Hello All
I thought I'd log a brief :laughing-rolling: account of my first wash / run.
Figured I can hopefully get some tips from others about ways to improve and maybe others might find the info useful ( maybe ?!?!? ) :roll:
My wash was 7250 grams of white sugar using a SS Turbo Classic yeast making up a total of 25L. It bubbled fast and hard and smelt like bad eggs but smelled better as it slowed down. It took a full 7 days to finish and even sitting on my cold floor tiles downstairs it peaked up in the low 27 deg C mark a few times, I even tried to cool it with a fan and had a wet t-towel wrapped around it to keep it stable, I stirred it up and used the Turbo Clear 2 part clearing mix and let it all sit for 24 hours before siphoning into my boiler.
( I am going to do a TPW next and see how it goes ).
My Pure Distiling rig ran well I think, I did a short run with 3L of water and some vinegar and then rinsed eveything all out and started my run.
12.30pm - Siphoned the wash into the boiler and added 1 capful of SS Antifoam, put the lid on turned on the power, start temp - 29.2 in the column.
1.10pm - getting warm, 40C, started the cooling water early, instructions said 50C but I could smell the wash at the top of the column.
1.20pm- 50C reached
1.22pm - 60C reached
1.27pm hit the 79C mark, fluctuated a little before slowly settling on 78.8
Left it refluxing for 10 minutes, tap fully closed.
1.37pm - 78.8C - Took the "Foreshots", my instruction book said take 150ml, I took 200ml as throw away/window cleaner.
1.45pm - 78.9C - Finished "Foreshots", closed the tap, refluxed again for 10 mins.
1.55pm - 78.8 - Started ( slowly, tap barely open, just barely breaking between a drip and a trickle ) collecting heads in 200ml batches then poured into jars so each jar ( all different sizes ) contained 200ml, took 4 collections of 200ml, each one took approx 13 minutes to complete, the temp remained pretty damn fine at 78.8/ 78.9 finshed collecting the 4th jar at 2.48pm.
2.48pm - Closed the tap, refluxed for 2 mins, gave each jar a smell and decided that the 4th one smelled cleaner than the first one I took at the start of "heads".
2.50pm - Opened the tap, took another 200ml and decided to call this "hearts" based on the smell only.
3.00pm - Took the first 200ml and put it in my "hearts jar" adjusted the tap down a bit, collecting 200ml every 15minutes or so.
3.52pm - 5th lot of 200ml collected and poutred into the jar, jar contents very "clean" smell and no vapor burn up the nose, readjusted the flow up a tought more, next jars collected at 11 mins each ( temp steady at 78.8 )
4.40pm - 10th lot of 200ml collected, same as before, very clean smell. ( the temp slowly came up over time from ( 78.9 - 79.1C )
4.51pm - The smell changed during the 11th one, I was sitting on the floor and noticed it immediately, bad smell, poured into "tails" jar, also at this time the temp started to move, went from 79.1C to 79.3C.
4.54pm - only colled another 50ml, the smell seemed way worse very quickly, temp reached 79.4C/79.5C, so I stopped here, turned off the heat and poured the 50ml into another "tails" jar.
Finished !!!
I let everything cool down and cleaned up, the wash smelled like a cornbeef when you take the lid off the pressure cooker, only a bit worse ... :(
I have decided today that my last "heads" is clean enough smelling so I have added it to "hearts" the last 50ml of tails is so bad I put it in "foreshots" the remiander all went into my "feints" bottle for my next run.
I will test the ABV of the "hearts" later and water down to 40% and have a taste, see if I am happy to use as is or put this down as my first "stripping run" and put the whole lot back through with my next run. I must say I am really impressed with what I have captured as "hearts", it smells so clean.
I think I maybe could have taken the hearts faster? But didn't want to be greedy and spoil it.
Will post back on ABV and taste test later. :-D
Cheers
GTH