Spirit Runs with Mile Hi Distilling

hey guys it's Buu from mile HDE to cealing and today we're going to be doing a follow-up video on last week's video the link to that video is found Down Below in the description um it's important to watch that last video because we're doing a two-part process we had stripping runs last video and today we're going to be doing our spirit run so just to give you a real quick rundown of stripping runs in case you don't want to click that link you're too lazy I'd recommend you do however what stripping runs basically are is is we would be fermenting multiple batches of the same type of of recipe let's say three or four batches we distill all of those batches out we don't make our Cuts we just want to get as much alcohol out of those runs as we can then when we finish up there now we're here in our spirit run that's where we make our Cuts clean everything up um and we get a lot of yield uh with that process so here is our Bounty our our booty from last week we have four gallons worth of distillate at various proofs because remember in stripping runs you're going all the way down to 20 proof I mean you're starting at 150 going down to 20 as much alcohol possible so because there's so much between 100 to 20 in here it's all just going to kind of average out and ease out so we are starting in 130 proof on this first gallon jar and you'll see that when you watch last week's video as to why but the remainder are just going to be 30 40 and 50 proof in these jars and when we throw these all in the boiler we're going to clean it up and it's going to come out about I'm going to say 160 155 160 so uh without further Ado let's go ahead we're going to start with simply pouring our spirit in what we'll do is when this is all in we'll take another alcohol meter reading just so you can see kind of how those average out and then from there we're going to have to want we're going to want to get down to about 40% alcohol by volume 80 proof that's what we recommend um no more than that in the boiler and that ratio should be about a third a third of water to you know the other two3 being your alcohol and so after everything has been in we get a nice little soup of different Pro strengths alcohol and we take our alcohol reading we're sitting about 100 Proof that's why we love the pros guys we've talked to Austin at Balmer Peak Distillery guy does this every day and he shared a really really cool tip we got a little bit ahead of ourselves but what should have happened here is what he does is when he has his internal element remember this can never be dry fired so if any point things the volume goes below that element that element burns out how he combats that is first before he pours in his alcohol in a Spirit Run he's using water and getting right above that element line and that way when he pours out his alcohol remember we're we're claiming most of this for 4 gallons um even if you know we were claimed all those four gallons of alcohol we'd still have a safe element line hindsight 2020 but what what we're going to do is um since our alcohol is already in here we're just going to gauge you know we have about 4 inches to go uh to cover that element so that's what we'll do with water and we're going to be um less than our 80% ABV but that's okay we're just going to get above that element line make sure nothing bad happens and again things will still come out at 160 I don't think our flavor will be affected that much just to give you guys an idea of where your water line should be and then of course we put our top on and it's a waiting game for the heat up time I hope you guys can hear me this is bubbling pretty hard all right ladies and gentlemen here we are 20 minutes later and we are distilling so you know remember we do have a a really awesome controller Balmer Peaks controller is a 220 volt 5500 Watt and with that 8 gallon boiler I mean average heat up time is only about 30 minutes this one took 20 because keep in mind most of this 66% of this right now is alcohol alcohol is obviously at a much lower boiling point than water so faster heat up time now since we didn't make our Cuts in our stripping run we have to make it here in our spirit run so for now we're starting with a regular CL classic mason jar and we're just getting our four shots out now as as this run goes on you can go ahead and just do mason jars the whole way through I actually have some bottles that I'm going to be putting under this and wearing our hearts you guys may or may not remember from previous videos or just your own knowledge U but typically four shots which is the first part of the still uh for a pot still I mean I recommend 350 to 500 milliters and that that'll be our first cut so we're heading there pretty fast right now we're sitting about 200 in here everything's cold to the touch we're going to go just probably do a 300 350ml mark and cut it there so we did go ahead and take a taste test in our four shots when we were through and we went ahead and instead of going that 350 ml route we cut it at you know close to 500 just to be a little on the safer side all right here we are just filled our 12 oz worth of the heads and uh on to the second and let's take our taste test that's definitely alcohol um clearly still in heads very nail polish removery um cold which is nice and smooth which is why I can take such a horrible tasting shot and still be okay one thing is if you remember during our stripping run video we had this condenser pretty much as warm as it could get without physically blowing steam out um that's just to speed up the process now we're in our spirit run which is treated pretty much like a normal run so you want this to be cold to the touch and then you sort of just adjust your flow from there uh you know we're we're at slightly above a trickle um remember the the slower you're going on your output uh the less flavor you get out so we still want that flavor intact so we don't want to go super super slow we don't want a lot of copper packing we don't want our rationing Rings we don't want our reflux active