by RC Al » Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:38 pm
So first up, 50l isnt going to run very well in a 50l keg - aim for a 40l fill - In the fermenter there will be a fair bit of trub, but you wont have to fill it quite to the top, 180L ish should work out reasonably well and some head room usually dosent hurt if it decides to go nuts initially (summer is coming!), but you will work that out over time, any excess can be stored and run next time.
If your doing generations with backset, then taking the time to do smaller batches for the first 5-6 times will build up the flavours in the trub, after that the batch sizes can increase to the qty you want to make AND be a good drop to drink
Actual foreshots are much less than many think, the 1.2l mentioned above is in reality very excessive, but that first litre of heads out of a potty is going to be undrinkable crap anyway, so meh. I have always taken a small fores cut when stripping, but will be leaving it in from now on to help compress it all for the spirit run.
Be prepared for how long that size spirit run will take - I generally run slow for the first 5L - around 1.5L/h and then crank up to around 2-2.5L/h for the hearts for the next 10l or so and then im usually into tails and just start turning up the gas - run time without heat up is usually 10-11 hours and I usually end up with around 20L or so of 73-74% roughly half of which is put in the feints keg. As im pretty familiar with the washes im doing, I can have a good guess at jars sizes for the cuts, but do occasionally get caught out using a to big jar than I should near a transition
Have a search for stacking fractions - the re-use of heads n tails to concentrate the nasties