T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

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T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby tonyg » Sat May 26, 2018 12:09 pm

Hi all, just getting to the end of my first TPW distillation in the T500 Turbo still. I've collected about 2.8L at 90% and it's smelling good, but it's slowed right down already. I expected to get about 3.5L from 5kg of sugar before it slowed down.

Now running around 65 degrees at the top and just getting slow drips. Do I stop or push it up further?
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby RC Al » Sat May 26, 2018 3:06 pm

On mine (not a t500) i have to back the cooling down around the start of tails, perfectly normal.

Whats left is going to be tails anyhow, whether you collect it depends if you plan to save em up for a feints run or just turf it (many do, kinda wastefull with a small still imo, too many hours invested not to recycle)
Did you do starting and final SG readings? what size run 25l?
did you run numbers through these? xcalcs.html

Way too late though as you will have figured it out before now :)
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby tonyg » Sat May 26, 2018 4:58 pm

Not really, I've stopped the still for now to decide what to do.

I didn't take a starting SG but my finishing SG was 985 which I was pretty happy with. Yes, 25L wash. Recirculating water. Most of the distilling was below 50.

I am happy to keep tails for recycling, but what temp do I let it get up to? I went to 70 and it was still barely dripping. Should I add more water?
Last edited by tonyg on Sat May 26, 2018 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby woodduck » Sat May 26, 2018 5:18 pm

Have you had a read of this? May help?

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=10483#p181128
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby Professor Green » Sat May 26, 2018 5:43 pm

Definitely worth reading the thread woodduck linked for you but if you were running 25 litres of approx 11% wash (based on 5kg sugar in 25 litres) then I'd say a collection of 2.8 litres @ 90% means that run was pretty much done.

25 litres @ 11% is means the wash contains 2.75 litres of alcohol. You collected 2.8 litres @ 90% which is 2.5 litres of alcohol leaving about 250ml alcohol in the boiler. Given you cannot realistically collect all of the alcohol from the boiler I would say that yield is about right.

Cheers,
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby tonyg » Sun May 27, 2018 7:29 am

Yes I had printed out that thread and had it with me while distilling. Very helpful but did not tell me how much alcohol to expect from the wash. I had read somewhere to expect about 1L per 1kg of fermentables in the wash, so for 5kg I was expecting 5L but wasn't sure if that was output or cut to 40%. If it's cut to 40% then I guess I have it.

Thanks for the help guys, I'll now start cleanup. Very impressed overall with the TPW brew.

The only real issue I had was with recirculating water for the condenser. I used my hydroponics pump in a plastic rubbish bin (50 gallon?) and found that about an hour after the boiler hit max temp (I've installed a lower temp guage) the water in the bin was very warm and I was having trouble keeping the condenser under 60 degrees. I then emptied the bin and refilled it, allowing the runoff from the still to go into plastic buckets and letting the tap hose dribble into the bin. This worked and the temp was stable around 48-52 most of the time.

How do others deal with the hot water coming back from the reticulation system? Or have I set it up wrong?
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby warramungas » Sun May 27, 2018 7:40 am

I think the conversion is half a liter of pure ethanol per kg. That's off the top of my head. It might be 1 liter of 40% abv though but we don't collect at 40%.
We collect at high abv down to about 20% so have to work it out by volume and strength or Sg and Fg.

Btw, I don't recycle water and it costs less than $5 a run. Easily less.
Last edited by warramungas on Sun May 27, 2018 7:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby Doubleuj » Sun May 27, 2018 8:22 am

Hey Tony, sounds like you’re going all right, you’ll pick up the finer details over time.
To know how much you’ll get off the still you’ll need to know what you put in.
This means take an Original specific gravity (og) when you first put the wash on, then when it’s done fermenting take a finished sg (fg).
There’s a calculator in the newbies corner that will tell you what %abv your wash is.
As an example only:
If your wash is 25L @ 10% and your take off is 100% abv (impossible I know) then you’ll get 2.5L @ 100% abv.
It’s not possible to get 100% but I just used that because my brain would hurt too much to calculate any other figures.
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Re: T500 TPW distillation - when to stop?

Postby Kenster » Sun May 27, 2018 7:12 pm

Tony, two things..
A 25lit wash will use aprox 400 lit of water per run... think of converting to a 1000lit IBC, if space permits as it will never stay cool under your T500 conditions/setup.
Secondly, invest in or make a parrot, if not already doing so...use an alco meter to measure what ABV you are producing "as you go", taking the final guess work out of it. Then, after a bit more experience and knowledge, you will learn, instinctively where you want to cut off. ie. Is your time/power usage cost justifiable to be chasing less than 30%.. it will ultimately be up to you what you want from the the tails end of the deal.
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