In this follow-up post to my Mad Lab Distillery visit, I will go over their stainless steel distillation set up. Their distillation process is quite complex, since they have to compensate for the lack of copper in their system. So let’s break down their distillation process.
Fermented Wash
Once the wash finishes fermenting in the IBCs, 1000 litres of wash is moved to the still pot. The heat is turned on. It takes 3-4 hours from the time the heat is turned on to when the first drops of distillate are collected. This is a relatively long time to wait, as it should usually take around one hour to start collecting distillate. I’m told that Mad Lab’s total distillate collection time is around 5-7 hours long.
Stripping Run Distillation
Generally for batch distillations, a stripping run distillation is performed, followed by a second spirit distillation. In the second distillation, cuts are made to the spirit based on flavour. At that time, the distillate is separated into heads, hearts, and tails. Mad Lab’s process is interesting because they make cuts to their spirit distillation and to their stripping run distillation too.
In their stripping run distillation, any distillate that comes out before the still reaches 80°C is considered foreshots and discarded. Then, they take 2L off the still as a heads cut. In this case I’ll refer to these different fractions as “stripped heads”, “stripped hearts”, and “stripped tails”, to avoid confusion with the cuts made later in the spirit distillation. Next is the “stripped hearts” which is everything collected until 40%abv. Anything collected below 40%abv is the “stripped tails”.
After the first distillation, our distillate is called “low wines”. The “low wines” are divided into different fractions. However, only the “stripped hearts” will undergo the spirit distillation. The rest of the distillate is added to the next stripping run.
Spirit Run Distillation
During the second distillation, we take 4L of foreshots, and 4-6L of heads. After that we start collecting our hearts. Hearts are collected until we hit 60%abv. Then, tails are collected until 30%abv. After that, Scott says it is no longer worth it to continue running the distillation. They will turn the still off at this point.
Mad Lab Distillery makes a variety of spirits such as raki, vodka, gin, and scotch-style whisky. So when they collect the hearts in the second distillation, anything collected above 80%abv will go to make gin, raki, and vodka. The distillate collected needs to be further distilled to produce these different kinds of spirits. The hearts that are collected between 80%abv and 60%abv will go into barrels to be matured into whiskey.
Limitations of a Stainless Steel Still
This is a pretty complicated distillation process, since many different fractions are collected. One of the reasons that it is complicated is because this stainless steel still setup has a lot of limitations. Scott didn’t have a lot of money when he started Mad Lab distillery, so their still is basically a bunch of things that he found and retrofitted together. Here we’ve got the pot where we load the wash into, we’ve got the thumper which acts as a “slobber box”, and the condenser of the still. The thumper keg is known as a slobber box since the keg is empty while the distillation runs. While the distillation runs, the slobber box will collect condensate.
If you’ve ever visited a distillery, you’ll find that most distilleries have beautiful shiny copper stills. Not only is copper pretty to look at, but it is known to help remove sulfurous compounds from the distillate to produce a cleaner tasting spirit. Copper is also extremely expensive. Purchasing a copper still was out of the question for Scott. Instead he made a stainless steel still. In order to achieve similar levels of sulfurous compound removal, Scott devised his current zero copper distillation method.
Vodka Distillation
While at the distillery I was intrigued by his vodka making process. I mentioned previously that anything collected above 80%abv is used for gin vodka, gin or raki. For their vodka making process, the spirit will be diluted with water to the correct %abv. Then the diluted spirit is slowly trickled into cornie kegs packed with activated charcoal. The spirit slowly filters through the activated charcoal in the first cornie keg and travels into the second cornie keg which is also full of activated charcoal. After passing through the second cornie keg, the vodka travels into a holding container where it is stored before bottling.
The filtration process is fairly slow, as it takes 2-3 hours to filter just 50 litres of vodka. The activated charcoal helps remove undesirable aromas and flavours in the vodka to create the pure and clean taste that vodka drinkers enjoy.
Watch it Below on YouTube
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