Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by cranky »

Badmotivator wrote:
cranky wrote:Yes your conclusions are completely subjective, what is nonsensical is to tell everybody they should use "full power" on every run based on a single fundamentally flawed test.
I think you are being disingenuous. You know, because I've explained it many times, that my conclusion is based on FAR MORE than one test. People can and do disagree with my conclusion and I would welcome new information which overthrows my ideas. But is just dishonest to dismiss my conclusion as "based on a single fundamentally flawed rest."

Feel free to set me straight with evidence that is more compelling than the evidence I have. Feel free to link to high-quality evidence from chemistry, engineering, industry, whatever you need to. Feel free to describe in detail the experiment which proved the Power Hypothesis to you? Feel free to describe an experiment which I could run which would show unambiguous evidence of a difference in the distillate between low and high power.

I'll wait. Until then, you don't get to pretend that I'm the one with an evidence problem.
I don't pretend anything and don't really feel I need to prove anything. You are only running 4000W, run 2 equal stills side by side, one 11000W the other 1350 with 13 gallons of low wines, that came out of the same container, equal by weight and collect in 400ml cuts then have the results lab tested to see if there is no difference. Any other way is fundamentally flawed. Regardless of the number of studies and charts you present.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by Badmotivator »

cranky wrote: I don't pretend anything and don't really feel I need to prove anything. You are only running 4000W, run 2 equal stills side by side, one 11000W the other 1350 with 13 gallons of low wines, that came out of the same container, equal by weight and collect in 400ml cuts then have the results lab tested to see if there is no difference. Any other way is fundamentally flawed. Regardless of the number of studies and charts you present.
So that's what you did? I'd love to see the results of your lab tests.

Or is your information based on less-perfect (or as you put it, "fundamentally flawed") evidence?
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by cranky »

Badmotivator wrote:
cranky wrote: I don't pretend anything and don't really feel I need to prove anything. You are only running 4000W, run 2 equal stills side by side, one 11000W the other 1350 with 13 gallons of low wines, that came out of the same container, equal by weight and collect in 400ml cuts then have the results lab tested to see if there is no difference. Any other way is fundamentally flawed. Regardless of the number of studies and charts you present.
So that's what you did? I'd love to see the results of your lab tests.

Or is your information based on less-perfect (or as you put it, "fundamentally flawed") evidence?
Nope that's not what I did nor what I plan to do. You said
Badmotivator wrote: Feel free to describe in detail the experiment which proved the Power Hypothesis to you? Feel free to describe an experiment which I could run which would show unambiguous evidence of a difference in the distillate between low and high power...
So I gave you what you asked for, test perimeters that would show unambiguous evidence. If you say we should run full power you should know what that means to some, so the test should be what the most extreme consider full power not what happens to be in your personal still. Personally I could care less, I seldom run a pot still any more even for stripping runs, then when I have 13 gallons of low wines I run it through my big CM, the flute works fine for everything else. You can talk and point at graphs all you want but you are not doing your tests under "Full power" and your cuts were too big to separate properly and you did no lab testing. Therefor in my opinion it is fundamentally flawed, sorry that upsets you but that's the way I see it. Now if you want to tell people that in your personal experience there is little difference between running a spirit run at 4000W Vs 1350W that would be an accurate statement but it is also just your opinion.
Last edited by cranky on Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

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This appears to be relevant to this discussion:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced ... 002/jib.42" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by der wo »

I would really like to see lab results, the experiment would be much more informative.
But if we set the level so high, most of the experiments and research in all threads here are flawed. We had to start again discuss almost everything. Lead in solder, different yeast nutrients, parrot smearing, copper in descending path, peach stones, the universe of questions about all grain mashing, or all the things about aging...
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Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by Badmotivator »

(EDIT: Hey, Cranky) Ah. I made the mistake of assuming you had information to share, or an actual assertion about the Power Myth that you were prepared to support with theory and/or evidence. But now it looks like all you intended to do is to be dismissive of all the "talk and charts and graphs" and deny that the test could be informative because flaws! And subjectivity! That makes me a little irritated, but I'm a big boy and I oughta be able to handle that better. Anyway, I misread you, and responded wrongly, and I'm sorry.

