Tails floaties

[arard]

Hi, I have just done a spirt run with about 15L 50% low wines and topped up with 15L of 2nd gen macstill rum.

2" pelican pot.

Running at about 1-1.5L/hr, I was 9.5L in and I'm down in the tails, sitting at 50% all of a sudden I get alot of brown/black floaties come through, it's not the oils that float on top like I have seen down in the tails while stripping, these ones are small chunks suspended throughout my collection jar although very slowly settling to the bottom, there is also a few small blue/green coppery ones.

I collected one more jar after this and it has alot less than the first jar that showed any signs and the bits that did come through started settling alot quicker. This jar become very cloudy and I just started stripping into a stockpot from there too add to feints.

I fished some out and it is sort of grainy, reminds me of crushed up welding slag

What are these brown bits?? I won't be adding them when I blend but i am curious, what I can do with it or how to prevent it in the future.

PS. Pretty sure I got a bit overboard racking in the wash and got a small amount of sludge in the boiler before realising, thinking this might have something to do with it.

[RC Al]

I daresay that would have to come from your pc, at the speed you were doing, I cant see you blowing chunks of anything up a riser

How long since you cleaned the still? has it sat unused for a while?

[arard]

Thanks for your reply,
I used it last weekend and flushed the whole show with water afterwards, once it was dry it sat in my garage with a clean rag bunging it up

[RC Al]

Might be worth another soak in citric, I saw in your intro post you did the appropriate cleaning runs - but how much litres/ time did you do those cleaning runs for?

[arard]

Yeah fair enough, I got a couple kgs of citric acid the other day so I'll probably do that.
The vinegar run I did through it, steamed it for about an hour then ran it with the condenser on for about the same from memory
The sacrificial run I did a TPW and ran it slow <1L/hr and down to approx 50% abv
Both times the boiler was filled to about 30L
I have done 2 stripping runs since then with no dramas

Before my last stripping run I made a parrot, it had a citric bath and rince. Also added a T with taps on my pump, one circulates back into my water storage, the other I can adjust to change flow rate at condenser. This seemed to work really well on the stripping run and the spirit run I did.
Parrot doesn't have a tap but just leave jars short and tip it in each time I change jars.
Haven't had any puking either.

I will just give it a good clean if it's more than likely just dirty, it won't hurt afterall

[RC Al]

Yeah, you covered the bases well with your initial cleaning

See how you go after the next clean :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[arard]

Thanks for your input mate