Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

So i've been in this hobby for a few months now and im having alot of fun and trying to learn everything i can :-B
I have a few questions if the experts don't mind chiming in that would be great !

I'm about to do another TPW run through my T500 along with some heads and tails from the last run, from what i understand, aslong as i'm not over 40%abv i'll be good to go ? is this correct?
Also i have a bottle of Crazy Horse bourbon someone who obviously hates me gave as a present around 6 months ago would that be ok to throw into the boiler also ? or could some of its horrid flavour ruin my final product ?

And finally a cooling reticulation system for a T500, i don't have a large water source near by, but i could knock up a coil system through a bucket of ice water or something similar, has anyone with a T500 found this type of system effective ? i'm a bit worried, i'll have to much trouble controlling the temperature, which seems really important if you want good cuts from the T500.

Thanks for any responses :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:D like a lamb to the slaughter...

Definition of Expert - ‘X’ = unknown variable, ‘Spurt’ - short burst of energy... :laughing-rolling:

Before I start, I need to confess to not nor even going to own a T500! So keep that in mind. I also won’t guide you on T500 specific things coz I just don’t know.

Yes - mix heads & tails in with your wash, and
Yes - make sure it’s below 40%, for safety reasons! Liquids above 40% produce vapours (distillate) that have a low flash point - think Ka-Boom).

TPW is a recipe aimed at making a neutral spirit, neutral means NO flavour (or as close to as possible) so, in my opinion, leave that whisky out of it as the chance of it flavouring your final product is there!

If you make neutral so you can add ‘flavours’ to make rum/bourbon/whisky then adding it in won’t be much of an issue...

Hope that helps you.

I'm the same with not knowing anything about the T500 so can't help there much but will say a constent temp of water will help keep the output and abv stable that's why the mains tap or large body/tank/drum of water is best.

Under 40% is the go :handgestures-thumbupleft:

My thoughts but once again never run a T500, is that if it produces neutral and can strip the tomato flavour out of TPW it should be able to strip the dodgy flavours out of a bottle of whiskey as well. I've done it with my boka and bubbler before and haven't had a problem. Worse come to worse you would just need to run it again if it came through.

A bucket of ice water won't stay cold for long, it will heat up and probably (don't really know since I don't have any experience with a t500) wreck havoc with your reflux ratio. You'll be forever adding more ice to it. Like woodduck said, a large volume of water is best for recirculating otherwise you'll want to run a radiator or cooling system (some members have re-purposed aircons for this). I only need 20 L in my setup as my radiator takes care of the heat.

Thanks guys :handgestures-thumbupleft: and yea i thought a coil system in ice water would be to hard to control,i'll look into setting up a stormwater tank and run through that i could also just bypass the water meter,but that could get me into trouble :law-policered: :?

Yeah you don't want to be doing anything else that's illegal in this hobby.