I'm still mulling over the design for an upgraded still and I saw a comment in another thread that any money not spent on bubble plates is wasted money.
I've done some reading and watched a couple of youtube videos and have a basic understanding of how these plates work. They certainly make a lot of sense in a neutral spirit setup.
I see a few people seem to be running bubbler plates to make their brown spirits (bourbon, single malt, rum etc.).
1. I haven't been able to grasp if you use a reflux condenser for the brown spirit runs, or only on neutral spirits?
2. How many plates?
3. Does this make stripping runs redundant?
4. How do runtimes vary between more traditional pot still setup and bubbler plates?
One of my goals is to make a good Jamaican style rum. Jamaican rums traditionally use a "double retort" pot still. i.e. A pot still with 2 thumpers. One of the thumpers is often charged with tails from a previous run. I read somewhere that the bubbler plates can collect congeners and allow the spirit to re-distill through these flavourful compounds. Would a couple of bubbler plates loosely mimic that double retort kind of distillation? At one point I was thinking I'd have to end up adding a thumper, but I'd rather avoid it to be honest.