch - discard the first 1/3 of a pint jar
10 gallon batch - discard the first 3/4 of a pint jar

So whether your FiL's shit is safe depends on the size of his batch!

[Speaker to Animals]

My father in law makes moonshine on the regular, with no science behind it at all. I'm pretty sure his method for removing methanol (he doesn't even know that word) and whatever other horrible chemicals that might be in there, is to pour out the first shot that comes out of the drip. I'm pretty sure he only does that because of tradition, not because of any technical knowledge of distilling. I've drank tons of it, but I can't help but wonder what kind of awful shit I might be ingesting. On the other hand he's been doing it for a long time and hundreds of people having drank a of lot of it without any ill effect, so maybe he's doing something right. Its good stuff though and it's strong enough to peel the paint of your walls. Anyway, somebody tell me if there's a good reason why I should never touch the stuff again.

Anyway, I'm excited to see how the mead turns out. I've always wanted to try brewing.

This sounds like a great man.

[Speaker to Animals]

Okay.

May have fucked up. Added camden tablets per direction, but also added yeast right afterward. Good chance the camden tablet killed my yeast. The grapefruit was removed a few days ago, but there were enough sugars in there to kickstart fermentation. I planned to add some blueberries but will just do that now. Defrosted two cups of some frozen NC blueberries. Adding another packet a yeast which is proofing now in a small batch of spring water.

[Montegriffo]

Okay.

May have fucked up. Added camden tablets per direction, but also added yeast right afterward. Good chance the camden tablet killed my yeast. The grapefruit was removed a few days ago, but there were enough sugars in there to kickstart fermentation. I planned to add some blueberries but will just do that now. Defrosted two cups of some frozen NC blueberries. Adding another packet a yeast which is proofing now in a small batch of spring water.

Camden tables are meant for sterilizing your mash tun. They turn to bleach when you add water.
Should be well rinsed after use.
Not sure why you were directed to add them to the mash?

Edit, I see they are recommended in order to kill wild yeasts.

[Speaker to Animals]

Okay.

May have fucked up. Added camden tablets per direction, but also added yeast right afterward. Good chance the camden tablet killed my yeast. The grapefruit was removed a few days ago, but there were enough sugars in there to kickstart fermentation. I planned to add some blueberries but will just do that now. Defrosted two cups of some frozen NC blueberries. Adding another packet a yeast which is proofing now in a small batch of spring water.

Camden tables are meant for sterilizing your mash tun. They turn to bleach when you add water.
Should be well rinsed after use.
Not sure why you were directed to add them to the mash?

It's called must in meadmaking. I didn't add it to the must. It told me to add it to the must plus the remaining water. Then add the yeast.

There seems to be conflicting info on this topic. Some say to wait 24 hours after adding the tablets. Others say the tablets cannot possibly kill all the yeast.

The first yeast was the batch given to me by default in the fermentation kit. It might have been bad too for all I know. I just threw in the yeast the guy gave me at the store.

[Montegriffo]

I was thinking of Milton tablets.

[Speaker to Animals]

It just kills bacteria, which I am wondering why you would even add this to mead, since honey does that anyway, without killing yeast.

[Montegriffo]

Wiki says one tablet per gallon of must/wort.
Did you add too much?

Also

Campden tablets (potassium or sodium metabisulfite)[1] are a sulfur-based product that is used primarily to sterilize wine, cider and in beer making to kill bacteria and to inhibit the growth of most wild yeast: this product is also used to eliminate both free chlorine and the more stable form, chloramine, from water solutions (e.g., drinking water from municipal sources). Campden tablets allow the amateur brewer to easily measure small quantities of sodium metabisulfite, so it can be used to protect against wild yeast and bacteria without affecting flavour. Untreated cider must frequently suffers from acetobacter contamination causing vinegar spoilage. Yeasts are resistant to the tablets but the acetobacter are easily killed off, hence treatment is important in cider production.

Maybe not so important for bacteria in mead but you don't want wild vinegar yeasts in your fermentation.