Small-Scale Distillation Projects | From Brewing Wash to Making Cuts

in this Northern Brewer video we're distilling Spirits with our friends at BSG handcraft and RAR Technical Center we Brew malt and sugar washes here at Northern Brewer then take the wash to the RTC for a two-day master class on small-scale distillation on both the grandfather G30 and the still spirits of air still stripping run Spirit Run dilution and the first round of taste testing for blending hello everyone here at nbhq I'm chip this is William we want to share some really cool video from a project that is ongoing at this point last week we spent two days at the RAR Technical Center which is on the RAR malting company campus with our good friend Ilya Soroka keywords for BSG handcraft represents still spirits line of everything knows a hell of a lot about distilling and distillation he also pushes their distilling equipment ingredients what not so he knows a lot we shot a bunch of video there that's going to roll out in the next weeks months or so but we wanted to kind of wrap it up at the very beginning and just share with you some of our personal perspective and just like nerd out a little bit about what we experienced while we were there if you want to make sure you do see those forthcoming videos from this series be sure to like this video subscribe to our YouTube channel ring that Bell of course and share this video with someone who will dig it all right let's get into it you're about to see a whole bunch of cool equipment and processes involved in distilling at RAR Technical Center but first it's very important to note that the RTC is a fully licensed Distillery for professional distillation we can't legally distill here at Northern Brewer HQ which is why we teamed up with BSG and RAR for this project however we can make wash here yes and that's what we decided to do we decided to make two batches of wash 10 gallons of malt derived wash 10 gallons of sugar derived watch The Malt wash we're going to put through the pot still version of the G30 and the sugar wash we're going to put through the condensed version of the G30 as well as the little guy the little tabletop air still for The Malt wash pretty much like any Brew day we made a worth of 100 raw two row malt added gluco amylase enzyme to help break down the sugars for fermentation ran off the work boiled it for just a few minutes to sterilize it then chilled it OG was 10.72 we pitched steel Spirits whiskey distillers yeast fermented it in the upper 70s and it dropped super low final gravity 0.998 for a malt wash with a starting ABV of about 9.7 percent had a very interesting spicy kind of phenolic we both noted the second we took the lid off the carboy we were like is this a Belgian like a Belgian table beer yeah but I'm sure that phenolic is also the booze but also this no hopped malt work fermented fairly warm yeah sugar wash process on the other hand was very unique something we never experienced I mean the thing I would liken it closest to is maybe a hard Seltzer but not really once we started adding things for the 10 gallons we started off with 25 pounds of sugar into the water to get us a OG of 1.102 which is almost off our hydrometer scale I believe uh so then we just did a quick 10 minute boil to sterilize that make sure nothing was in there that we didn't want in there doing the fermentation and then chilled that down to 70 degrees from there we uh per the instructions on the classic eight turbo yeast that we used we rehydrated that you want to make sure you rehydrate so that all the nutrients break down and get in solution and then we also just agitated that on our stir plate for about 10 minutes just again to make sure everything was in solution you can see that most of it broke down some stuff didn't break down we reached out that's okay you just want the majority of it to break down also important to note you want to use that full packet in each five gallons it's Blended for that so as you can see the high gravity sugar was a clear liquid after chili upon adding the yeast that was rehydrated it becomes this cloudy milky white uh that's where the fun kind of really starts to begin or diverge from what we're used to because you know we're like okay odd color but okay and then we added a turbo carbon which is going to help you get a cleaner spirit in the end and that stuff was mind-blowing to us uh you first you start off you massage the packet because it's really hard and it becomes you can see that you can feel it becomes more liquid and then you pour it in and it's like Squid Ink yeah and at first it went in the top so we're just seeing this little spot of black but once you stirred it up we're like is this right yeah are we fermenting grape juice and and the mixing of the milky white cloudy stuff with the the purpley black it was it was to be honest I think we double checked the instructions a few times it was just out of our Norm yeah and the the fermentation was equally wacky looking as well quick bit of video you can just see really aggressive fermentation but not a croissant of course but these big gooey Bubbles at the surface just pop in it just looks so strange it looks like something like out of the Black Lagoon yeah and even the the croizian ring left that like little it wasn't super thick but it was it was different fermentation of course only took a couple of days that yeast is meant to just power through it uh very look odd looking yeast cake gritty purple yeah it was odd when I went to clean it um definitely gritty purple black uh I wouldn't wear white shirts or pants or anything like that if that splashes on you the FG on this sugar wash Bonkers 0.985 making this a starting ABV of 15 for our sugar wash so here's where we get into the actual distillation our boy Ilya picked up five gallons of each The Malt and the sugar wash ahead of our video shoot he wanted to do a little uh pre-video distillation so that we kind of have that cooking show magic where there's like a turkey already in the oven he wanted to do a stripping run of