“All things distilling.for spirited people” – Published Dec 3, 2021 If ever you distil your mash and find that you get a blue-ish colour (and perhaps even a copper/metallic taste) don’t drink it! It is not fit for human consumption. When distilling “faulty” mashes the distillate will start off with a bluish colour and slowly the blue-ishness will turn less blue as you continue to distil.
- These faulty mashes is the result of chemical reaction between the copper of your still and ammonia.
- To explain: Nitrogen is used in many nutrients to allow the yeast to grow and ferment healthy.
- However, too much unconsumed nutrients can also create a problem during distilling.
- The nitrogen (from the nutrients) reacts in an alkaline environment to form ammonia.
The more residual nitrogen and the more alkaline the mash, the more ammonia results. This ammonia then corrodes the copper and results in a “blue-ish distillate which tastes not good at all. “Blue-ish” distillate should be discarded and is not fit for human consumption.
- To prevent this: Use less nitrogen containing nutrients and ensure the pash pH is acidic rather than alkaline – easy as that! If you do expect the mash to contain residual nitrogen just before distillation, make sure to keep the pH low (acidic) before distillation.
- An alkaline mash makes the nitrogen/ammonia/copper problem even worse.
Ideally your mash’s pH shuld be between 4 and 5.5 (use pH test strips to confirm this). After a blue run, just flush all copper with clean water and it will be fine again.
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Is it safe to drink blue moonshine?
Why Did My Moonshine Come Out Blue? on MoonshineDVD.com Brown-colored apple pie moonshine. When it’s made correctly, moonshine should possess a crystal clear appearance — similar to good old fashioned H2O. Whether it’s brown (shown to the right), orange, or blue, colored moonshine is usually an indication of something wrong.
- Blue in particular can be alarming, as most people associate blue with heavy chemicals.
- Does this mean you should toss out your batch of blue shine and reattempt another batch in your still? The short answer is NO, you shouldn’t drink blue-colored moonshine.
- There’s always a chance that the color was caused by some natural organic reaction, but there’s also a chance that it was caused by some buildup of toxic chemicals and/or heavy minerals.
Regardless of how badly you want to test it out, it’s not worth jeopardizing your health. Pour the blue moonshine down the drain and try again with a fresh batch. It’s also recommended that you dispose of any mash or other ingredients used in connection with your blue moonshine.
Even if they aren’t tainted, it’s simply not worth taking the risk. Mash is cheap and easy to make, so there’s no reason why you should keep it. What causes some moonshine to come out with a blue color? Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer to this question, as it could be one of dozens of different possibilities.
Coppers stills, for instance, are known to react with salts and other impurities. If these impurities are left inside your still when you use it to create moonshine, your batch of shine could turn out blue. Copper is the metal of choice for moonshine stills, but you must still clean them thoroughly before each use to ensure there’s no impurities or contaminants lingering behind.
- So if you’re planning to create another batch of moonshine, make sure you clean your still thoroughly beforehand.
- Don’t just wipe it down with an old towel and call it a day, but instead use white apple cider vinegar to clean each and every component of your still.
- Apple cider vinegar is a safe all-natural compound with anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.
Unlike bleach or other harsh chemicals, you don’t have to worry about tainting your still when using it. When you are finished cleaning your still, you can make a second attempt to create a batch of moonshine. Hopefully, a clean still will do the trick by preserving its clear appearance.
What is the sediment at the bottom of moonshine?
Why is sediment forming in spirit after carbon filtration? This is a very rare occurance. The fine sediment is in fact mineral salts which originate within the activated carbon itself. When spirit runs over activated carbon which contains some mineral salts, some mineral salts can be absorbed into the spirit.
- Later, once the temperature has dropped, these mineral salts start to become insoluble in the spirit and after a few days a fine sediment appears in the spirit.
- This fine sediment (sometimes looks like a milky haze, other times it drops to the bottom of the bottle) is the mineral salts originally from the activated carbon.
These mineral salts are absolutely 100% safe (in fact essential for life!) but you don’t want them in your spirit. Under certain circumstances, some of this residual mineral content gets dissolved into distillate spirit as the spirit flows over the activated carbon.
Think of it this way, as the spirit passes through the activated carbon, the carbon absorbs the vast majority of ‘volatiles’ from the spirit and holds them within the internal pore structure – however, under certain circumstances, mineral salts contained within the carbon may pass into the spirit. Whether mineral salts do indeed get dissolved into the spirit depends upon 2 main variables: 1.
The amount and types of mineral salts within the particular batch of carbon.2. The pH and chelate chemical (eg organic acids like citrate are a chelating agent) content of the spirit. Obviously, we have no control over 1. In a perfect world we would persuade the supplier to first wash with an inorganic acid like they currently do and then wash with organic acids to remove the remaining salt content.
These mineral salts remain soluble in the spirit for some minutes / hours because the spirit temperature is warm and so has higher solubility. After the spirit has cooled, these mineral salts will begin to become insoluble. If you had a spectrophotometer to measure even the slightest haze, you would begin to ‘see’ the spirit ‘go hazy’ after just a few hours.
To the naked eye, you will not start to see these solids until after 2 or 3 days (may be less or more depending upon the level of mineral salts present). Re-filtering through activated carbon will not help, but ‘re-filtering’ through an ordinary wine filter or even a coffee filter, say 1 week after the filtering through carbon would remove the insoluble mineral salts and hence solve the problem.
But spirit should be stored cold (not frozen) during this week to ensure anything that is going to become insoluble, does become insoluble). If the spirit is left for long enough (3 or 4 weeks?), it should be easy to pour off the bright spirit from a white sediment at the bottom of the bottle. This problem is likely to be influenced by certain environmental conditions like temperature and water quality.
