First Run - Still pics and results

[karrotbear]

Hello all, so I have been a member here for almost a year now, and it is great to see the fruits of my labour!

So initially I wanted to make a 2" VM Reflux still on a 50L Keg (insulated with a yoga mat later), and ran a 40L TPW through it (but used it incorrectly and ended up with crazy mixed product) but then after reading Kiwi's newbie information I figured I would knock up a quick pot still in order to charge the reflux. I have been making McStill's TPW wash.

So here are the pics of the pot still, running great with my second 40L wash (including the 5 or 9 bottles of crap from my first reflux run) (until it started puffing, so I have increased the angle from the horizontal, so it is pointing down more) and I was collecting at about 4 - 5 L/hr using my parrot (which is not too shabby except it decided to crap it after the final run) and the ABV to decide when to stop. I noticed as I got down into the tails, that the inside of the still head got super yucky (as well as black things getting into the final product) so I don't think I will be running it down to 10ish% again!

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(ps do not use pizza boxes as a stand!)
I collected about 20 equivelent wine bottles (accounting for non standard size smirnoff etc bottles in my collection)

I then decided to throw caution to the wind and build me a nice little voltage controller, it works great (cooling it with an old fan from an old laptop cooling pad).

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Went to vinnies and ended up with 40+ glass bottles (moccona coffee) which has a nice lip for the rubber band to snap around for airing.

I charged my still with all 20 Bottles with about 30L of plain tap water and I figured that would be well below the 40% max ABV anyways.

Started, to my dismay, at around 10 am on saturday, full power untill it hit boiling temp, then used the controller and let it equilibrize at approx 900 - 1000 W. After about an hour I slowly opened my gate valve and threw away the first 400mL (just to be on the safe side). Closed the gate and let it re-equilibrize for 30mins, I then opened it untill I had about 400ml/hr which I found was a pretty good speed. Parrot read at 95% for the duration of the run (except a few cases, see below).

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[karrotbear]

Ended up with a total run time of about 18hrs, and 24 x 400mL bottles (I also noticed the keg stayed blazing to the touch 7 hours after I shut it down). I found my 'hearts temp' to be about 70.2 Degrees (my thermometer is jacketed in some thin copper pipe, so I don't expect it to be very accurate). Bottle 18 and 22 had dropping ABV's and raising temps, so I stopped collection and let the still re-equilibrize, the temperature dropped to my hearts temp and I let it sit for an hour, I then started collecting again.

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I read that I had to let it breathe for a day or two, I let it breathe for a week (helping parents move) and found that each bottle had lost about 30mL of distillate. Got the missus to help distinguish between the heads, hearts and tails. Found that bottles 1 - 8 was heads, 9 - 17, 19 - 21 to be hearts, and 22 - 24 to be tails. And because I am an awesome distiller, I decided that with my limited experience I would just chuck heads and tails into my feints jar.

So I have about 4L of Hearts, and 3ish of Feints. Is this a normal ish result?

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ps thanks for all the help everyone!

[baldoss]

Congrats mate, nice work :handgestures-thumbupleft: I'll leave it to others to comment on your final result but what you've described sounds about right from all that I've read! What happened to jar 18?

[karrotbear]

Just chucked it into my feints jar :)

So pretty much I just wanted to collect what I would classify as hearts, and I will just redistill the rest with my next wash :)

[MacStill]

Nice one karrotbear :handgestures-thumbupleft:

You'll get the hang of it no time, it looks like this run ended up being pretty much a success :D

Cheers

[1 2many]

Couple of nice JUG's you have there .very nice :mrgreen: