Long run times?

[UnclePaul]

Lately my mash has been staying around 7 to 8 %. I end up getting a stuck ferment when I've tried to push it over that so I have started being satisfied with what I get and the taste it gives me.
Seems though my runs are really going on the long side. From start to finish once it starts dripping can easily be 8 or 9 hours.
My pot holds 17 and I generally run 10 to 12 in it. Not counting the foreshots and heads I normally get close to 3/4 of a gallon of good tasting spirit that is strong.
Then I can stretch it out and get another quart or so of tails before I get tired of a drop a second.
Could increasing my coil size speed things up.
Pot is 15" in dia. x 24" tall.
Then I come out of the head with 6" that tapers to 4" and this is 24" tall. This angles off at a downward slope starting at 3" and reduces down to 1 1/2" or 2" in about 24".
This section is removable from the pot for filling and cleaning.
Then I reduce down to a 1" coupling with about a foot of 1" straight down to a reducer to about 6' of 5/8" coil. This is sitting in a 5 gal. bucket that has water going into it at the bottom and draining out at the top.
I would post a photo of the entire thing, but my camera died on thanksgiven!
It takes about an 1 1/2 hour with a propane turkey cooker to get up to 175F +/- where I usually start getting a slow drip, then the drips increase to a couple every second or so till it gets over 200F and starts slowing down again.
Still these runs seem long.
Luckily, when I have work, I work at home.

[heynonny]

UnclePaul said:

It takes about an 1 1/2 hour with a propane turkey cooker to get up to 175F

It sounds like a heat problem, I heat about 6 1/2 gal with a turkey burner, and at about 18 minutes, I sit down and put my hand on the propane regulator knob. usually, 20 - 21 minutes, I have product (meth anyway) flowing.

An hour and a half seems an AWFULLY long time to heat 3 gallons of wash, and kind of falls in line with the distill times.

12 l - 3 gal shouldnt take more than 12 minutes tops to reach 175 deg. How high do you turn up the heat?? Mine sounds like a 'shuttle' launch, , ,

That 1 1/2 hours isnt from frozen mash is it?? just kidding ha ha -hey-

[Nightforce]

That "turkey cooker" might be a bit undersized. I had one that I was using that even on a high pressure regulator took about 40 minutes to heat 6gal of wash. Hour and a half sounds about right for one outfitted with a 7" water column regulator. I'm using an old burner that I made from the element of a propane water heater. I'd say it's about 40,000 btu rated. Last 6 gallon wash took 27 minutes to a full boil.

Can you post a pic of the turkey cooker? I've seen them both puny and jet engine hot. I'd like to hear one of the multi-jet porcupine jobs, I bet they are loud.

Anyway, I concur, more heat.

[blanikdog]

Paul, your rig is as close as shit it to swearing as mine is and I run 25 litres and it usually takes around an hour for the fores to begin and about another five hours to complete the run. Have no idea on temperature as I never use my thermometer any more, but as a guide the lyne arm is too hot to touch, but not hot enough to cause injury. You wouldn't want to hold on to it. Your coil will handle it easily and doesn't need changing. Seems to me that Nightforce has hit the nail on the head.

My gas jet is a two burner - eight inch and three inch - and I use both for the initial heatup and turn the large one off and run the small one at 1/4 open and leave it there until I decide to run it faster to collect feints for re-use. This isn't a stripping run as I only do single runs.

blanik

[blanikdog]

As an edit to that post, I run the rig very slowly gauging by the output stream being about a pencil lead in diameter. Ignore what I said about the 1/4 on because all stills operate differently, but by gauging the output size you can't go wrong.

blanik

[UnclePaul]

I guess I was misunderstood in the beginning. My pot holds 17 gallons when compelely filled, I run 10 to 11 gallons in it and have quite a bit of head space, but that works out to give me two runs from one fermentor and not get into the corn at the bottom of it.
If I really turn up the heat, I might be able to heat it in an hour, but us sucks propane at that rate like the space shuttle uses fuel.
I'll try that next time and see how many runs I can get out of one of my eight gallon propane tank.
I use the temperature gauge which is mouth at the extreme top of the lyne arm mainly to keep from letting the temperature to just run away. I can tell if I have too much heat of not enough by seeing if the temp is rising or falling.
Perhaps a lot of it has to do with the low ABV in the mash.
I have a friend who swears he watch some one else with a 90 gal pot, run 15 gals of product in less than 2 hours. I think that it might have been a little over rated as that would be close to 17 or 18 % in the mash. But then I wasn't there.

[Hawke]

Some turkey fryers are only about 20,000 BTU's. Mine is a 60,000 BTU Camp Chef unit. It will heat 12 gallons of 8 to 10% in about 45 minutes. (Although, I have used it for a couple of 14 hour runs on a reflux rig)
Best to have a simple potstill for stripping runs, then run the low wines, adjusted to 40%ABV, through the reflux rig.