How To Make Vodka and Getting To 190 Proof In A Still

hey guys it's Fu from my high distilling about a month or so ago we showed you how to make a really simple wash called a sugar wash on our Channel about maybe 3 weeks ago or so we actually had a viewer request to show a flute running in pots to mode we took that Sugar wash put it in our boiler and basically made like a stripping type run for what was supposed to be a vodka originally made it about 160 proof uh very flavorful residual flavor of vodka in a way now we're finally completing what we originally set out to do we're going to be taking that distilled vodka we've got five gallons worth running it through our still now in full reflux mode and attempting to achieve an aot tropic level of spirit that's 190 proof that's what how you would classify a vodka at a professional standard so without further Ado let's just get right into it we're going to be pouring these in and we'll proceed from there for so one thing you might notice is we have a gallon that we left out of the solution in here there was two main reasons for that number one is provided I did my calculations correct if we have five gallons of about 130 proof vodka in or shine in this boiler it's going to leave me about a gallon and a half half of free water space and remember we we want 40% ABV or below in this boiler nothing more so if I ran my calculations correct if we had all five gallons in here topped off with that water we wouldn't meet that minimum so uh we just use four but it works out because another thing we're going to be doing here is side by-side comparisons we're going to see just how much this flute is stripping in reflx mode we're going to take it's not really a residual flavor vodka but it's it's packed it's very sweet vodka and I want to see compar it to our what should be completely neutral vodka so it'll be a fun little experiment all right guys so we are dripping we're sitting about 1 80 proof right now so I'm going to be making some small adjustments and trying to get this in the right place so Austin has shared some pretty good tips on this what he does is remember this deflator is really touchy if you provide enough water a cold water source to this deflator it's going to go into basically a full reflux mode so nothing with is still out we're barely at a drip we're just going to let everything kind of be going down and reboiling and that should hopefully make up for this 10 proof for losing trying to get to that 190 we're going to let everything boil in here reboil go through these plates that are bubbling away and then in about 10 minutes we'll loosen up on it slowly push things over and uh you know we might have to make small adjustments here and there to get there but we should hopefully be at 190 at that point regarding 190 before this whole journey we've been at trying to achieve this I guess I was pretty I had some misinformation in my head I thought it was much harder of a process than what I guess I've been told the past few weeks Austin at Balmer Peak he's got a 9section 6in flute from us he's able to achieve it pretty easy I have a few customers that are kind of saying the same thing that they were able to achieve that um I think it's just about kind of dialing things in I did try to do this about five or so years ago and it was really hard for me maybe chucked it up to not having enough experience maybe my equipment was an issue the way I was doing things was an issue so I'm excited to try again with a little more knowledge under my belt and hopefully get there speaking of this information one thing I was wrong about or these plates I always assume that in order to get the max amount of reflux 100% reflux all these caps had to be on the same side I didn't realize that when you did that and everything was on the same side it basically plugs you up so you're not getting any reflex so for these plates you want your tops caps facing up and that's giving you your reflux and then you'll have one at the bottom and that's allowing things to actually push back down into the other plates and create that reboil effect I'm learning a lot just actually distilling I've been in my high a long time and I thought you know for the most part I thought I in a way knew everything which is very foolish of me you should never assume that so I'm learning a lot actually getting in distilling I'm glad we can do this for you guys we're learning more on our our side as well so it's been really enlightening very fun experience so while we're waiting for this reflx mode to do what it needs to do let's explain our setup a little bit so as you can see we have six of these sections each section is going to have a bubble plate so we have six bubble plates in here and we have our deflator right now it's pretty cold to the touch because we're trying to get in full reflex mode with it from there we just have our reducer our uin to bring everything over into our condensing line which is pretty much ice cold and then if you watched the last video you're familiar with the rest we have a breather cup and then we have our parrot so parrot it's allowing everything to drip in as well as give us realtime proof readings that's how we know we're at 180 another thing that we added in that I forgot to mention this needle valve this is going to be pretty important if you're trying to achieve this 190 proof as far as I'm concerned a ball valve just doesn't cut it at least the experience I've had with one so a really high Precision needle valve is a good add-on to get for a flute if you're attempting to do this on your own let's try to get a closeup of these plates so we can see it in action we are at 188 right now we've made a few adjustments so as Austin explained to me which helped me is what we essentially did is kept things in full reflex mode for about 10 minutes or so uh then slightly eased up on this needle valve here it allowed us to introduce a little bit more Vapors coming through so we we were getting a little bit of a drip um coupled with a few small adjustments on the controller got us to about 185 we went back and did that same