each of those so that the day we were there and did a stripping one then we could combine it all it's kind of confusing there was a flow chart that that we were both a little like I trust you Ilya yeah so Tuesday of last week we rolled out the Shakopee Minnesota RAR malting company with our two kegs of wash very eager to get started we walked into the distillation space and we're kind of shocked really let's talk a little bit about the space it's not your average home domestics mix for sure it is a purpose-built room well laid out and small yeah um one of the things that pops out is that whole water manifold Bank there which is really just their cold water supply to each still so it looks overwhelming but it's just basically their faucet yeah this is a space where their Brew Crew their lab crew actually distill for r d purposes whether that's malts and enzymes flavorings equipment so it's really funny to see this like I can't remember how many is it three hectoliters I can't remember I believe so okay this like cool real still and then all of a sudden like a little G30 and a G30 and an air still yeah just to see kind of the processes uh uh comparatively laid out but it was small we were basically like behind you behind you yeah kind of like kitchen mode yeah and we all three got put to work I was shooting video for the most part but we definitely got put to work so let's look at our setup we got a grainfather G30 topped with the still Spirit stainless steel t500 reflux condenser five gallons capacity we've got another G30 topped with the still spirits copper alembic condenser better known as a pot still also five gallons capacity and then our little guy The Little Engine That Could the still spirits air still one gallon capacity again Ilya will be coming up to nbhq in the coming weeks to throw down some like legit knowledge in depth on these products but this is really just kind of a a bird's eye view at the process so we're about to say stripping run and spirit run a lot can you just like bird's eye view of what those are stripping run you are just pulling out the alcohol you don't care about the heads you don't care about the tails you don't care about anything you're just trying to get the alcohol out of there and basically you do a couple stripping runs to combine those together to get a more efficient Spirit Run and the Spirit Run is where you start separating out the heads the hearts the Tails um you're a little more concerned about these different sections of distillate yes versus on the first day you're just milking it yep squeezing it out yeah the next one you're trying to make it for us too because we didn't have to collect jars and throughout that entire process everything is just getting reduced and condensed it's almost kind of like making a syrup and condensing it but here you're leaving water behind and collecting really high proof alcohol liquid we should say every time we opened one of these distills afterwards it was absolutely not appealing smelling at all so you really are leaving behind unfavorables undesirables and collecting through this balance of temperature and attention the best parts of this wash yeah let's start with the air still this thing is so easy literally plug and play we added a gallon of wash to the boiler vessel and a packet of these ceramic boil enhancers who secured the lid plug it in and literally just let it go after heating up for about an hour you'll start to see some drips uh it'll start dripping slowly and kind of pick up speed and then it's about another hour hour and a half to collect the full distillate from that run once you've collected that full amount of disc lid it's as simple as unplugging it it's pretty easy and then we put that through the carbon filter overnight it was pretty slow so we just let it run overnight so we did that process twice to get a concentrated distillate and then we put that back in the air still and ran both stripping runs together to get um a concentrated discipline of about 80 percent ABV that will be cutting down and flavoring in a future video that's this little guy right here boom boom boom so two stripping runs got stripped combined Spirit Run bam that's what we got right there so that's two gallons of 15 alcohol down to three three quarters of a quart [Laughter] eighty percent for the G30 definitely more interaction engagement attention having to be paid whereas these air Stills are just awesome for setting and forgetting the G30 uh it's just like ballet it's this balance of kind of time temp counter water flow collecting knowing your Cuts very interesting to watch this process on a very small scale let's start with the condenser column not as hands off once again as the air still but not as complex as you're going to see in a minute with the pot still remember this sugar wash is 15 ABV at the start poured that Sugar wash into the boiler of the G30 attach the condenser column to the unit as well as all the liquid ends and outs what's happening in this setup can you tell me a little bit about how the condenser works yeah Ilia can describe it much better than I can but basically it's a reflux column going up and you're basically it's packed with a stainless steel and copper Saddles they're called widgets sometimes people call them and those cause the the steam to recondense drop back down and in a nutshell you're causing a bunch of micro distilling happening up through that column so you're getting a very clean alcohol coming out and a stronger alcohol okay so this one we're a little less worried about taking these many many Cuts because it's kind of like as long as you get the beginning and the end out of there the middle is pretty neutral Spirit yeah yep day one Ilia stripping run five gallons of wash down to two and a half liters at 90 ABV day two when we were all there we did three gallons of wash down to about one and a half liter at 90 ABV day three is a group we combined and diluted it to 52 by adding almost equal amount of water then we ran it through once again for a spirit run which yielded an