TIPS AND TRICKS MEASURING ABV
Well welcome back. This is the channel that will offer you as much information as we possibly can. But this is not your only source. It's still it and four beards and board, all two excellent channels for you to garner some other tips and tricks and processes and procedures to satisfy your brewing or distilling pleasures.
Now, today we've got what I have today is simply a couple of things that I want to show you and demonstrate. And I'm actually doing a little bit of time lapse photography for you to show you some things that happened. We're going to do a group quick cleaning. Don't let this intimidate you. We'll do some mix up of a cleaning solution for my copper wire but to show you how to do that one more time. I've got a liter of water and we're going to do that someone noticed in my two rice fermenters back here, an adaptation, and we're going to discuss that.
And also all the questions that have arisen from what do I think the alcohol by volume is of my Saki? Well, we're going to show you how I actually can determine that using the oven ometer. And I'll also throw that link in below. So you can order one of those if you want to, they're somewhere around 10 bucks, but they're valuable to have.
Let's get this thing going. Now, I have here my prime Still, this is one of the visible glass portions that's full of these, these copper springs. And now these copper springs are ever used, you know, of course, all copper starts to turn tarnished. And that's the activity of it with us. other chemicals that go through the steel and also with some air. This reaction on the surface of the copper causes it to get dull and dingy looking. So you want to clean that up. And as a matter of fact that this video is going to show you why you should clean that up.
So let's get to move into this is nothing more than a stand for that so that we can watch it. Um, nothing's particular you don't absolutely have to have one of these. As a matter of fact, you use a mason jar to do all this stuff with Okay, I have all one liter there's a little bit more than a quart of one liter of water, just straight water. I have 100 milliliters of hydrogen peroxide. Yes, the 3% and all I've got to do is add these two together to start with and the only thing I need now is I need To lower the pH and make this an acidic environment, which requires for this size 40 grams, about an ounce and a half of citric acid.
Now, I'll add that in there, all I've got to do now is just give this thing a good shake, and get it mixed. We're gonna let that set simmer for just a little bit as I assemble this. Now, um, again, like I said, you don't really need one of these. I just do it like this, because it's so simple. And oh, by the way, this came with a skill, so why not use it. Now, oh, once I clamp this on here, all I'm going to do is pour that in and allow that to sit, which you'll see over a period of time and this takes all it takes less than 24 hours.
But what you'll see over a period of time is you'll see a definite change of color have, first of all the copper itself and also of the color of the liquid, which will turn a greenish blue will show you that if you ever wondered why if you're running a copper still and or you've never cleaned out your packing why sometimes your distillate comes out and it's blue. This will show you why.
Now all I gotta do is fill this up. There we go. Good. I'll throw the cap honor. And we're going to let this set and we will come back to show you this in a couple hours. And you'll see a distinct difference from where we are now and where we will be then. So let me set that aside. Now I need to grab one more thing to show you this. Okay, I cut off a piece of copper from my roll of copper mesh. And this is not extremely dirty, but I can tell that it's dull. What I'm gonna do is just roll this up.
And this is again just for a demonstration, and we'll put that in this little pint jar. And since I got a bunch of disks left over, I'm only going to fill this halfway because what I want to demonstrate to you is when we do this, you'll see how half of this copper will clean in the top half. Pull that out, look at that. So I'll let that sit there. My gosh, we're just about at the point of Yeah, let's describe it.
Yeah, I have you asked the question. Did you see this on the other video, um, it was in the one of the corners of the video, which Oh, by the way, in that corner right there is the subscribe button. Hit so Subscribe, click the bell you'll get notifications. That's all I can ask of you we're nearing 50,000 subscribers. Of course my goal is a billion but you know not gonna get there.
But let's do this. Here's what I got. I've got these are both rice that have been fermenting for several days over a week now. It's a wonderful process because the rice is converted to fermentable sugars at the same time as the eastern eating. Okay, let me grab what I need to show you. And then I'll describe what I've got here.
Alright, I got it now. I got one of these. What does that say about the heat blanket? plain and simple, you know and a lot of people will advise you not to do what I did. But I find no problem in what I've accomplished with this little device. This thing I think it would cost me like 24 bucks. Well, if you take that blanket out, and what I did was I just chopped off the end of it with a pair of scissors, and it opens up. And what's inside here are all these wires, but actually, it's just one long wire. And that wire goes down, up and down and up and down. The two ends of it, come back to the controller.
And that's this puppy right here. Now this has an auto off after 10 hours and you can set it from one to 10 which would be high. And here's the plug in. So here's the connector right here and all this is resistance wire. So it won't get it's not like well, you know, toasters have resistance wire and they turn red hot. Well, that's because there's a lot of resistance in there.
But this is low resistance wire so that it can only get so hot. It gets warm enough and if you what I did is I took out you put a piece of tape here and I wrapped it around this fermenter and then we're wrapped around this fermenter and right now I've got it set on said about seven and a half. And I'm trying to maintain and it's doing very well maintaining about 82 degrees Fahrenheit in both of these fermenters so that they will continue to ferment because what happens is is at night f these will start to cool down and once you know that once you get a mass this much of a volume to a certain temperature, it loses that energy a lot quicker than it retains it and then once it drops down and the fermentation stops, it takes forever in a day. And I keep the shop about 76 degrees but it takes forever.
For it to warm back up. So what we do is we all assist that by just wrapping this wire around here and I can feel it. It's nice and warm. But what that does is it just keeps the fermenter warm. So that's what I got going on now, I thought it was the monitor in there and test every once in a while just to make sure it's where I wanted to be and I can adjust my temperature control right now.
