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Just finished the Column design. 4" diameter perforated plates. Interested in the capability of a 2nd plate take off to refine in one pass rather than two.

Any thoughts on early take off ? Easy enough to change now....

Thanks!

My first thoughts are,

1) will this be your first still?

2) If this will be your first still why not go with a flute build? It's a well tested design that can make anything you're like. Those 4" fittings will add a lot of extra cost to your build relative to the flute design and from what I've read and seen it probably wouldn't be an **improvement**. Plus there is something to be said about using a tried-and-true design for your first still because there are a lot of other members with similar stills who can help answer questions about building or or running it.

3) If it's not your first still and you're wanting to do something different for the challenge or experience then I say build and take lots of pictures.

Gm

Yes first plate build,and habe done a fair amount of reading and research. I like the idea of the flute, it is straightforward but i also want to make and all grain with but so I can refine it in one pass instead of two or three refinements.

A simple flue with tri clamp T's lets you adjust the amount of plates quickly and easily. It's a tried and true design. Personally I like 2 or 3 plates for one shot whiskey.

DVW70 wrote:Yes first plate build,and habe done a fair amount of reading and research. I like the idea of the flute, it is straightforward but i also want to make and all grain with but so I can refine it in one pass instead of two or three refinements.

In my experience -someone else more qualified than myself please correct me if I'm wrong- you'll need like, 10+ plates to make a true neutral if you want to make only one run. But let me make the case against this.

If you fill a keg boiler up with say 10% wash and run you you'd expect about a gallon of "pure" ethanol in there. After you run it and make your cuts you get a different amount depending on your fermentations temperature control and yeast variety. This is important because plates need lots of ethanol to work properly. If you want to make neutral you'll need a lot of alcohol to stack and efficiently reflux a lot of plates. Depending of your boiler size and your fermentation capacity you may find it takes MORE time trying to get it in one go than the more traditional strip and spirit.

Running a flute allows you to make a wickedly quick stripping run. You can save up several of these and do a spirit run and you'll have more alcohol to better load more plates. Further flutes are great at compressing heads and tales so you should end up with a larger total collection of hearts with less total volume heads and tails than running several runs individually.

For the longest time I tried to do it all in one go thinking I'd save myself some time but I then tried a friends brandy who ran twice and it was a lot better than mine. To be fair he was also a home brewer with a beer fridge for fermentation control.

guittarmaster wrote:

DVW70 wrote:Yes first plate build,and habe done a fair amount of reading and research. I like the idea of the flute, it is straightforward but i also want to make and all grain with but so I can refine it in one pass instead of two or three refinements.

In my experience -someone else more qualified than myself please correct me if I'm wrong- you'll need like, 10+ plates to make a true neutral if you want to make only one run. But let me make the case against

From my testing of packed vs plates you need 15+ plates to truly hit azeo from wash. That is not practical on the hobby scale. A tall packed column can get you there but it's hard to keep it loaded with only 12 gallons or so of wash. Much better to do a run of low wines if a neutral is the goal.