"Let's say you ran 20L of 12.5% red wine through your still. What should you expect to yield in heads, hearts, and tails? How do you come up with this number? I would like to be able to estimate what I should be getting in a run to know my efficiency.

Thanks,
Blaztaz"

No problem heeler. I actually was expecting something like that for an answer. This was a first run with store wine and I was trying to get a grasp on what I should have expected from 20L. I ended up with about 2 quarts of 94 abv from 20L. But toward the end, it was dripping so slow and there had not been any change in the smell. I had my cooling water down to a trickle and couldn't get the temp up anymore without increasing the heat at the pot. Once I did that, I went into an instability in the column that I could not recover. I ended up with a quart of what looks like tails and smells really bad. I was wondering if I just pushed too hard or if I may have hit the miracle and was really at the end of my run and all that was left was tails anyhow.

Thanks,
blaztaz

Well Red it may be because I am so new to this. It may be that if I like this... I am really really going to like what is coming :) I ran in reflux. I plan to do that until I get a good handle on how the still runs. I am going to start a batch of the Gerber sugar wash next and see how that goes. The only thing I don't like about the taste in the last run was that it has a slight taste like burnt marshmallows right at the beginning and you can smell a little of that smell in it. I wanted to try the dilution, so I went ahead and diluted my 2 quarts to about 45%. I am sure I will come back here in the future and tell everyone how little I knew about how good it could have tasted verses what I taste here.

blaztaz

I tried to take some pretty detailed notes on what I did for future reference. So here is the run from start to finish:

I first started by trying to figure out the boiling temperature of ethanol for my altitude and barometric pressure for that day. I put a pot of water on the stove and got it to a full boil and then took the temperature. This was at 200f. I then multiplied that temperature by 0.81415 to get the boiling point of the ethanol. This said I should be looking at 163f. This was my goal for a steady temperature.

I started with the water to the column off and water to the liebig on at full.

Starting Temps:
Cooling water: 60f
Top of column: 69f
Room Temp: 72f
Amps to heater were full on at 11.8
volts were at 118.

First drips started at 148f and the temperature was climbing very fast, so I cut in the cooling water to the column. The temperature was very hard to control at first and it dropped drastically. I slowly started to cut back the column cooling water to get the temperature where I wanted it. I dropped my amps to 9.0 and at 2 hours and 15 min in, the column started to settle and the temperature was only bouncing between 148-150f. During this time I had been cutting the water a bit at a time and at 2 hours and 30 minutes in, I had the temperature fluctuating between 153 and 156f. A mere 7 minutes later it seemed to calm down and I held it at a steady 156f. The drips were coming at about 2 per second and I was still trying to bring up the column. At 3 hours (I was trying to go very slow and can probably speed some of this up when I know more of what I am doing) I had the column pretty steady at 159f. Everything that was coming off at this point smelled horrible. At 3 hours and 15 min in I had my first 50ml. Although I thought I was still in the heads, I wanted to get that jar away from my nose and start another to see how different they smelled, so I swapped.

At three hours and 20 minutes, I was still trying to get my column temp up to 163. At this point I was pulling about 1/2 a tablespoon per minute off the liebig. The temperatures were:

cooling water was now at 81f
tower was steady at 160f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.0
volts reading 120v

At 3 hours and 45 minutes in, I had another 150ml that came out at 96%abv.

cooling water was now at 85f
tower was steady at 162f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.1
volts reading 120v

Things were going much faster now and all seemed well. 4 hours and 7 minutes in pulled another 200 ml in a new jar and it was still at 96% abv:

cooling water was now at 86f
tower was steady at 162f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.0
volts reading 120v

At 4 hours and 35 min I had another 400 ml in a new jar that showed I was still at 96% abv.

cooling water was now at 87f
tower was steady at 162f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.1
volts reading 120v

At 4 hours and 52 min the temp rose to 163f. I had made no changes and watched it pretty careful and it didn't change after this 1f change.

At 5 hours and 4 minutes I pulled another 300ml that read 95% abv.

cooling water was now at 88f
tower was steady at 163f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.0
volts reading 120v

At 6 hours and 29 minutes I pulled 400ml more that read at 96% abv.

cooling water was now at 92f
tower was steady at 163f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.0
volts reading 120v

At 8 hours and 17 min I pulled another 500 ml that read 95% abv

cooling water was now at 92f
tower was steady at 160f
room temp was still 72f
amps were at 9.0
volts reading 119v

When I had made that last pull, the drips were coming very slowly and I could not cut back my cooling water without shutting it off. It was barely a trickle. I think in the future I will try to run with a slightly higher heater temperature so I can have a greater flow of cooling water. The drips were coming ever second or longer. To get more out of it I decided to increase the water flow and the temperature to the pot. So I brought the amps up to 9.5 and was shooting for a slight increase in temperature to about 164f. I never gained control again. At this point the column was bouncing from 150 - 170f and product would almost be spraying out the spout. I put my finger under it and it felt like there was pressure pushing it out. The temperature would drop and it woudl stop. Sometimes it would hold for a bit around 163f and I would not be getting any product, good or bad, out of it. I let this go on until 9 hours and 55 minutes into the run and then shut down. I had about 800ml of cloud liquid that stunk really bad.

So that was the run. I got rid of the first 150 ml that I pulled off. Those were in the first two jars that I pulled off. The rest were all similar in smell and taste. I left them out over night and smelled again the next day. They were again all very much the same in smell and taste, so I combined them and took and abv. It was at about 94.5% abv. I am guessing that I got a lower reading because of temperature change when I was measuring. I did not record the temperature of the product that I was checking, so I have some variables that are unknown.

I then mixed this solution with 4.3 ml of base to 5.7 ml of distilled water and took an abv on that. It came out to just under 45%abv.

With that I bottled it up and threw it in the freezer. It may get consumed and it may not. But I wanted to see what it was going to be like.

Thanks,
blaztaz