I've got it set just about where I like it. I've taken this lid off of this one because I keep opening it up so often now that we're at that point, I'll show you again another example of as a matter of fact, look at this. There you can see all these bubbles appearing, rolling right up the top and right out of our airlock. So you can actually see the fermentation taking place as a co2 is rising. Now here's what's really interesting. Remember I talked about the potential for my Rice to be so compact, that co2 gets trapped. And there's bubbles down.
Now these are spaces where I've got co2 trapped, that hasn't been released yet. So again, if I insert and stir that all that co2 will release and you'll see a whole bunch of, I call it going bad as crazy for a few seconds, and then that will all fill in solid. And then again, as it continues to ferment, these bubbles will start to or these pockets will start to appear again, that's just because that rice is so compact, it can hold that in there.
That is not amazing. I can sit here and watch this happen, and it's almost mesmerizing. So here let me show you as an example, and I'll just take this off. It's just a piece of saran wrap with a rubber band around it. And I want you to watch what happens and you'll see all these bubbles. As I just insert this spoon in. I release all those bubbles. At the bottom, look at that.
See, I'm releasing, I'm releasing all of that captured co2. And it's going nuts. So that's what we got. So give me an opportunity. I'll put this all back together and we'll come back and talk about that denominator. All right, if you'll recall when we made that, Saki, I explained that that one of the challenges was that since we weren't able to take in initial gravity reading because the conversion and the fermentation were happening at the same time.
You see, Normally, you would convert all to fermentable sugars and measure that and then ferment that. Which means that you can determine what your alcohol by volume would be. Well, when it comes to Saki, if you're doing it that way, that's the old traditional method, then it's almost impossible. But what we have is another device called a denominator and That's what that looked like. It's just a small tube and it's marked and graduated on the ends here and I'm going to do a close up of this just a moment. Now, the way this works is I'll use a small pivot, and I'll pull some of this see that Saki is nice and clear what all awesome color that has. Now, this Psaki was actually cold.
So if you're trying to clarify a spirit, you can do even use chemicals, you can allow gravity work in your favor, and you can also co crash it which is just put it in a freezer for a couple of hours and that cold temperature will cause most of everything to fall to the bottom and then you'll have your clear liquid on top. So I did that and I carefully transferred it into another jar. It really wasn't that cloudy to start with.
So what I'll do is you just put it in, fill this top reservoir about halfway, and you allow six drops to drip out. And what that does is it just makes sure that the entire thing is full of liquid. Now if you've got some solid particulates, or you're testing something that's you know that's murky, you're going to have a challenge because this has got a very, very small orifice that measures the percentage of alcohol as it leaves this cylinder. But what will happen is you let six drips drip out, and then you dump it, turn it over, and then you can watch it from the top as it starts to work its way back down.
Now that the level of liquid will stop at the percentage of alcohol that it is measuring, whether that be 1% 2% all the way up to 25%. Now, I have a rough guess I'm always thinking probably 18 or so but I was absolutely pleasantly surprised when I tested this. Now, its accuracy is there can be some question, okay. Look, but you're measuring the viscosity which is How we measure gravity in the first place. So you're measuring the viscosity of this fluid as it's leaving. It's as accurate as you're going to get without any other method.
So, is it a really good ballpark figure? you man? Absolutely. You better believe it. Otherwise, you're left to guess. And we know what happens when you guess. You're just out there flapping yet really have no good idea. No, you don't have a close idea. Let's give that a try.
Write us a little pipat. And I'll feel this about halfway through a little bit more than halfway. Sorry about that. There we go about halfway. And already there's one drop already for me 123 We go or five and six, that means that that thing is full. Okay, folks don't do this at home. I'm gonna do it here because my shop is dumping. Now you should be able to watch.
As you can see, it starts, it's starting to fall down. And you'll watch that as it makes its way I'm going to try to watch this at the same time with you. Because it's not that easy to determine. It's really hard to look at. Now, ah, hope you're able to see what I'm looking at. You can see where the liquid stopped right here. Right above that. 20 Mark, it's 21%. So, my denominator tells me that this is 21% alcohol by volume, which is pretty darn good for a stocking run, and we've done nothing else to it.
Again, all I did was Cold Crush it now, here comes the next challenge is, yeah, of course this is reusable but how do you keep it clean? Well, one thing is to put water into the same thing, turn it upside down, just let it all run out. But then it tends to get air bubbles and stuff and it can serve 91% I isopropyl alcohol with you. What's good about isopropyl alcohol is that it evaporates really well.
So if I take a little bit of that, but there we go. And it also does a good job at displacing water because it mixes with it really, really well. And so when this runs out what it'll do is it's going to clean it'll sanitize it at the same time. There goes one, and I'll let that drip a couple of times and then I'll dump it out and leave it turned upside down so that everything will run out of it and that isopropyl alcohol will evaporate and it takes that water with it so it will clean out the inside of this and it won't even air bubbles. Mix it usable over and over and over again.
So all you gotta do is be cautious with it. There we go. And then find a place to set that where it won't fall over and allow that to run all the way out. Now one more thing I want to show you now this has only been about 20 maybe 20 minutes or less. And you can already see you can already start to see that green hue that's in there. You see that? That was stat stainless This is a stainless steel scrub pad that keeps them together. And you can already see that green he starts to develop.
So this is a good indicator In this one, there you go. You see that I've got a real lightweight change: green dope or blue Well, be back and I'll show you in a few hours. Here we have four hours. I look at this. I turn it sideways. You see how clean that is? As opposed to what's at the top and so far or see that blue there and they are much cleaner. I'm gonna let this go for another day.
That's a wrap for you. So that does it. Now you can see why when you run that copper still with copper scrubbers in it or whatever you do or your stainless steel, and you're not cleaning that caught those copper mesh. You can see why sometimes your display will come out with a little bit of greenish blue tint. It's really easy to clean. So I share that with you. And of course, as always come back to this anytime for more information.