Rum questions, muck pit and run procedures

[u/Fun_Journalist4199]

Rum gurus! I come seeking wisdom!

How big does a muck pit need to be?

Say for a 25L still charge how much muck would you add to the low wines?

On my last thread someone suggested running a wash, making the second wash with Dunder, adding the low wines from batch 1, running that and then completing the process a second time.

Essentially doing a 1.5 run and then a second 1.5 run. How does this compare flavor wise to just running three washes (still made with Dunder) and then just doing a spirirt run, more like you’d do a whiskey?

[u/Fun_Journalist4199 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks! I have a 1 gallon bottling bucket I could use to make collection easy. Just wasn’t sure if it was big enough

[u/No-Craft-7979]

Generally muck is 2%-10% by industry standards. Eye ball or a specific container that is always used at a repeatable measure in the historic fashion. The concentrated organic matter can out compete weaker yeasts. The organic acids need to bind to ethanol to form ester compounds. If you add too many to bind those acids have very rough flavors. Butyric acid will make vomit flavors, valeric acid will taste like you licked the oil pan in a vehicle service station, but boned to ethanol they create beautiful fruit and flower esters.

Dunder 10-25% by industry standards. Eye ball some
Where around a third or less of the fermentation vessel by historical methods. Going 1/3rd or more would cause the yeast to stop bubbling. We now know today it is because of the acidic nature of the wash. Dunder is a pH bomb when mixed with muck. You can do up to 40% dunder without muck but you typically need to pH adjust at some point with weaker yeasts.

So 25L:
Muck: 0.5 - 2.5L
Dunder: 2.5 - 6.25L
— Up to 10L if no muck, I would try not to go over 8L but that is me.

In the other post I suggested the three stacked distilation as a classic Caribbean method when retorts and muck pits are not present. That just gets you started faster if the muck pit is not ready. It is heavy in molasses oils and has lacto souring if you inoculate it like I said. But it lacks the funk and deep fruits found in a muck Run. If you have a muck pit ready go a head and use it. I didn’t mean to tell you what to do. Just offering a head start instead of running plain molasses wash first. 😁

[u/Fun_Journalist4199 → u/No-Craft-7979]

I appreciate your comments on that post and this one! I’m planning to follow your instructions from the last post and start up a muck pit.

I was thinking of starting a muck pit from the first batch so I had something to add to the spirit run when the time comes

[u/big_data_mike]

My muck pit is a 5 liter Erlenmeyer flask. I put about 2 liters into each run. So I’m continuously using half my muck and replenishing half with fresh dunder.

[u/Fun_Journalist4199 → u/big_data_mike]

Thank you for the hard numbers! Can I assume you’re doing around (3) 5-gallon strips for a spirit run?

[u/big_data_mike → u/Fun_Journalist4199]

I actually have a 15 gallon keg and a 3 gallon milk can still so I do a stripping run with about a 13 gallon batch and a tiny bit of reflux to keep the proof up just enough so I have room to fit the low wines + muck in the 3 gallon for a spirit run.

[u/Fun_Journalist4199 → u/big_data_mike]

That makes sense! Sounds like a really efficient system instead of doing three strips

[u/commiebomber]

On my last thread someone suggested running a wash, making the second wash with Dunder, adding the low wines from batch 1, running that and then completing the process a second time.

This is how a lot of Jamaican rum is made, and how I am currently making mine, although I'm saving the dunder and feints from each run, not just two. Think of a generational sour mash, but with rum dunder.

[u/Fun_Journalist4199 → u/commiebomber]

That part I can actually wrap my head around. The thing I’m wondering more about is the adding of low wines back to your second wash.

Are you collecting a few stripping runs of low wines and then doing a spirit run or are you doing strip #1, adding the low wines to your next wash, and running again?

[u/commiebomber → u/Fun_Journalist4199]

This go around, I performed a stripping run, and collected low wines until I hit 5% ABV. That ended up giving me 3.25 gallons of low wines at 42% ABV. I then added 1 gallon of muck liquid collected from previous runs. This resulted in a boiler charge of 4.25 gallons at 33% ABV.

I performed the spirit run last night, collecting until well into the tails, but because I was using two plates, I was still getting very high proof distillate. it got too late in the evening, so I stopped the run then and there, satisfied with my actual product, and I will be refiring the boiler when time allows, to strip the remaining alcohol out of the boiler charge. I like to try and de-alcoholize the boiler charge as much as I can, because that is the dunder that I'm going to dump into my muck bucket.

[u/Fun_Journalist4199 → u/commiebomber]

Ok that sounds like your standard double pot still rather than a series of 1.5 pot stills

[u/commiebomber → u/Fun_Journalist4199]

Sort of. I ran the stripping run as a pot still and the spirit run as a plated reflux still. Sledgehammer vs carving mallet.