coffe addict wrote:Sounds to me like you didn't have enough reflux. So either more heat or more water through the rc.
When I shut down my rc at the end of the run my abv crashes to below 10 in the same cut jar.
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bluc wrote:No dont put the sludge(trub) in the boiler :handgestures-thumbupleft: 0
Amberale wrote:Nice rig mate.
I’m settling in my Neutraliser set up and nearly there(fingers crossed).
I’m rigging up my RC with both a gate valve and a needle valve in parallel.
Then I have a choice of outlets for that.
When I’m in full reflux I’ll use the gate valve and drain to a storage tank, then when I get to taking off I’ll switch to the needle valve with much tighter control and drain to a sink near my still where I can have a visual indication of flow and measure the rate of flow in a jug.
(I’m not sure if the needle valve will give me enough flow for full reflux in summer and I’ve got penty of valves).
Once I work it out I’ll knock it up in copper.
Also, if I want to kick it back into reflux, I can just open the gate valve and then shut it down with the needle still set for take off.
My problem down here at this time of year is water temp.
My cooling water is something like 8C and my RC cooling water flow rate is about 200ml/min.
It takes bugger all change in water flow to make a big change to the RC performance.
I think upping the heat input to the boiler would help but the only time I tried that ended in tears.
Lowie wrote:I'm going to suggest that by the time you got to jars 7 and 8 you were well and truly into the tails. If it were me, I would keep all the jars up to 6 or 7 (sniff test of 7 will verify if it's the start of tails). Keep the remaining jars and do a feints run with them (make sure your boiler is less than 30% alcohol), you will still get some nice rum from them. Discard the feints run from this run.
woodduck wrote:The other way around it is to get a power controller and use that for your fine control instead of a needle valve. Run it on your 3600w and set your rc at about where you want it then dial the power to get the right take off rate.
I think everyone does it differently when it comes to when to strip the tails. I personally wait for a 1% drop in abv and strip everything after that and generally get about 2ltrs of tails that is around 40%. Others like to keep collecting in jars at high % till they are deep in tails then strip only a small amount at the end. It's totally up to you.
That rig should hold at least 92% the whole run, probably higher if your running at 1.8lph.
db1979 wrote:Do you mean half off on coolant rate? You'll probably find it'll need to run at a trickle so you're target range will most likely be almost full off.
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