A while back I made a parrot for use when stripping. (Let's not get into the parrot debate.) It came out looking nice but the first time I used it I realized that I should have made the funnel part a little higher than it is as the funnel is mostly filled before it starts to drip out the spout. I'll confess that I was pretty irritated with myself for not thinking about it when I was building. I mean DUH! Of course the funnel needs to be well above the top of the column. Grr.
Still, I put it into service. I could raise the funnel but then there would be an obvious patch. I was running my first batch of all grain the other day with 50% corn when I noticed quite a lot of oils/fats floating in the funnel. Since there is a lot of spirit in the funnel it allows the oils to float to the top. By the end of the run there was a lot built up in there. So it is working as a pre-filter of sorts and keeping those oils out of my spirit run. So as it turns out my building error actually works out quite nicely. Proving once again it is better to be lucky than good!
It is working as a separator and I was quite surprised at the volume of the oils. I was surprised at how thick it was too, as it congealed and balled up during the run. It seems to me that getting rid of that much oil is a real plus but as I am new to all grain I don't really know.
