First off, I dont collect stripped product in a bucket anymore. Have a large SS kettle that I use. And yes, I know you can see some not covered connectors for heating elements. That is also taken care of. It's just old pictures.
When I built the still, I kind of overdid the boiler. Not practical at all, and even with 5 kW it took way to long to get it up to boil.
Rest of the still is also a bit unpractical, large and bulky. I live in a small apartment, and it takes up a lot of space. Grew tired of the size, so got rid of it and have now built a new one that is modular and all the parts fit inside the boiler when not in use. Also, the new one will monitor the operation via a raspberry pi. And not the way I did before (windows PC running teamviewer).
All my washes have been purely suger washes with turbo yeast. 5 kg suger and 100 gram of yeast per 25 liter. And yes, I have been struggling with washes stalling. Never added any vitamins, nutrition or adjusted pH. All will be taken care of from now on
Anyhow, used to run the still by topping it up with wash. Could fit around 100 liters w/o problems. Heated it up 5 kW. Stripped to low wines with 3 kW constant heat. That amount started to get close to what my liebig could handle. Temp of low wines coming out were usually around 34 C. Guess I could have pushed it harder, but did not find the need of it. Done stripping, next thing would be to clean boiler and then reassemble for VM-run.
Again 5 kW for heat up. When heat got close to valve I shut down 3 kW element and let it run by 2 kW. Let it stabilize for 3 hours ish, then take out foreshot slowly. Around 1 drop every 2nd second. Here I dont bother check temp, only go by smell and taste. When fores are done and discarded I let it stabilize for 20 minutes to take out heads. This time a bit quicker. Around 2 - 3 drops a second. Really dont care much about temp at this stage either. Collected heads iin
Same procedure here as well. Closed valve and stabilized for another 20 minutes.
For hearts I had fully open valve. Output around 1.5 liters an hour. Let it run until I started to see temp start to move upwards. Not much, just a couple of decimals. Then I started to compress the hearts until I felt I had enough product or just got tired for the day. Never bothered to collect any tails.
And I guess I am a bit conservative regarding cuts. Usually ended up with 15% heads.
From start to stop on a 100 liter wash (that had been stripped) it took me around 12 hours if I do remember correctly.
One of the pictures is of the new still (apologize for all the mess on the picture, will post some proper ones of it when it is up and running). Really look forward to test it. As you can see from the pictures it is of 304 SS. But I have some copper mesh as packing, plus the reflux coil is also made of copper.
Any questions, let me know.