175 L bulk weetbix/allbran - inconsistant yield

[vqstatesman]

Hi All,

I have been distilling for about 6 months now with my t500. I have been putting down a couple of 25 L fermenters every week or so. I thought it was about time to produce a large batch so I purchased a 200L pickle barrel from a local salvage yard - Paramount Browns. And yes I washed the hell out of before use :)

Having tried a couple of weetbix/allbran 25L I thought I would use a scaled up version. I used the following recipe scaled by 7 viewtopic.php?f=32&t=170 total volume was 175L.

My plan was to split the 175 up into 7 * 25L sessions as I only have a 25L boiler. After a couple of weeks I tapped off 25L and ran this through the t500, pulled just over 3L @ 90% +. A couple of days later I tapped off another 25L and ran it through the t500 similar yield. And then something odd happened: The next 2 runs of 25L only yielded between 1 - 2 L. The final few 25 batched yielded the usual 3L +.

I'm completely puzzled why the few batches in the middle had such a low yield! I thought it might have been my still randomly playing up or leaking. But it seems to be running fine now so I'm a little unsure.

I would love to hear some opinions.

[Kimbo]

Mate, it could be any number of things,
Like you said, maybe a leak. It could be a different amount of coolant flow,
when you had the low yield, what ABV was it?

[vqstatesman]

Mate, it could be any number of things,
Like you said, maybe a leak. It could be a different amount of coolant flow,
when you had the low yield, what ABV was it?

I don't think it was coolant flow as both times I ran at the same temp, approx 60C. One of the bad yields was 1L@ 90% then 1L @ 65%. Odd :(

[Kimbo]

Dunno then mate..... one of life's anomalies I guess :-B