Blue Moonshine
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Wanted to ask the question referencing honeyshine. I accidentally put too much nutrients into the wash. After distillation the shine had a light blue tint and smelled like ammonia. After researching on the internet I have discovered that the cause was from accidentally adding too much nutrients to the wash. I ran it back through and the color and the smell is gone. Ran it through a third time to make sure the proof was a hundred and eighty. Is it safe to dilute and drink the moonshine. Did the flame test and it is an extremely light blue flame.
Thank You!
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Did you dump the foreshots?
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I’m just curious what kind of still you are running? Are you using a copper still? Copper anything?
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I’m just curious what your cleaning schedule is like for the copper? Do you take the packing out after each run?
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The amount of nutrients (a lot of ammonium compounds) in your wash is only half of the problem with the blue distillate, which is Schweitzer’s reagent, a copper-ammonium complex. The other half of the problem is a too-high pH. It’s the combination of high-pH and presence of ammonium compounds that cause the blue distillate. I can’t tell you off the top of my head what’s too-high pH, but if you had adjusted that first wash pH to maybe 5.0, with citric acid, for instance, or a ~5.2 pH buffer from your homebrew supply, you would never have seen that blue, or smelled the ammonia.
Just as an aside, the copper in that distillate is your copper still head being eroded.
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