Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

coffe addict wrote:If you use the same heat but slow down the take off you'll raise your abv as you're increasing the reflux ratio.
You should easily hit 95 on wash and azeo on low wines.
I used to use 5 plates for a fast stripping run taking a small fores cut and small tails cut, then rerun it @40% abv doing very tight cuts.

Hey mate, what do you mean by "tight cuts", smaller volumes?

I would slow it down a bit to around 2lph and it should get to 95-96%. I do that straight from wash but I have an extra plate. I don't strip and spirit run but I also don't sip straight vodka so if it's not completely taste free it doesn't bother me. Personally if I wanted it cleaner I would rather run a single run at 1.5lph than strip and spirit run. Running a 40ltr spirit run of 40% doesn't interest me as sitting in front of the still for 10 hours doesn't float my boat, that's why I built bubblers :-D.

woodduck wrote:I would slow it down a bit to around 2lph and it should get to 95-96%. I do that straight from wash but I have an extra plate. I don't strip and spirit run but I also don't sip straight vodka so if it's not completely taste free it doesn't bother me. Personally if I wanted it cleaner I would rather run a single run at 1.5lph than strip and spirit run. Running a 40ltr spirit run of 40% doesn't interest me as sitting in front of the still for 10 hours doesn't float my boat, that's why I built bubblers :-D.

This is very much part of the journey for me, learning the times and the methods etc

With 5 plates and the FSD packed section do you think thats ok to go straight from wash to neutral? I'm all for saving time!!

Also just reading up on some washes/macerations scorching with elements as opposed to gas, are there any tricks for this?

Yes :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Did just that yesterday

So ran my first TPW today, seemed to have a lot of trouble adjusting the RC to bleed off the fores...

I let it reflux for a full hour to compress the fores and heads up nicely, then adjusted the RC down to bit by bit waiting for about 5 mins after every adjustment to see when the temp started to increase on the thermometer.

It only started to really move on the thermo when the flow to the RC was just under 1lpm, then the temp started jumping up to where it should and I started to collect product, however really fast! So I wound the RC back a tiny bit and it just about stopped collecting all together, I mucked around with this for a bit till I gave up and just started collecting at under 2lph.

Still no 95% looked to be about 94-93.

Any tips of RC control??

If you don't have one get a needle valve..

bluc wrote:If you don't have one get a needle valve..

I have 2 lzt m-15 fluid meters with needle valves, so it actually shows me what's going on.

Not sure how great they are but I thought having a rotameter would help

bigadz wrote:started collecting at under 2lph.

Still no 95% looked to be about 94-93.

Any tips of RC control??

Is this abv temp corrected?

4 plates should give 92-93, maybe 94 if run really slowly. 5 plates shouldn't give too much more than that so if you're getting 93-94 then I'd say it's about right.

Finally, how often were you making adjustments to the RC? Your RC might take a long time to respond to changes and if you were making changes too soon then you'd be doing nothing but chasing your tail trying to find the right flow.

bigadz wrote:

bluc wrote:If you don't have one get a needle valve..

I have 2 lzt m-15 fluid meters with needle valves, so it actually shows me what's going on.

Not sure how great they are but I thought having a rotameter would help

The rotameters are available in much lower flow rates, having a hard research on them at the moment, the ones with a valve have the LZM prefix then a -6 or -15 (there are some inbetween) this is the pipe connection size. the -6 are available in very low flow rates 100ml-1000ml/min, even down to 60-160ml/min, it seems round ones are for gas and square ones for liquids

To get some better control out of the setup you have, you could consider pre-heating the cooling water a bit so that a faster flow rate is required

db1979 wrote:

bigadz wrote:started collecting at under 2lph.

Still no 95% looked to be about 94-93.

Any tips of RC control??

Is this abv temp corrected?

4 plates should give 92-93, maybe 94 if run really slowly. 5 plates shouldn't give too much more than that so if you're getting 93-94 then I'd say it's about right.

Finally, how often were you making adjustments to the RC? Your RC might take a long time to respond to changes and if you were making changes too soon then you'd be doing nothing but chasing your tail trying to find the right flow.

Temp corrected was 93-94, and I run 5 plates with a 500mm FSD section packed full of copper.

I'd make an adjustment on the RC and watch it for about 5min before changing it again, took an extra half hour to get it to produce and when it did it went hard to start before I caught it, but was never able to get it to drip consistently at the suggested rate of 1-2 drops a second

RC Al wrote:

bigadz wrote:

bluc wrote:If you don't have one get a needle valve..

I have 2 lzt m-15 fluid meters with needle valves, so it actually shows me what's going on.