none of that but um you want to find a good balance there we don't want to pump out too fast and then we're ruining what could be some extra Purity in our spirit we want this to be smooth ready to drink right out of the still running the math on everything I think we'll probably be looking about half a gallon worth of heads so what we'll do is after this jar we'll take a taste test if we don't like what's there I'm going to swap out one of these 12 oz mason jars for a 750ml bottle and we'll collect from there so as we fill up this second 12 O mason jar with heads I think originally you know we were planning on that 750 mil bottle under there but honest in just this short you know amount of time I think that flavors change it still definitely heads not something I drink but I want to say that we might be nearing the end believe it or not so instead of a big 750 we're going to do another 12 ounce and we're going to take it from there um I think past that we might be running in to Hearts which is when we'll definitely start collecting in our in our big bottles um stay tuned guys and as we fill up this second jar we're going to make the switch to a 750ml bottle I think we're pretty much out of our heads I feel somewhat confident I think we're we're going to be trilling over a little bit into this jar um we will have to take a taste test to determine kind of where we're at but in the previous ones we've done we did one about maybe two or three minutes ago and everything was looking okay I mean there's always going to be a little bit of residuals I think it's pretty hard to get 100% perfect cut when you make this um there's always Chace amounts of methanol in spirits um with distilleries they are governed you can only have a set amount of methanol uh in your bottle so those are always safe to drink for home distillers we have a little more leeway and nothing to really govern it other than our smell and taste you can send in a ethanol test kit to a lab um you can do your flame tests and all and all that sure but your main indicator is going to be your nose when you're here I mean we can't really mail something to a lab right now so we'll just use our our best discretion and remember you know we're trained innately as as caveman beings to identify poison um use that smell and taste you're going to be able to determine where that is all right guys looks like we're about half full in our first 750 ml jar not too hey we have multiple opinions here and uh I think the consensus is you know we've done a good job with the cut so to get get you guys a rough idea of what we saw in our heads we did have 500 mL of fores shots 12 O worth which were pitched already and then we had these two jars with heads plus about another half uh half a jar filled with heads that we ended up pitching and we ended up with about 30 o of of heads so everything now should be able to be pulled off and remember as we were talking earlier in this video we had four gallons of alcohol in here we are going to reclaim most of that and remember throughout this run you're just going to want to occasionally feel your condenser make sure you're still cold anything wrong with the flow during your taste tests um maybe you notice you know it's you don't like the flavor coming out try to increase your flow get more flavor out see what you like there and this goes without saying this is sort of just distilling 101 but know where you find the best control over your output is a combination of your water source and your heating source so you have to play around with both throughout this run I've been periodically changing the amount of water coming through with this ball valve that's gonna cool my condenser down of course when I do that less heat can travel through so I have to make adjustments on my controller there's small fine tune adjustments just periodically throughout the run and speak of the devil with our condenser so it's starting to get uh it's still cold but you can definitely feel that warming up we're using a water recirculation chamber so we have ice and water in U just a a container um and we're going to go ahead and ref that get this condenser a little cooler you're going to have to do that periodically through your run if that's a water source and to give you guys a rough idea too for our control our heating portion of everything we're sitting at about 6 amps out of 24 amps possible out of this controller about six so uh quarter of the way and you know that's 220 so it's it's definitely producing a lot more power than a 110 would but just to give you guys some guidelines let's go ahead and test the proof of our first jar collected of what should be Hearts okay we are right at 160 proof folks that's perfect that's just about I would say as high as we can get in a pot still with a Spirit Run and stripping run so as we finish filling our second 750ml bottle we'll go Ahad head and do the usual we'll take a taste test it's smelling really really good and it's tasting excellent I mean it's smooth um obviously there's still a bite cuz it's 160 proof well is it we'll find that out next because this is our next step we'll go ahead and take another proof reading make sure we're not dropping and in fact we've gained we're at 160 5 proof we are looking good now to that if you notice here this is completely full you have a choice here as a distiller you can fill these maybe 3/4 of the way full maybe a little more and that leaves room in this bottle for dilution we're not going to keep it at that 165 obviously we're not crazy we can fill this up with water dilute it bottle by bottle now Austin had a great Point here um if we want consistent our best bet is to actually collect everything once we're done collecting every last bit we can throw it all in one big container a mixing tank and dilute it there and then we have consistency in all our bottles that flavor doesn't change if we do it the way we're talking at first which is 3/4 of the way full and then fill this bottle up with water we're going to get different characters throughout each bottle so it's really your