: Why is sediment forming in spirit after carbon filtration?
Why did my drink turn blue?
How Do I Detect if My Drink was Roofied? – Someone spiking your drink is a very big, and very real, fear in the lives of both students and parents. It’s one thing to know what to look for if your child or friend has been drinking, But what if their drink was roofied? Talk It Out NC wants to help you tell if you or your friends have symptoms of being roofied.
Watch out for these warning signs to keep you and your friends safe when you go out.1. The Color of Your Drink has Changed It may seem obvious, but a change in the color of your drink is a strong indicator that it may be spiked. Some adulterants might turn your drink a darker or lighter color than it was before.
Newer versions of some drink-spiking drugs (such as Rohypnol) are designed to turn drinks blue. If you have to ask if it’s a different color, pour it out immediately.2. Your Drink Looks Cloudy Many drugs that people use to roofie drinks are difficult to detect, but there are some warning signs to look out for.
If your previously clear drink has a cloudy look to it that it didn’t have before, that’s a sign that something may have been slipped into it.3. Excessive Bubbles This can be trickier to identify, especially with carbonated beverages like soda or sparkling water. Some drugs react with beverages by fizzing up, sending an excess of bubbles to the top of your drink.
If you notice this, or see bubbles in a drink that wasn’t carbonated, do not drink it and report it to the authorities and/or a responsible adult.4. Your Drink Tastes Funny If your drink tastes different than it did before, there’s a good chance that it might have been spiked.
Is it OK to drink sediment?
Sediment In Beer: To Drink It Or Not To Drink It? Have you ever poured a beer or examined a bottle and noticed a cloudy layer of sediments floating around? Well, sediments in beer can occur due to plenty of reasons. Call it flakies, floaties, yeasties or sediment, they are primarily composed of protein particles resulting from the brewing process.
Let’s find out more about why these sediments appear inside a beer can or bottle in the first place and if they are safe for consumption. Sediments are primarily yeast and protein particles floating around in a beer. Cloudy beer styles such as German Hefeweizen, New England IPA etc. often tend to have substantial haze with particles swirling around.
This is due to the styles like these being unfiltered and have a solid layer of yeast at the bottom and hop particles in suspension. Let’s run through some of the common reasons that cause floaters or haze down below. Bottle conditioning is a process where a small amount of active yeast and simple sugars are added to the bottle prior to sealing it off. 
After the fermentation is complete, yeast cells clump together and drop to the bottom, eventually forming a thin cake. When the bottle is agitated, these particles are thrown back into the suspension and as a result we see these sediments. Bottle conditioned beers are safe for consumption and they are quite good.
Yeast, in some beer styles, also enhances the visual appearance. Aged beers are bottle conditioned as well and have yeast in suspension to ferment out any complex sugars which are present in a bottle. High gravity beer styles such as Barleywines, Imperial Stouts or any Barrel aged beers are ideally suitable for cellaring and at the time of packaging, they are dosed with yeast.
While we all agree that strong ales improve with age, this is not the case with many other beers. Yeast sediments in a bottle conditioned beer In styles where ageing isn’t appropriate, the liquid breaks down and proteins clump together and hop character diminishes over a certain period of time. Added to this, beer is oxidised and tastes stale or musty.
In this scenario, floaties tend to look like snowflakes. While this is only a cosmetic thing, these are safe to consume as well. Aggressively hopped beers like IPAs, New England IPAs or Double IPAs are charged with different intervals of hop doses from time to time. Dry hopping creates haze and over time, it releases tiny hop particles into the beer.
Hop particles are safe for consumption although some of the breweries filter these out. Hazy New England style IPAs stand unfiltered traditionally. 
A Hazy New England IPA Incase of a German Hefeweizen, Belgian Witbier, American Wheat or a hazy New England IPA, beers are naturally cloudy post fermentation and are traditionally served unfiltered. Unfiltered IPAs when dry hopped have a lot of polyphenols from hops which bond with proteins often creating ‘chill haze’. 
German Weissbier Poor sanitation or bacterial contamination can have floaters in them. Wild yeast and bacteria contaminate the beer and overwhelm the yeast that was already in the beer. Beers taste way off and undrinkable. This is an exception for some beer styles such as Lambics or wild fermented sour beers where contamination is intended during fermentation.
Yes, you can consume sediments without any issue! Sediments are not usually a negative trait. In fact, sediments are acceptable in many beer styles and are a natural cause. Even infected or spoiled beers are safe for consumption as well but they may not smell or taste great. As a rule of thumb, all the bottle-conditioned or unfiltered beers must be stored upright to let the sediments settle at the bottom.
: Sediment In Beer: To Drink It Or Not To Drink It?
Does methanol burn blue?
Methanol, once known as wood alcohol, burns with a very pale blue flame, one that appears almost invisible in daylight. It’s what got Rick Mears into trouble during a pit stop in the 1981 Indianapolis 500 when his methanol-powered car caught on fire and nobody could tell exactly where to point the fire extinguisher.
Can you drink blue alcohol?
What Alcohol Is Blue in Color? – Naturally, no alcohol will be blue in color, however, blue food coloring is added to some liquors to make the end result in a much more appetizing and interesting color. The most common blue liqueur found today is Blue Curaçao.
Can you tell if moonshine is safe to drink?
One way to test the purity of a moonshine liquor is to pour some in a metal spoon and set it on fire. If it burns with a blue flame, it is more likely safe to drink. If it produces a yellow or red flame, it is an indication of the presence of lead.