process again held it there for maybe another five or so minutes and now we're sitting at 188 so we've just refilled our ice bath water recirculation chamber getting this a little bit colder which may help made a few small adjustments on the controller open our valves up a little bit more and we're hoping that's going to be the added push we need to get to that 190 so guys we we did it we're we're sitting here at 190 we're going to do a closeup here but we have effectively achieved that AO guys you know what this High proof means right it's a celebratory shot folks there's no other alternative everyone get a shot glass ready take this with me folks we did it guys I'm really happy that we are filling up our first gallon jug and staying consistently at 190 the way I always saw things is getting to 190 is one story and staying there consistent is another I don't know how true that is because obviously my perceptions of 190 have been a little skewed up until now but I'm just glad we're consistently pushing that out we're not dropping too much when we refilled our water recirculation tank filled it with fresh ice we did see a little bit of that drop that variable and temperature kind of screwed us a little bit but we're back in flow we're staying where we need to be and we're just pushing through creating this uh this first jar in a second here we're probably going to do a comparison between our our two Spirits our 190 proof vodka and our 160 proof sugar Shine Moonshine whatever you want to call it and we're going to see just what that's doing the the taste test we've done done here it's alcohol that's that's it it's um I guess I was expecting a little more stripped and maybe that was foolish of me to to think that but we'll just have to see we'll do we'll do our side by side here shortly do do stay tuned to a future video where we're going to be filtering this as well so now when we filter we're going to have a comparison between our sugar shine our 190 proof vodka and then our 190 proof vodka filtered and we're really going to see there so stay tuned if you haven't already like this video subscribe to our Channel we're going to have future content all kinds of different content so now's the Moment of Truth guys we're going to go ahead and try both Spirits out and see if we really notice what's going on here so as you guys might be able to tell kind of filmed it a little bit SP fing tiny bit and right hand here is the 190 proof and left hand here is 160 there's a hell of a difference there so I don't really know how to describe what's going on here our pot still I think I messed up I think I grabbed the final gallon jug of our initial run so basically Tails um not always a bad thing sometimes Tails bring over characteristic this is just funky there's something in the poto mode um it's almost sweaty I don't really know how to describe it right side I like our clean Vodka it's uh tastes like alcohol maybe a maybe a hint of alcohol you know there's also a little bit of alcohol alcohol on the back end it's it's you know it's it's alcohol it's it's good so let's go ahead and pull that second jug and enter our third and as we fill about half a gallon full in this third gallon jug we're noticing a pretty consistent loss and proof we've done a few things since then one thing we did was that jug I had that was supposed to be for comparison with it being Tails I really messed up there I really should have brought something earlier in in the run and uh we just didn't want to keep it it was just not good wasn't a good comparison we want Prime right so we threw that back in the boiler so we're going to expect around another uh close to a gallon out from that but we're we're we're diminishing here we're at 130 140 Proof from our original 190 remember in this boiler we threw pre- distilled alcohol in that we had distilled previous viously but that wasn't all Hearts it wasn't all at 160 we were throwing tails in that were about 100 proof or so at minimum so we're seeing all that now we're definitely there I'm nearing the end of the run I think we may be filling up this gallon and potentially putting another half a gallon worth of a jug full um in the future so we'll keep you updated in the meantime I do want to thank you guys for watching if you guys have any suggestions for future videos or things that we can even do with this vodka please be sure to leave a comment if you have any notes on what we could have done for this vodka something we can do to improve this vodka please leave a comment we we want to hear that and as we said at about 130 proof I think we're going to switch out for a fourth jar now we're kind of debating here and we're using our taste test to kind of determine I think we're right now thinking about going down to about 80 proof and cutting things there but again taste is really going to tell us where to stop we're just going to keep going until we don't like what we're tasting anymore so who knows that could be at 120 proof that could be at 40 proof we don't really know so far we have our three full jars and also a little bit of a kicker probably going to put this on my pocket for later but we're filling up our fourth jar so we'll see how how far along we get there so as we head into about half a gallon full of our fourth jar we're starting to see that pretty tremendous Dro and proof we're nearing 80 and it's a little bit funky coming out it's it's sweet so it's still palatable but I think this is probably the end of the road here so out of 5 gallons of 160 proof we came out with about 3 and 1/2 gallons worth of 190 proof well in the tails you know started going down but two gallons full of 190 and then kind of proceeded down from there so overall happy with the yield think we did an okay job and we're looking forward to future videos we're going to be filtering this and maybe adding a few infusions a few different flavors to it um until next time guys thank you for watching

Channel: Mile Hi Distilling

Views: 6,807

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Id: VvFFiOY7v9A

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024