end product of about four liters at 90 percent distillate bam this thingy thing thing right here yeah there's no joke um I know we didn't dilute it uh the day of shooting but we do plan to gauge whether or not we want to and by how much when Ilya is here later um I will say we tasted all of these along the way very interesting not nearly as complex as the evolution of flavored in the pot still yes you could this is a easier learning one because like you're going to say I think the beginning the the heads you can it's more harsh chemical nail polish yeah and then you start picking up all this little sweetness and all of a sudden that nail polish is just gone and you know it's you get alcohol burn because it's 90 percent alcohol but it's so sweet and clean and there are times that it was kind of cinnamony or Berry or maybe I'm confused with the pasta but either way in the distilling process there's like these flavors that come and go and you might want to capture one segment which is what we'll talk about right now the pot's still much more intricate uh Ilia had us collecting and separating the whole way all hands on deck running and gunning to keep up with it remember we're starting here with a 10 ABV malt wash stripping run fairly simple you just kind of let it go maybe collect the middle 80 percent or or whatever but Ilia stripping run five gallons to about three and a quarter at forty ABV day two when we're all there five gallons down to about three and a half liter at again about 40. Spirit Run much more intricate and complex we basically set aside a whole day um because we were he put us to work like every 100 milliliters he wanted that isolated in a jar we were labeling it in consequential or in sequential order as well as it slowly decreasing proof but it wasn't decreasing by much we're talking like maybe 75 over the course of what we decided to keep and it's interesting because it hung out like you could definitely tell you're probably in the middle there so it hung out and as it gets closer to the Tails all of a sudden that proof did drop quicker over those hundred milliliters I think that's worth a taste sweet yeah yeah I thought it was a keeper too yeah and we were saving all these jars because Ilya wants to really demonstrate the idea of blending and when we did our first little round of taste testing you could tell those like first six seven jars he was not happy with if you were noting I was I was trying to learn I mean my palette Ali has a much better palette for this type of thing it's very new to me and when you're tasting that high alcohol it is hard to discern different things but there are a few things you can like there's bitterness in there there's just some other like again that higher alcohol where you just it's just nail polish or other removers but then it starts transitioning yeah and you start getting lack of a better term almost multi characters like grassy was noted um cinnamon was one in there I think two that was super good and interesting like how much that was just cinnamon yeah and then yeah towards Vienna as we're getting more into the Tails which actually have more of the flavor I think that's where you noted um a berry or uh yeah a little kind of strawberry dark berry but then at the end and there was a definite point where it's like this is starting to taste like meat yeah to me it was more Umami yeah kept calling it like meat meaty or mineral not in a great way like mineral could be a good descriptor in the middle but yeah that was almost like and he did note like you might want some of that mineral because it if it was just that mineral none of the meatiness it was a nice characteristic to it almost like on a Pilsner it's really dry and you get some of that water character coming through right so you know we have all these jars the idea is we're going to blend exactly what we want and then the rest will probably go back for another batch that's the thing like as long as you are really picky about the high quality stuff now you have extra it's almost like a Solera right it like goes into the next batch a lot of bigger distillers will keep all their tails and just keep using that to pull out a little bit more ethanol I could see the pot still stuff some of that if you don't want it you could run it through that reflux condenser and get that clean Spirit out of there or even your air still if you have this exact setup um so real quick that was a lot of talked and I hope you enjoyed the really cool video um just so cool for us and this is going to be even cooler when Ilya gets in here and like starts dropping like some serious technical info not just us being like here's what I did at distillation camp this summer uh Elias coming in to help us with some product videos we're gonna blend that pot still batch here uh dilute the condenser badge possibly and then we're going to flavor the neutral Spirit most likely with some of those still spirits they have everything from like rum gin tequila white rum dark rum everything there's things I was like I didn't even know that existed as a as a spirit yeah yeah so these concentrated flavorings so we're gonna play around with a bunch of those it's not the end of our interest and distillation by far so come along on the journey yeah subscribe to our YouTube channel let us know in the comments below what uh specific topics you would like maybe to see us cover because Ilya is going to be here he's going to talk about these products but he can talk about just about any other topic this verse that at FAQs of distillation so let us know what you're interested about until then cheers I'm scared I know to clink them too hard I'm gonna go pass out now [Music]

Channel: NorthernBrewerTV

Views: 6,866

Keywords: distilling, spirits, how to distill, how to distill spirits at home, small-scale distilling, making whiskey, making neutral spirit, how to make sugar wash, how to make malt wash, still spirits, the grainfather, reflux condenser, pot still

Id: U_wSkiJBJSM

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023