First wash down

[Sam.]

Yes that is how you can find out how much power your condensor can handle, but you don't want vapour coming out during any run :violence-smack:

If you are running and it is cold outside and your distillate is quite warm it will produce what look like vapour as well :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[MacStill]

When doing a stripping run do you basically have the water going fairly fast and have the heat fairly hot. Then if you see a little vapour back the heat off?
Or is there always going to be a small bit of steam/vapour when stripping?

If you can see it, it aint alcohol vapours ;-)

[kingy]

If I looked hard enough it looked like a mist coming out the end. Almost like rain. It didn't rise or anything, It disappears almost immediately once it hits the air.
Was a bit strange, so is that nothing to worry about?
I did turn the heat back tho untill I couldn't see it. I thought it was alcohol vapour.
Took me an hour and half to strip a 25litre tpw down to 20%

[kingy]

So I've been reading flat out about distilling. I think about it all day, I dream about it, I talk about it constantly.

I plan on doing my first spirit fun this weekend.

I'm a little unsure on foreshots still.

When doing a 25 litre strip run if I tossed the first 250mls every time I stripped. I'd be safe?
And say 500mls for a 50Litre

Just say I done 5 stripping runs and tossed 250mls of foreshots from each run.

Then decided to do another stripping run do I toss the foreshots again or are they all gone?

And then the spirit run? Do I throw another lot of fores ?

[Sam.]

So I've been reading flat out about distilling. I think about it all day, I dream about it, I talk about it constantly.

I plan on doing my first spirit fun this weekend.

I'm a little unsure on foreshots still.

When doing a 25 litre strip run if I tossed the first 250mls every time I stripped. I'd be safe?
And say 500mls for a 50Litre

Just say I done 5 stripping runs and tossed 250mls of foreshots from each run.

Then decided to do another stripping run do I toss the foreshots again or are they all gone?

And then the spirit run? Do I throw another lot of fores ?

They "should" be all gone as they have a lower boiling point than the ethanol that we want.

At the end of the day if you do proper cuts with your runs and only drink the hearts you are not going to be drinking foreshots :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Consider this, we make "beer" to distill then worry about getting rid of foreshots, yet if you drank that beer there is a percentage of foreshots still in it :scared-eek:

Point is you would have to keep all your foreshots and drink them in one hit (if you could keep it down) to do any real harm I reckon ;-)

Safest bet is to throw away the first bit out of each run, no need to go overboard, the foreshots are called that for a reason it is the first bit that comes out of the still when it's coming up to temp, from about 60 odd through to 78 odd where we want to be, once you have been at that 78 odd for a little bit it has flushed all the shit out anyway :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[kingy]

Awesome, that clears it all up for me. That's what I was thinking. It wouldn't hurt to throw a little bit extra bcoz it's only heads anyway.
Cheers mate.

[SBB]

Ive seen it put this way in a thread somewhere, Especially regarding pot stills and getting all the fores out......it went something like this.
" Imagine dropping your sandwich in the sand, You can pick most of it out, but you'll never get it all"
For my money it never hurts to take another small fores cut, ya got plenty of booze and its only a tiny amount your loosing.
It can only improve the end result not make it worse.
I guess the real test is to smell those first small drops exiting the still, Do they smell like nail polish or worse?, if they do you still have fores in there.

[kingy]

Yea that's great info, working it out slowly. I think I've been making it harder than it should be (coming from a beer brewing background) seems there's a bit of forgiveness in distilling.

Another question when doing a spirit run if it is dripping into the parrot but a small steady flow out of the parrot is that to fast?

[googe]

Like sand in ya undies at the beach SBB :D

[SBB]

Something like that google,

Another question when doing a spirit run if it is dripping into the parrot but a small steady flow out of the parrot is that to fast?

Flow rates for spirit runs are a debatable subject, some say a broken stream from the pot, a lot say a pencil lead sized stream, and some say much faster.
The faster you run it the less defined the cuts will be and you run the risk of dragging tails through , in my opinion anyway.
If you still worried about getting the fores out go nice n steady, a fast drip or broken stream from the condenser to begin with, keep smelling and or tasting,
Once your sure the fores and heads are gone and your into hearts you can crank it up a bit faster.
take off speeds are a bit of a trial and error thing until you learn how your still and different washes work.

[SBB]

PS, some say to0 slow is almost as bad as too fast......as I said depends on a lot of things.

[kingy]

I'm definitely out of the fores. Been stilling for about 6 hours on stripped tpw wich was bout 12 litres going into boiler for spirit run. Got 11 x 300ml jars. still reading 76 on the alcometer. Seems like taking forever lol.
I reckon the hearts came in around jar 6 or 7. Tomorrow will tell tho.

[kingy]

What a great learning curve.
Bottles kept coming at 70% then high 60's,300mls every 20 mins then the alcohol dropped fairly quickly and the bottles started filling faster.
Glad I done a sugar wash on my pot before a bourbon mash.
Can't wait to fire it up again

[SBB]

Then decided to do another stripping run do I toss the foreshots again or are they all gone?
And then the spirit run? Do I throw another lot of fores ?

So what was the answer Kingy??.........did you still find some fore shots in there ??

[kingy]

Yea mate, not much tho tossed the first 100.

Wasn't worried about that in the end, I was worried I was going to be up all night watching the still lol.

Seems the higher the alcohol coming out the slower the jars fill. The drops seem smaller?

As the alcohol % falls the drops get larger and fill the jars faster and make for a faster finish.

Looking forward to making some cuts today!

[SBB]

Might be an idea not to rush your cuts first time around, if you get confused walk away for a while. ;-)

[kingy]

Thanks mate I thought it would've been harder than what it was.
Collected 19 jars of 300mls.
First few jars where 86% last jars where 26 to about 22%.
Collected jar 7 (82%alc) through to jar 13 (70%alc) total of around 5litres @40%alc once watered down.

Definately worth all the effort. Can't wait till I've got a full keg of stripped bourbon to run. Yeeew.

[kingy]

Thanks mate I thought it would've been harder than what it was.
Collected 19 jars of 300mls.
First few jars where 86% last jars where 26 to about 22%.
Collected jar 7 (82%alc) through to jar 13 (70%alc) total of around 5litres @40%alc once watered down.

Definately worth all the effort. Can't wait till I've got a full keg of stripped bourbon to run. Yeeew.

[SBB]

Sounds Like you have it pretty well sussed, just a matter of a bit of experimentation and experience now.

[kingy]

Few photos,brought a label maker as well. Love it!

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1366019753.752122.jpg

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1366019782.3021[attachment=0]ImageUploadedByTapatalk1366019825.913889.jpg[/attachment88.jpg