call we're choosing the consistent route and that's why our bottles are completely full at such a high proof another thing to point out is before you dilute if you're planning on Aging you'll want to uh not delute all the way you're taking a slow process and making it even slower when you do that so a lot of distillers professional and home alike they age at about 120 I've seen up to 140 it's called Barrel strength and keep that in mind if you're planning on Aging before you delute too much with water now guys I want to show you if you remember if you watched the stripping video you remember we had a little bit of a puke um throughout the run and it turned our distillate yellow during that puke we just let the St get ahead of us we were indisposed and came back we had some puking however as I had mentioned in there um no matter what you throw in the still any color it's going to come out clear as day when everything's being distilled again so I just want to show you the level of clarity we're getting this wash when it first went in was you know it was murky um we had water in there making it cloudy there was some yellow tint to it there was a lot going on but now we see just how clear things come out of the still all right guys third bottle down and we're at 155 proof now why we went down could be an indication when our heads I think that's unlikely more likely is that what we did is during this jar we actually turned down our controller uh turned up our controller and so that adjusted our speed we were trying to just get out a little bit faster and U looks like that affected our proof what you'll also see is we are transferring all these small jugs in into this larger one gon jug and the reason for that you may or may not do this during your stripping run is like I was mentioning before we're planning to take all our alcohol get it all together in one container and then dilute it and blend it from there so we have consistency in all of our bottles if you choose to go basically byy bottle you wouldn't do this part we're just doing it so we have everything why we're not just holding a gallon jug underneath this uh condenser is because remember we still have to make our Cuts so we still want to be safe we don't want to just collect everything in one big container if we get ahead of ourselves we're busy with something else and we don't make you know that flavor starts to change for the worse we just ruined our whole gallon by that so we're still making smaller cuts and then when everything's smelling good and tasting good we'll throw it in this bigger one so guys what we're doing is since we're going this route we're filling everything up at once you want to periodically take taste tests on that just to make sure your blend is actually going as to plan so we just did that we're liking what's coming out we'll fill this jar up which will then fill this gallon up or close to it and proceed to our next one uh with taste test on the still as well as taste test here we really can't do much wrong so our fourth 750mil jar has yielded about a 140 Proof as far as flavor goes I mean I don't really taste any Tails so I'm not sure why we continue to go down we must be heading somewhere in there the flavor is wonderful aside from the proof I'm really enjoying what's coming out so we're going to go ahead and put this into our big gallon Here Comes jar number five we're sitting at 140 still and that's pretty typical in a Spirit Run um we're going to be staying St stey at about 150 140 Proof for the majority of the run and then obviously our Tails will start dropping that um in pretty fast sucession so we're going to be watching stuff pretty closely we have achieved about a gallon here and we have 750 Ms another jar as well as this one filling up over here and uh remember every time you take your proof test go ahead and get that a sample as well and we're going to see if that flavor still coming through the way we like yeah I mean it's it's heavy on the grain bill um or it's heavy on the flavors coming through that grain is really prominent in there you can taste it um obviously it's at a higher proof so you still have that bite but you know for what it is 150 proof and it's going down pretty much like water small burn I think it's going to be phenomenal when we bring that proof down to that 80 sipping level um very very happy with it and this is clear this is white so this is before you even Oak and get all those oak flavors in I mean we have nowhere to go but up from here all right and as we head into our six jar 750ml bottle filled look like we're at 130 you know as we keep going down I mean that's always an indication we're heading into our Tails so one thing we didn't take into account and I apologize for the misinformation earlier on in this video I had mentioned that we would be collecting pretty much all of these four gallons worth of a 100 Proof distillate in our boiler one thing I didn't take into account is remember this still is producing about 150 proof distillate so obviously there's a scale we have to work with there to 200 proof scale 100 Proof in the boiler we're coming out 150 proof in the still itself on on our second run so we're losing about 50% of that to water and whatever we're coming out with a pure Spirit but obviously that accounts for our volume so we're not expecting four gallons in out of this unit anymore um we're expecting about 50% of that which is nearly what we have between our heads and our for shots and everything we've collected I reckon by the time we fill up this jar we're going to be at 115 120 and um then we'll go from there and where we go is really up to us as a distiller really until the alcohol tastes bad um it's not really set at a certain proof limit we're just going to keep taste testing and when we stop liking what we're making we end we can choose to then collect the rest of that and save it for another batch or stop um really up to you at this point in the Run we are getting a lot of that Oak smoked wheat that's kind of our special little tweak we had on this baby step Bourbon