WHAT A DAY!!!!!!!!!!!Started out at 7am, bustling with excitement.
45+ litres of TPW into the keg, all hooked up and burner on.
Old HWS burner works a treat and soon the temp comes up, I can hear movement in the keg, so on goes the cooling.
Nek minnit - :scared-eek: :scared-eek: :scared-eek: - FOLY HUCK!!!! Wash is bubbling out thru the small relief hole in the top of the still!!! See vid below
PANIC and turn the burner off.
Quick thread on in the beginners questions and MACSTILL and JayD sort me out quick smart.
Burner back on (heat way way down!!) and everything is cool again.
Let it get up to temp again and then set it into full reflux for about 60+ mins.
10:15 - Start collecting fores at about 2 drops per sec... this is great!!! :dance: Making my own booze!!! :dance: ... Geez... this takes ages...
see vid below
12 noon - 250ml of fores collected and set aside.
Noon to 6pm - Slowly collect product, cut into glass jars of varying sizes( Around 250mls) at a rate of around 750 - 1000mls per hour.
Watching everything like a chipmunk on speed.
Temps go from constant 80's to spikes of 92+. This mostly happens by itself but also spikes when I get impatient and turn up the output rate.
Mostly just sits at or around the low-mid 80's tho.
6pm - Temps start to rise, as does the product output flow. By 7:30pm it is at a constant 96.1 and output is up to 1000mls per hour.
8pm - Temp still at 96 but product flow is way way down now.
NOTE: I have not touched the product flow valve setting since 4pm8:30pm - Shut still down. Pack everything away, cover the jarred up booze and store it to breathe.
PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!All up, I collected a touch over 6 litres of product. I will throw the 1st 600 odd mls of fores, let the rest breathe for a bit and the bottle it all up into heads/hearts/tails. I checked jars 4/5/6 and they were at about 83% ABV. Jar 9 was at 80% ABV and I was too tired to check much else after that.
I was smelling the difference between the jars for about the 1st 4 hours but by about 3pm, I couldn't smell anything!!! Will try again soon!! Haha...
I must say that my cooling set-up has worked a treat. The water in the tub stayed at a constant temp all day and when I finished, I measured the water temp at a chilly 17 deg C !!! It was 8:30 pm by then mind you and quite chilly here in Melbourne but still very impressed.
I have alot to work on and tweak before my next run, but for a 1st effort, I'm pretty happy.
I didn't hurt or blow myself up and I got a heap of booze to boot!!
Thanks must go out to JayD and Mac. Both of who were patient and very very helpful yesterday, while I jumped from imaginery crisis to crisis.
Also thanks to everyone who has posted here with advice and/or support. Its very nice to know there is a wall of support to lean on here, if needed.
Thanks for reading all my dribble
Happy brewing
Cuz