Not sure how great they are but I thought having a rotameter would help

The rotameters are available in much lower flow rates, having a hard research on them at the moment, the ones with a valve have the LZM prefix then a -6 or -15 (there are some inbetween) this is the pipe connection size. the -6 are available in very low flow rates 100ml-1000ml/min, even down to 60-160ml/min, it seems round ones are for gas and square ones for liquids

To get some better control out of the setup you have, you could consider pre-heating the cooling water a bit so that a faster flow rate is required

I'll definitely have a look, the ones I have now are 0.5lpm to 4lpm and are the square ones. The water was particularly cold today so perhaps that did affect it more than I thought!

I get a full two turns between no output and max output on my needle valve at 2400w..a 1/2" one..

bluc wrote:I get a full two turns between no output and max output on my needle valve at 2400w..a 1/2" one..

I'll check at how much mine is but I reckon it's about 1 turn tops

How many watts you throwing at it? Keep in mind there is a second way you can run these...blast past the rc using watts... find out how many watts the rc will hold back. Then with help of a voltage controller increase power beyond what the rc will hold back and run by output volume and smell taste.. not sure of your background but if you have your nose and tounge dialled in you should be able to blast past rc and use nose and taste. There is no subsitute for cuts in small amount airing then blending but once nose and tounge are tuned in you can do a pretty good job of tasting smelling straight off still(still collect in small amounts and do cuts) :-B

How big is your rc? The bigger it is the slower it will be to respond. Mine is 75mm long and can take up to 2 minutes to respond. Keep in mind it will take a while for the still after the rc to heat up and let any vapor through so don't rush that initial out put.

What sort of tap are you using? Ball valves are no good. I use a gate valve and on 2400w to get 2.5lph it is pretty much shut and my adjustments are done in tiny moves, barely move it at all.

Take no notice of any thermometer, they are there for looks, don't try running a bubbler by temp. Neither of my bubblers have a temp gauge, they're not needed.

I’m currently running a glassed like yours (tho only 4 plates), my packed section is 500mm and I use copper and SS mesh in there. To date I’ve always stripped first in pot still mode (because I do 150L washes to collect 50-75L low wines), then I do a spirit run with the full monty as you have describes at the beginning (I reflux for the full hour because I feel it gives me a cleaner product)... but I pull the power of the top element and just run one element, and ALWAYS do cuts!

My next purchase is a power controller (as bluc said above) so I can keep both element’s in the game and overpower my RC (300mm - But I live in the north where it’s far-quin hot 8-9 months of the year) as it should give me better control over the whole run, not just for neutral but also for whisky, and perhaps some Rum (not my strength!).
This will allow me to not have to worry about water flow...

Hey Woody, is your RC really 75mm or 750mm?
I have been having similar problems with my Neutraliser.
My last run was a bit easier to control with a needle valve but I had problems getting the output rate below 2,2ltr/hr and above 80%.
That was with 5 plates and a 500mm packed section running with about 3400w.
Then when output slowed/stopped after about 3litres of output I upped the heat to around 3600w and got nothing and then a huge purge (2ltres) out of the parrot.
I think there must be a problem with output condensing above the PC but before the down comer and creating a blockage. Then when enough pressure builds up, it pushes everything out.
I think part of my problem is the packing of 2x500g of copper and 11 ss scrubbers.
I’m going to cut a metre off the copper and repack.
The other problem is my water temp of 5-7Degrees C, this leads to tiny flow rates through the RC.

Of course I also complicated the situation by upping my PC flow rate at the same time.
My PC sits just under the 2” 180Degree turn at the top of my rig and I don’t know if my very low water temps could cause condensation temperatures in the top section before the PC.
It is shitting me at the moment.
:violence-stickwhack:
:angry-banghead:
:roll:

75mm, mine is about 80mm
Not run it yet but i plan to run it in power management (over power the RC with extra watts).

PC should be as flat out as required to maintain an output liquid temp of 20*C-ish.

RC just needs to knock it back so only needs a trickel, with water temps that low i would guess that maybe 500mL/min might be too much in a coper RC.

Yep it's on 75mm, check my glass duck build thread for more info.

I think you have way too much power for a 4" there. I'm guessing your packed section is flooding? I wouldn't think you'd need more than 3000w max, you should be able to run it on 2400w.

:text-+1:

Currently my power situation at home won’t give me 2 x 2400W so have been running mine on 1 x 2400W element... sloooooooooo as! But it works.

I also have a 500mm packed section but don’t have your issues... I think I did (a long time ago) - Heath talked me thru possibilities of ‘why’ turned out I stuffed a whole kilo of coppermesh in there as well as 15-20 SS scrubbers...
Waaay too dense!
So, we took the copper out and wound out 3 rolls the were loose but fitted tightly into the 4” tube. To clarify, we made 3 coils out of 1Kg copper mesh roll.
Now I use 1 of those in the top and one in the bottom and loosely fill the space in between with SS scrubbers (10-15 I think).
Problem solved.