recipe and it's coming over pretty well we didn't taste it too much in the hearts um but you know it's it's coming over more it's it's noticeable on the back end of things um it's it's been a nice addition and it's only like I mentioned going to get better from here once we actually put this on Oak I think it's just going to be a really nice prominent um Oak flavor and jar number seven is yielding 120 proof we've been doing this the whole time out of this Balmer Peak Distillery glass as you remember from last video there is science behind this glass it does make things taste better and this is already delicious so this is going to be nothing but good those grains are coming through so well it's almost like legit eating the grains by themselves um really really happy with that however I think because we're getting so much of our grain flavor out pretty good indication to me we're in our Tails I think the the Esters and coders and everything in the tails are starting to mix and um if you guys have watched my making Cuts video you'll know that a lot of um a lot of the components found in uh Tails certain Esters um hexal acetate things like that they're used as flavor enhancers in cooking and things like that um they bring over lots of fruity notes different things like that so I think we're getting some of those out and with our proof dropping everything else all these other indications we're nearing the end here um but again it it's coming down to flavor um if we're liking what's coming out there's no reason to stop let's also take the time here to give this a quick swirl of our blend and taste test this see if we're still liking what's going on you know what I don't want to toot my own horn man man but that [ __ ] is golden I think it's really really good and in this second jar second gallon jug we're about 130 that's everything mixed together what we'll do is just out of curiosity I'm going to throw a little bit of jug number two a little bit of jug number one in a glass and give that a taste test that'll give us a really good idea of our final product here this is the the moment people let's see what we created I want to take the time here to thank everybody so far for watching supporting us please like And subscribe to videos if you enjoy what you see please leave comments we love hearing from you guys anything you guys want to see in future videos let us know and um without further Ado Cheers Cheers people take a show with me if you got one available so I like it a little bit less but it's still very very good jar number eight is netting us about 110 so if you guys have been following we're losing about 10 proof per 750ml bottle obviously that's not Sound Logic because as we advance further into our Tails things just kind of go Haywire um I I I would reckon that the next CH will be maybe 90 so we'll lose about 20 proof we'll we'll see if that ends up happening but as far as flavor goes which again is more important than the proof itself we're really liking what's coming over still um very heavy on the grains almost too much in my opinion but remember it's all being Blended together as one so I think the lower residuals the you know less abrasive alcohol we've gotten out out of this first uh first jar will sort of mix with this um you know very intense grain and just sort of blend all together so guys what we're noticing on this jar here is uh our flavor has started to change it's it's not bad um but it's noticeably changing and so we've decided to cut this one short and get another jar no harm in that we're liking what's in this we just took our taste test we'll put it into this gallon jug everything so far on these one gallon jugs we like so we'll put this in here and then as this fills up we'll taste test from there if we like it it goes in this jug if we don't like it it separates out it goes it either keeps in here or we decide to stop the run and Pitch It Whatever our call is um but you know we're we're nearing the end we can definitely tell um let's take a proof test on this jar see what we've got so yeah I mean we're we're at 100 and it looks like our run has completed so to give you guys an understanding of what we've produced here these are two 12 oz jars filled with our heads we have two gallons full of hearts and some tails that are both really really nice we finish off with about H 3/4 of a 750 ml bottle and that's sort of like our kind of there kind of not so um what we're planning to do is since we like these so much once again we're going to throw them in the same vessel and uh blend so we like everything coming out we want consistency in our bottles we'll take it all we'll get it aged and then we'll dilute down and um pour into bottles individually for this um again might be a Topper might be something we blend with might be something you know what we're going to do is experiment we're going to take some of both of these mix mix in a little bit of this and see if we like that and then proceed from there whether this goes into our full Blend or not but um as far as we know that is the run we're still collecting and as you can see we've increased our flow you might be able to see that's because this is still good alcohol but we don't really like any of it so we're just running it through like we would a stripping run as fast as possible we're getting the alcohol out so we can throw in the next batch but then we're doing just that we're just kind of throwing it to the side for next batch at this point you can decide if you want to do that as a as a distiller but that's it for us guys um wanted to thank you guys so much for watching I really hope you enjoyed this big shout out to Balmer Peak once again your friendly neighborhood Distillery they are awesome here make phenomenal spirits and um we're happy to be here we're happy that they've let us do all this we're happy that we can do these videos for you guys until next time guys

Channel: Mile Hi Distilling

Views: 9,369

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Id: 5ttX4mba3BI

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2023