Need help reusing heads and tails

[Bobbydog]

Hello everyone.

Well its finally happened. My heads and tails (no foreshots) 20L carbouy (95% ethanol) is full and needs to be run through. I have been avoiding doing the research on cleaning these heads and tails up, but now I dont have a choice So here comes the questions..

If I dilute the 20L of nasty high wines with 80L of water and run it through my 100L fractioning still, how much hearts can I assume will result as a minimum? One litre? Two? And then what happens to the remaining 18L, it has to be run again and again and again? How effective is water in cleaning up this stuff is what I need to know. Would I be better off only running 5 litres of high wine with 95 litres of water? Do the fussels etc dilute evenly throughout the water/ethanol mixture? Or do they "hang on" to the ethanol. (my head hurts)

I'm having trouble believing that this process will clean up much of anything.. I have a really nice still and make good slow cuts, so this high wine is pretty nasty..

I am wondering what others experiences were with this situation. I'm guessing that I need to add a bunch of carbon or charcoal, as well as some sodium bicarb? Although at 95% I would have to dilute it with water a little to get the sodium bicarb to do its thing.


If anyone could help explain what the challenges are with a Carbouy full of nasty fussels etc. I would really appreciate it. I really dont want to have to run this stuff through my still a dozen times to make it drinkable. Thanks in advance..

Bob

[Bobbydog]

I added the 20 litres to my still and filled it to full mark with clean water. I then added 5 tablespoons of baking soda and stirred the whole thing up. I gave it two hours and right now its going through the still. I'll let you guys know how many litres of good drinkable hearts I get out of it. But I'm still open to any other suggestions, there will be lots of heads and tails comming through this run

Bob

[kiwistiller]

Pretty hard to make an estimate of the hearts yeild, it will depend on your original cuts, and your reflux ratios, column design, and so on. I think bicard takes a while to have an effect? sodium carbonate is better if you can't let it sit. sounds like you could have used more as well. You're aiming to correct ph to a certain level, which I can't tell you because I don't have my copy of designing and building automatic stills nearby

Looking forward to hearing your results.

[Bobbydog]

I just finished doing the cutting. Didnt take too long though, it all goes back in the heads and tails carbouy lol.. I used 1.75 litre bottles for the cuts and got a total of 9 bottles. I knew the first two were really bad, cause I could smell it from 3 feet away while they were filling. The heads carried on until the 5th or 6th, which is where the tails started to come on. Only the 5th and 6th could have been considered "drinkable". To my standards anyway. The 7th 8th and 9th were just horrid, like drinking dirty sock water. I'm not surprised by any means, that was a real nasty carbouy of crapola. The good news is, the 80 litres of water leftover from the process smells so god awful, its got to be chock full of the bad stuff. So I'm hoping that the next run should produce a few good bottles.

I was hoping that the impurities in the 20 litres of ethanol would evenly distribute with the 80 litres of water, then after running it through the still, would leave only 20% of the original impurities with the "new" ethanol. It doesnt appear to be 80% cleaner than the previous run, but its certainly better. I'll just run it all through again and see what happens. My bet is I'll get 4 good bottles next run, we'll see.. I'll keep ya posted.

Bob

[kiwistiller]

Good for you for having standards, that's what it is all about. I reckon a good dose of sodium carbonate would be a solid idea for the next one . Still can't find the figures but suspect you were a bit light on the bicarb. Carbon could be a good option as well. Did you give it a good long equalising period at the start of the run?

[Aces High]

I was told 1 teaspoon of bicard per 1L of low wines, and I gotta say it made a massive difference.

Its also best to add the bicarb and leave it for a day or two before running

[Bobbydog]

Thanks for the input guys.

I ran the batch through again yesterday. I didnt have any soda left so I just ran it though with 80L of water. The output of my still is usually about 1 litre of ethanol an hour, but I cut that in half for the first two bottles this time. I also let the still equalize for 2 hours (double my normal) before starting to pull any ethanol out. Needless to say, the first bottle was really super concentrated "heat". I decided to just add this to my firestarter bottle. The rest of the run was no different than normal, and I ended up with 8 litres of primo clean hooch. The tails arent nearly as bad anymore, just slightly noticable near the end. I also added the last litre of tails to the firestarter bottle.

I need to make myself some charcoal, and fill the heads/tails carbouy to the top with it. Then I can let the nasty crap soak in that for a few weeks or more. Any suggestions on wood type? We've got Maple, Alder, Fir, Cedar, Spruce.. thats all I can think of right now.

The next time I have this carbouy of crap full, I'm definatly going to run it through at half speed, and throw away the first and last litre after the first run though. The good news is, that you dont have to run it over and over and over to get some decent hooch. It was well worth the time and electricity to run it twice.

Thanks again for the tips..

Bob