Here's the first one..............My thinking was to try to incorporate the simplicity of the internal reflux with the flexibility of the valved reflux, but also try to incorporate the principle of the thumper tub by placing the reflux return low down on the column to try & get some of the distillate back into the wash. As I said though, I'm brand new to this so my thinking behind this might've been a wee bit cloudy. But hey, the learning's half the fun, isn't it? The boiler's around 25 litres, & I get around 3.5 litres of useable distillate from each run using a Turbo Teast wash fermented to around 18%. I might well be erring on the side of caution when it comes to discarding the head & tail though, so perhaps the yield should be greater...........I'm learning all the time though, so I guess I'll optimise it once I fully-understand exactly what's happening during each fresh cook.
Here it is, anyway. It works pretty well, I think............I'm not blind yet, anyway
Here's what I got from the tap at 92C, anyway
The second build is a pure valved reflux design.....
I still have to tweak the cooling head as I found I was losing some vapour from the top
Here's the cooler........I reckon I need to increase the number of coils, & also maybe increase the length of both the cooler, and the condenser vessel itself
So far I've had 3 runs from each, & every time I've learned something new!
As for results? First 'proper' run gave me 2.5 litres of spirit, that I then added charred oak to, along with a vanilla pod & some lemon zest. The zest probably wasn't needed, but I was really interested to find out that the charred oak lends a flavour compound called 'lignin' that then changes to a compound called 'vanillin'! Strange how my first thought was to add a vanilla pod, hey?
Thoroughly enjoying myself with the whole process!