By the way, 11000W/13gal = 4000W/5gal so I'm not sure where you're going there. Maybe you're saying the slow run wasn't slow enough? A 3x difference in power won't be detectable but an 8x difference would?
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by cranky »

der wo wrote:I would really like to see lab results, the experiment would be much more informative.
But if we set the level so high, most of the experiments and research in all threads here are flawed. We had to start again discuss almost everything. Lead in solder, different yeast nutrients, parrot smearing, copper in descending path, peach stones, the universe of questions about all grain mashing, or all the things about aging...
I agree completely but to set the bar too low and make claims that it proves more than it does is wrong. Everything we do is subjective there really is no way around it without enormous budgets.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by der wo »

Thank you for the pdf. I will read again tomorrow with more concentration. Unfortunately no picture of the equipment. I would like to know, if the still was insulated (perhaps some of you noticed, I have tourette syndrom and have to say "insulated" all the time). And no backround, who wanted why to do this study?
Insulated insulated. Ok, now I can go to sleep. Good night... :yawn:
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by Badmotivator »

masonsjax wrote:This appears to be relevant to this discussion:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced ... 002/jib.42" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Thats the first really interesting bit of science I've seen that suggests that power affects distillate composition. I'm going to take some time to digest that and look at the papers cited in that paper as well. I read through it once but I'm having trouble seeing how the data in the chart supports their conclusion.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by cranky »

Badmotivator wrote:(EDIT: Hey, Cranky) Ah. I made the mistake of assuming you had information to share, or an actual assertion about the Power Myth that you were prepared to support with theory and/or evidence. But now it looks like all you intended to do is to be dismissive of all the "talk and charts and graphs" and deny that the test could be informative because flaws! And subjectivity! That makes me a little irritated, but I'm a big boy and I oughta be able to handle that better. Anyway, I misread you, and responded wrongly, and I'm sorry.

By the way, 11000W/13gal = 4000W/5gal so I'm not sure where you're going there. Maybe you're saying the slow run wasn't slow enough? A 3x difference in power won't be detectable but an 8x difference would?
I don't mean to dismiss your findings. All information is good but it is the wording that bothers me the most when you say everybody needs to run everything at full power when full power is completely subjective. I feel you are using terms too broadly and your cuts were too large. To properly separate the end results of such a small charge. 150ml collection of a 5 gallon charge is the equivalent of 390ml from a 13 gallon charge, while 400ml is more the equivalent of a 1040ml cut on a 13 gallon charge. Now I for one sure as hell don't collect in 1 liter increments when I do a spirit run. I collect in 1/2 pint (236ml) or pints (473ml) when I do a spirit run or the blend suffers. I say to do it in 150ml increments because my own test cylinder requires 150ml to float the alcometer.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by Badmotivator »

Cool, Cranky. I get where you're coming from about the limits of the test. I will be appropriately moderate when discussing my conclusion from my tests.

Let's talk about effect size for a moment. If I had taken 100 mL samples instead of 400 mL samples, then at the edges of the hearts (last heads jar or first tails jar) it is possible that I could have kept as many as three more small jars. Based on the cuts I did choose (2000 mL), if all three smaller jars on both sides of my hearts actually belonged in hearts too, then I missed out on 600mL, which would end up being 600/2600=23%. That's the worst case scenario; the real difference is almost certainly not this big. It's also the maximum possible effect size of the Power Hypothesis here too. Assume that my high power cuts were right on the money but my low power cuts were 300 mL off at both ends of the hearts, as much as a 30% expansion of the hearts due to low power (from 2000 to 2600) (or 23% of the "real" hearts cut, 600/2600) is possibly hidden in my large jars that would be revealed by the 100ml sample sizes. Again, even if there is an effect, it is almost certainly much smaller than this.

Does anyone who believes in low-power spirit runs want to assert an effect size? I've never actually heard one. Just a thousand variations of "run it slow", "pencil-lead stream", "reduces smearing".
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by cranky »

The thing is, I feel an extra bottle of finished product out of a 13 gallon run is a significant amount and worth doing a slower run and could well be within the theoretical margin of error of the experiment. That would only be the equivalent of 288ml from this test.

My idea of a finished bottle is 750ml tempered down to between 50% and 40%
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Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by Badmotivator »

Right on. If there's an effect.

