■ 🕑 25. Recently produced ~12 liters of "low wines" from sugar washes.
Biggest game changer in my fermentation for distillation lately: I add a tablespoon or two of diammonium phosphate and tiny pinch of magnesium sulfate per ~20L of ferment I do. Seems to make a pretty big difference: ferments go faster and cleaner.
Picked up about 200g of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) today and converted it to washing soda (sodium carbonate) by throwing it in a saucepan on the stove at a low heat and constantly stirring. Sure enough, I could see the powder "boiling" -- despite wearing a face mask, some funky smells came through. After about 20 minutes or so, the texture of the powder appeared to change, and the powder seemed to stop reacting.
Spilled a little in the process. Post-cook weight of sodium carbonate was about 120g which is consistent with the theory.
Tomorrow I'll be throwing my 12 liters of "low wines" into the pot still with 3-4 liters water and 4 tablespoons of washing soda. This should result in a large volume of hearts, which will be turned into... gin! this Saturday.