Oak Stills Pot Still + T500 boiler = Drain of Doom

[zippdoodah]

Howdy,

after a few successful gin runs using the T500 refux still I purchased a pot still attachment from Oak Stills for the boiler as it was highly recommended not to take the packing out of the reflux still for the botanicals run.

For this run i did the spirit run as normal from birdwatchers recipe which produced about 4lt of 93 ABV. Result was no odour and seemingly super smooth. I cut to 42 ABV and soaked botanicals for 2 days and then did the pot still run.

which was a disaster. The volume out of the condenser was a stream, not the drip, drip dribble i was after. I attempted to increase the water flow but nothing stopped the pace of the stream.

The botanicals came through in the 1st 200ml, but after that it was old boots and everything went down the drain.

My only guess is the boiler got the liquid too hot and i need to find a way of moderating the temp of the boiler.

I ordered a temp gouge today, will sit ay the top of vapor path as per the 2nd pic.

Would appreciate any advice you guys have.

Many thanks

[NZChris]

The temperature gauge won't help. What you have to control is the boil rate, not the temperature, so you need to control the power to the element. There are plenty of threads on this subject if you know how to search for them.

[CopperFiend]

As Chris said, controlling temperature or water flow to the condenser wont make any difference to your offtake rate. You need a voltage regulator (can be found cheaply on amazon or ebay) which has a dial on so you can make tiny adjustments to the power input. You want full power to get it to the initial boil point and then turn it right down to the minimum that keeps it just boiling. This will need to be changed a little every so often to keep it boiling and your offtake speed what you want it to be.

I suspect you had a puke.

Copper.

[NZChris]

You want full power to get it to the initial boil point and then turn it right down to the minimum that keeps it just boiling.

I prefer to heat to boiling slowly to encourage flavor extraction, but if I was in a hurry, or had already macerated for several days, I would use full power at the start.

The 'old boots' is a worry. Did you strip the TPW before the spirit run?