What's your time difference, slow run vs. fast run? Because it makes just as much sense to me to run a fast spirit, pull the hearts, throw away super-heads, then redistill the seconds. I bet you'd get more than one bottle out of the seconds run, and the time would be the same as a really slow spirit run. And I'm sure it works. :)
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by HDNB »

great discussion guys! spirited yet friendly, it has made for some good reading.

bad, i think i see a *lot* of differences in your data stream, i'd love to see more from others...it may not be clinical...but the information is there.


i don't understand your ask on effect size?

i'm convinced a slower run (to a point) makes a better spirit, i find the difference in the nose and initial palate. it would take a while to articulate the difference i sense. broadly, it is the difference between craft spirits and moonshine...but given the more aggressive stances that can be taken on the verbiage, i'm inclined just to say "it smells better"
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by cranky »

I can't seem to find any notes about any pot still spirit runs so I don't know how long they took. I want to say 3.5hr but given that my strip run was 2:25 I think it must have taken longer to do the spirit run with 13 gallons of low wines. When I get the 55 gal fermenter finished I might be willing to do some tests but it's so much faster to get a finished product on the flute I don't know if I am willing to take the time to do so even if I could somehow miraculously find that time.

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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by masonsjax »

It's interesting to me that in the article I linked earlier, there's mention of esters forming in the boil. So running slow means a longer boil, which means more esters, so more flavor can come through. That's what I got from reading it anyway.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by Badmotivator »

HDNB wrote:great discussion guys! spirited yet friendly, it has made for some good reading.

bad, i think i see a *lot* of differences in your data stream, i'd love to see more from others...it may not be clinical...but the information is there.


i don't understand your ask on effect size?
I see differences, too, but they are really really small, and I think that measurement errors here and there can account for them. But I also would love to see more data from others.

Effect size: let's say you get data on every person in America and you discover that to an extremely high degree of certainty Doritos cause brain cancer. Alarming and compelling, right? Maybe not, if the effect size is small, say 1 case in 27 million Doritos eaters. No intervention would be warranted.

I am asking about the effect size of this Power Smearing Hypothesis. The hypothesis is that high power smears stuff into the hearts, reducing its width. In other words, you can take a wider hearts cut if you run your spirit run slowly. What I want to know is, if that's a real thing, how big of a thing is it? If it's a 5% wider hearts cut thing, screw it. If it's 50%, sign me up. If it's 0%, well wouldn't that be a bummer?
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by sungazer »

Interesting The thread has taken a slight change in direction. One that I had been thinking about while running the still over the last few days had thinking about some of the posts that are made here.

Let me first say what I do then what I agree with you about and where I think there may be an issue.

First of all I never do a stripping run and then a spirit run. As it takes just over an hour to heat up the still and then a half hour of equalization only two or three hours to distill the batch at 95 ABV at this ABV there is no flavor or taste so why do another run. The difference in time to run the still at a lower ABV is not going to make a difference greater enough to offset the time it takes to set up a batch to run and the heat up time.

I use a propane burner on my set up so of course I use full power to heat it up to boiling temp whatever that me be (one day I will put a thermocouple down there) I watch the temperature meter for the poit when it starts to rise rapidly this is when Vapor first starts to travel up the column. I use cold water that is recycled however I use a pump that is designed for a complete household and I am only using this on one tap to get a constant flow it has to be open quite a way so I have excessive cooling some would be yelling shock cooling. Anyway despite that I have adequate cooling a small amount of Vapor will often escape from the still. I have to turn down the power and let the still equalize the SS Scrubbers need to heat up so that re flux can occur once everything is hot or at the constant temperature the power can be turned up.

I agree with your statements about cuts the amount of cuts should not vary. What you have initially in your wash will remain there as long as the temperature of the Vapor coming off is constant.

The thing that I was thinking about re the amount of power is how much of the liquid is being returned by the natural reflux of the still design and how much of the liquid is being returned by Vapour that is being condensed by the cooling column and being returned.

It occurred to me that perhaps I could actually turn down the power to the still and just rely on the natural re flux of the still design ( I use the calculation on the parent site re the still and the amount of reflux I was retuning to the still made little or no difference to the output).

Anyway that is not what I do I run the still with the burner on high once it has equalized and I just take off enough liquid to maintain the temperature as close to the minimum I can which is normally 78.3-78.6 (The actual number I wouldn't worry about because thermo couples inherently have about +/- 1 deg spec the amount of variance throughout the run is the important thing). Interestingly the amount of liquid I return to the still does make a difference which leads me to the belief that I am either or or both over cooling hence returning liquid colder than the optimum which changes the still and or pushing to much vapor up the column again upsetting the natural operating parameters.

