General Carbon has years of experience in providing activated carbon for the filtration of distilled spirits. Distilleries find that during production, often after distillation, their spirits may have colors, odors or tastes that are undesirable. Activated carbon is used as a polishing step to strip the spirit of these impurities. These undesirable items are typically aldehydes, aminos and fusil oils. When filtering with activated carbon, these impurities become trapped within the enormous pore structure that activated carbon offers. Common spirits that use activated carbon are moonshine, vodka and other clear alcohols as carbon will do an excellent job of removing tastes and colors. Activated carbon may not be as desirable for the filtration of whisky or schnapps where you want to keep a lot of the processes color and taste.
There are a couple products that distilleries use including GC 20x50S or an acid washed 8×30 or 12×40. You should rinse the carbon once before using it to filter spirits. This will remove the dust created while handling the carbon.
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