Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Hi Champions,
I've done a few stripping runs through the pot still of rum washes, question is how do I run the pot still for my spirit run - hard n fast or slow and steady?

All the help would be appreciated.

I just did my first pot still spirit run.

3 double generations of whiskey through a 50L keg. Was about 35L or so of low wines. I pumped the heat into it until it was just about to boil and turned one element off and ran the other at just under 50%. Took me a bit over 9 hours.

Plenty of info if you jump into the pot still section or search bar. But low and slow is the go.

Birdman is on the money, I run mine a fraction over 2l/h on a spirit run

Thanks guys, will post my end results.

I kept my cuts in long neck bottles because they're clear and easy to work with. When I was definitely in hearts I collected straight into the demijohn and then back to longbots for tails.

Left overnight I could clearly tell the changes (which is odd for me because I have never been able to). I definitely think running it so slow helped with the smearing.

I combine 6 or 7 strippings for ~40L of low wines at 30-40%.

I run it as a steady but thin stream, approximately 2L an hour, and count on it taking me the best part of a day, once you include setup, heat-up, slower foreshots bleed, and clean-up at the end. I often cut off the spirit run while I still have some alcohol in the still, if it's getting late, and I haven't yet gone after the rum oils. I find the tails in my rum much skankier than in sugarheads or whiskey.

Morning,
Late one last night with the run, started with 25lt@38%.
End result i gathered roughly 10lts ranging from 90%-65% abv,
I did cut the run short as i was getting into tails by the smell, wondering if i could have got more out of it or are the numbers roughly lining up?

90% seems too high for low wines at 38%. I would have been expecting more like 80%. Are you sure you compensated for the temperature of the distillate? Or you might have passive reflux in your pot still, which could lighten your flavour somewhat.

MC

My first 2 jars where at the high end of 90% give or take a percent or 2 for accuracy, they where the only ones at that level with the rest tampering off to an average 80/85% for roughly 6lts then gradually dropped over the next 3-4 Lts where i finished the run.
Still bit of noob at this and working out how my still works and how fast or slow i need to run for a spirit run. About getting the right balance atm.

Still seems on the high side, even though every still is different. My keep averages 70-74%, depending on what I'm making, when I do a spirit run on low wines.

What temp should i be aiming for in the column, I have it packed with about .5kgs of copper mesh and temp guage at the same level as the out put into the condenser.

Are you running this as a pot still for separate strip and spirit runs?

No packing at all, if you want to keep the maximum flavour, would be my advice. Also a thermometer is pretty useless in a pot still, other than to let you know the run is done.

MC

Hi Roybee,

As Martin said, no need to pack the column for the pot still. You may end up getting a bit of passive reflux which you don’t want. I just add a small amount of copper at the bottom of the column for sulphide removal. Temperature is not the focus for the spirit run, output is. The temperature will continually rise throughout the run as the ethanol in the boiler is drawn off. This is supposed to happen so don’t worry about it. Just for your reference, early foreshots start dripping out at about 55 or so degrees and there will be an increase in output at around 80 degrees. This will obviously vary slightly according to still design and probe placement but is a rough guide. The aim is to keep the early output of foreshots down to a drip. Use your power controller to adjust this. After foreshots are removed, turn up the controller to increase the output a little. I like to use a bit of a broken stream for a couple of litres to take off early heads. I then turn up the output slightly to get a continuous stream (about 2.25l per hour) I normally increase this output when the taste of the product loses its sharpe, biting flavour. (Stick your finger in the output stream and taste it) When I get down to obvious tails, I increase the output and strip off some of the remaining ethanol. I normally shit the still down on a spirit run when I get down to about 40%. Some people find some nice flavours in certain sections of the tails and will continue to run slowly run down through the tails. That is a personal choice. Hope this helps.

Lesgold, thank you so much best break down ive gotten on how to run my still. I'll have a stripping to do next week and be sure to give this method it best.

Once you have a feel for how things run, you should only be concerned about not puking on your stripping runs in terms of how fast to run. You can really run things as fast as your condenser will handle, while avoiding a puke.

I say once you have a feel for how things run because I personally found it helpful to play around a fair bit while doing striping runs when I was starting out. Changing power input, tasting at every stage of the run when running at different speeds, noting down the output in L/hr at different power settings, etc. This is because you'll be doing stripping runs more often than spirit runs, and in stripping runs you collect everything and there's next-to-zero chance of screwing up (no cuts). Once you get to your spirit run you'll have a better idea of how your still responds when you do something, and also you have a higher chance of stuffing up if you make a mistake in your spirit run, such as too much smearing from excessive speed.

Also every still I've run has seemed to have a speed that it likes to work at naturally.