by R-sole » Wed Aug 03, 2011 8:38 am
During a spirit run, the distillate will start say, at 80-82%.
I will record each jar taken in my notebook as say .5l at 80%@ 7:05am. As the run progresses the abv will drop, but this is not alineal curve. it will hold at 80% for litre after litre and then slowly drop through to 78 and own towards 70%.
This is when you need to be keeping a sharp lookout for the transition to tails, as long as it's up over 72% or so, i know i can keep filling 4l bottles with hearts. when it gets down tween 72 and 68 i'll find my first cut point as i'll be tasting the start of tails by dipping my finger in the output, or if i'm feeling lazy, i'll just switch to smaller jars at 72% and sort it later.
Once it gets down to 55% or so, i can safely switch back to large jars cause i know i'm collecting tails i'll use for feints.
Once it gets down to 20% i know that it's time to switch the gas off.
I'm getting all this info in close to real time (allowing for the space in the parrot) rather than picking arbitary times to fill a sample jar and dunk a hydometer.
Like i said, you can potstil without one, but why would you?