New member, new T500

[Tesla101]

Much better spirit run today :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I learnt a lot today. 5 hours watching drips will do that lol

My cooling water tanks cooled down to 23C overnight. That's much better than starting at 36C.

Tested the cooling, about 1.6L/min. All good to go. For this run I've decided just to run the cooling flat out and see what happens. Low and slow, as they say.

Fired up the boiler. 20 minutes later I start getting steady drips at about 39C on the cooling output. 20 minutes later I've taken 200mL of fores at 92.5%ABV.

I continue at a drip…drip..drip.dribble.drip..drip…drip throughout jar 1 and until almost at the end of jar 2 and then the drips slow right down at 40.1C, then all of a sudden the temp spikes to 40.8C and I get a fast dribble. Jar 2 takes 20 minutes to finish and weighs in at 91%.

Jar 3 continues at a fast dribble and only takes 7 minutes to fill. Temp stable at 40.5C. However it comes in at 85%! (checked twice)

Jar 4 is interesting. It's a drip, drip, dribble for the first 170mL and then slows almost to a stop. It takes a total of 52 minutes for 200mL with the temp at 42.5C at the end. (again, cooling is running flat out). The really interesting thing is that jar 4 comes in at 87% too. (End of heads?)

Jar 5 is up and starts with drips slowly getting faster and then finally settling into the famous "drip, drip, dribble" after 30 minutes. Temp is now 45C. ABV returns to 92.5% :handgestures-thumbupleft: Am I now into hearts???

Jars 6-11 are pretty uneventful, each takes about 10 minutes to collect 200mL at a fairly constant drip, drip, dribble and all weigh in at ~93%. Temp has steadily increased to 47.9C by jar 11.

Jars 12-13 start taking longer and I think I'm now into tails. Temp has just kicked 50C by the time jar 13 fills and it takes 31 minutes. After that I call it quits and shut her down.

Ended up with 2.6L (plus fores) over almost 5 hours, but much, much happier with how the run went. How the take off rate went kind of told me that the still was refluxing how it should and that the various alcohols came through in stages ("stacking?"). Jars 5-11 definitely tasted better and didn't leave a bad after taste like the other jars did.

Anyway, will let the jars air for a couple of days and then try and take cuts.

[Tesla101]

I wasn't too happy with the cooling system I had so I built a new one from a radiator and a couple of fans I had in my "stuff I might use someday".

Cooling System.jpg

Underneath the bench is a 120L wheelie bin with a 400W Ozito subby pump. The fan controllers in the foreground have 7 speed settings, so I can control the amount of cooling the fans do.

After I did a test run to make sure I had no leaks I did a stripping run on a 25L TPW through the pot still. After the boiler warmed up I collected about 7L in around 2 hours. This was similar to the stripping run with the old cooling system.

The spirit run with the regular T500 reflux column was a bit of experiment to find out how slow I could go and to also try and get the most reflux I could out of the T500. I added the heads & tails from the previous TPW run to the low wines from the stripping run and diluted to 40% for a total of 10L.

By the time the boiler warmed up and I'd taken 200mL foreshots, 1.5 hours had passed. I knew I was going to be in for a long day.

Long story short - after discarding 200mL of foreshots I collected 15 jars for another 3L over 8 hours. Every jar was 91% and the RC output water temp was between 44.7C and 46.7C for the entire run.

So it looks like the new cooling system is a winner. Next run I'll experiment with the needle valve and the cooling fan speeds.

I'm expecting cuts should be a bit easier to do, will find out tonight after the jars have aired for a couple of days.

Next run is 3 x 25L TPWs and an experimental 25L recipe where I've subbed out the tomato paste for a litre of vegetable stock. The idea being that the wash will settle a bit clearer and earlier than the TPW does. Let's see what the yeasty boys think of my idea :)

[RC Al]

We love experiments :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Main issue I see with stock would be the salt content. Home made or store bought?

[Tesla101]

We love experiments :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Main issue I see with stock would be the salt content. Home made or store bought?

Store bought from Woolies: https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/prod ... lt-reduced

I got the salt reduced as I was also concerned about it. A bit less than 4g of Sodium in 1L of stock. There's just under 1g of Sodium in 200g of Leggo's tomato paste.

So 4 times as much. The wash is fizzing away after a couple of days, being held at ~30C with an aquarium heater. Same as the TPW washes.