The main thing however is that the whole process is very forgiving and I have found that as long as that vapor is at the correct temperature then spirits of 95% or ABV are going to be taken off the still. At this ABV there is little chance that there will be any bad taste or smell no matter what the wash started out like.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

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raketemensch wrote:
drmiller100 wrote:we could measure the temperature just before the condenser. then we'd know the alcohol content of the vapor.
I'd love to implement something like this in the experiment:

http://www.alliedelec.com/figaro-engine ... /R1056304/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

why???? Temperature does the EXACT same thing, and is free.
Now I know how you claim azeo so easy, it's based on a meat thermometer. :lol:
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by googe »

I see it as more to do with the still performance capabilities, I think.most run to slow, rockchucker runs fast as his is Thumper orientated, I was always one that said, no you can't run that fast and get a good product. But since then I've done lots of faster runs, testing product at different speeds. I've found, for an example, using my old separate columns, I would run it at about 2lph for rum and 3lph for neutral. I tried rum at 3lph, funny taste, strange cuts, smearing here and there, same with neutral at 3.5~4log. But when I upped it to 4lph for rum and close to 5lph for.neutral, the still performed amazing, it was in it's running element. Any faster and abv dropped, smearing, ran crap. Getting a still to perform to it's best ability takes some testing. I see a pot, lm, vm, having a point where they will perform best. You could get good product from a pot run at 15lph if you took cuts at 50mm, lots of blending required but doable. Just like making whiskey with a packed column at 95%.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by skow69 »

Googe, are you saying that for rum running at 2lph was good, 3 was bad, and 4 was good? And for neutral 3lph was good, 3.5 -4 was bad, and 5 was good?
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

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yep skow
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by IanD »

cranky wrote:
Badmotivator wrote:
cranky wrote: I don't pretend anything and don't really feel I need to prove anything. You are only running 4000W, run 2 equal stills side by side, one 11000W the other 1350 with 13 gallons of low wines, that came out of the same container, equal by weight and collect in 400ml cuts then have the results lab tested to see if there is no difference. Any other way is fundamentally flawed. Regardless of the number of studies and charts you present.
So that's what you did? I'd love to see the results of your lab tests.

Or is your information based on less-perfect (or as you put it, "fundamentally flawed") evidence?
Nope that's not what I did nor what I plan to do. You said
Badmotivator wrote: Feel free to describe in detail the experiment which proved the Power Hypothesis to you? Feel free to describe an experiment which I could run which would show unambiguous evidence of a difference in the distillate between low and high power...
So I gave you what you asked for, test perimeters that would show unambiguous evidence. If you say we should run full power you should know what that means to some, so the test should be what the most extreme consider full power not what happens to be in your personal still. Personally I could care less, I seldom run a pot still any more even for stripping runs, then when I have 13 gallons of low wines I run it through my big CM, the flute works fine for everything else. You can talk and point at graphs all you want but you are not doing your tests under "Full power" and your cuts were too big to separate properly and you did no lab testing. Therefor in my opinion it is fundamentally flawed, sorry that upsets you but that's the way I see it. Now if you want to tell people that in your personal experience there is little difference between running a spirit run at 4000W Vs 1350W that would be an accurate statement but it is also just your opinion.
To be right about this, the accepted science says that there should be no difference. What little experimental evidence we have agrees with the science. The burden of proof should be on you if you disagree with it. Of course, the reason for this reversal is...
S-Cackalacky wrote: Smearing being caused by running to hard (to fast) is an accepted fact here - just like the fact that water runs down hill.
It seems, however, to be an accepted fact based on hearsay with little or no scientific or experimental evidence behind it.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by der wo »

masonsjax wrote:It's interesting to me that in the article I linked earlier, there's mention of esters forming in the boil. So running slow means a longer boil, which means more esters, so more flavor can come through. That's what I got from reading it anyway.
Yes. 1 point more for reflux stills. Odin wrote about that. Search for "Compaction and esterification"

Edit: I found it again in his blog:
https://istillblog.wordpress.com/2015/0 ... -products/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by der wo »

I read again through the pdf about ethylcarbamate in sugar cane spirits influenced by distillation speed.

