Personal pages/Season 2021/Distillations

Distillations 2021

I got started quite late, end of June - somehow Spring was quite busy or I just kept procrastinating.
I started with distilling some of the cider which I never got bottled. Not enough bottles and not enough interest, so I'm distilling it instead.

2021/06/27 D2 - 20litre golden delicious - about 900ml of 48%. It went straight into the gin balloon.

2021/06/28 D1 and D3, some mixture - approx. 40litres. 1000ml at 54%, 800ml at 30%. Straight into the gin balloon.

2021/06/29 D4 and D6, some mixture - approx. 40litres. 1000ml at 45%, 1000ml at 30%. Straight into the gin balloon.

2021/06/30 Dunno, some mixture - approx. 40litres. About 2000ml. Straight into the gin balloon.

2021/07/01 D7 and Dx, some mixture - approx. 30litres. 1000ml at 50%, 1000ml at 40%, 800ml at 30%. Straight into the gin balloon. This was with the new reflux cooler, seems quite an improvement.

2021/07/02 Starting on C6, Schneider juice, no extra sugar. Probably 30-35litres. Disappointing, 1000ml at 60%, 900ml at 30%.

2021/07/03 Continuing with C6, Probably 40litres.

2021/07/05 Finished C6, still disappointing, 1100ml at 45%, then some 30%. Gin-balloon.

C6 summary - overall disappointing. End result was about 2litres @ 68%. It did have some fungus growing on top, I cannot say if that may have had an impact. Basically, there is not sufficient sugar content to achieve a decent ethanol%. It is much like with the cidre.
The new powerful reflux cooler is too good, produces too much reflux - it is clearly noticeable when switching off to swap to the quiet one. Maybe with a PWM regulator, which I'm sure the servers have too.

2021/07/06 Starting on C5, probably 30-35litres. No fungus, just clean juice. 1000ml 50%, plus the rest. Maybe it would be an idea to distill twice? The gin balloon didn't have much else in there beforehand.