Normally sugar cane spirits have 50µg and they want to limit it to 150µg.
For comparision: Stonefruit spirits have about 10mg (10000µg) of it. German distilleries want to reduce it to 1mg (1000µg). So I don't understand the reason for this experiment, because I see no problems.

But the results are interesting:

Test 1 (spirit run) result:
"At the faster distillation speed, the spirit showed 87.5 mg/L of ethyl carbamate, a much higher content when compared with the 50 mg/L found in ordinary spirits, according to previous literature." They did not two runs, one fast one slow. No, they did one slow run and compared with something, they had read somwhere... cranky, feel free, to add something by using the word "flawed".

Test 2 (stripping run). The result you can see in the pdf Table 1:
-Ethylcarbamate, aldehydes, methylalcohol and higher alcohols are reduced with slow distillation.
-With esters I can't see a direction, but they interprete a rising with slow distillation.
-Volatile acidity rises with slow distillation.
They stopped each stripping, when the whole distillate had 45%. But these idiots had no thermometer correction, so at the end (lab analysis) they found out, the runs were ended between 42.72% and 45.97%. This probably is the cause, that some of the individual mesuarements are strange. If we exclude the both most extreme runs (the 42.72% and the 45.97%), the result is much more clear. Only the behavior of the esters is still strange.

Please correct me, if I did not understand everything in this pdf right.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by masonsjax »

They skipped the control run because the distillery they borrowed for the test already had the numbers from their countless standard runs. It would have been redundant for them to do another one.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by der wo »

masonsjax wrote:They skipped the control run because the distillery they borrowed for the test already had the numbers from their countless standard runs. It would have been redundant for them to do another one.
Really? "Literature" means not a book or another study, it means their own lab analysis?
They write, it's from:
Lima, U. A. (1964) Estudos dos principais fatores que afetam os componentes do coeficiente não álcool das aguardentes de cana, thesis, Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz, Piracicaba.
So it's a study from the same author, not a lab analysis from the same distillery. Or am I wrong? Did they write it anywhre else?
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by skow69 »

That study has so many problems I can't believe it was published.
Test 2 (stripping run). The result you can see in the pdf Table 1:
-Ethylcarbamate, aldehydes, methylalcohol and higher alcohols are reduced with slow distillation.
-With esters I can't see a direction, but they interprete a rising with slow distillation.
-Volatile acidity rises with slow distillation.
They stopped each stripping, when the whole distillate had 45%. But these idiots had no thermometer correction, so at the end (lab analysis) they found out, the runs were ended between 42.72% and 45.97%. This probably is the cause, that some of the individual mesuarements are strange. If we exclude the both most extreme runs (the 42.72% and the 45.97%), the result is much more clear. Only the behavior of the esters is still strange.
Der wo, I have to disagree. I don't see any significant trends except maybe the ethylcarbamate. If you exclude two of the samples you've lost 40% of the data, making the results even more meaningless.
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by der wo »

I also don't trust this study, but this part is the best of it:

Duration 55min 60min 100min
Ethylcarbamate: 39.2 33.9 21.03
Aldehydes: 18.57 11.74 11.56
Methyl alcohol: 7.54 4.69 4.55
Higher alcohols: 272.09 230.57 210.09

For me this is a significant trend.

Strange are the much lower results from 55 to 60min. But much less lowering from 60 to 100min. If we could trust, this could end (after more experimentation) in an interesting result like "You should run slow, but there is a point, where slower is useless." Or "You can run fast, but only up to a limit".
In this way, imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure. - Rosa Luxemburg
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raketemensch
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Re: Speed of stripping & speed of spirit runs

Post by raketemensch »

der wo wrote:Strange are the much lower results from 55 to 60min. But much less lowering from 60 to 100min. If we could trust, this could end (after more experimentation) in an interesting result like "You should run slow, but there is a point, where slower is useless." Or "You can run fast, but only up to a limit".
I think those variables (max/min speed) will vary from still to still, but if we can come up with a means of measuring or determining them, it would be a pretty huge advancement.

While the idea of "run slow and low" is well and good, for many of us who aren't retired yet, time efficiency is incredibly important. The "pencil lead stream" vs the "x drops/second" thing is taken as gospel at the moment, despite it basically being a matter of personal preference.

"As slow as possible" would drive me batty.
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