Low head temp on reflux still

[MadBrewer]

I have an 8 gallon reflux still ( one with water crisscrossing at the head) anyway... On my first run i kept the head temp at a pretty steady 175*F. I threw out the first 5 or 6 ounces that smelled bad, but continued to collect distillate at that head temp for several hours. I ended up with about 50 ounces of 170 proof. It finally stopped dripping so i assumed the run was complete. After reading more, and more importantly understanding more, i see that the temps should change for different stages of the run, heads, middle, tails... Starting with 174, going up to 200+... Is this run bad? Should i re-run it?

The original wash was actually a failed 10% double ipa so there are floral hop notes to the alcohol which makes it difficult to a true nuetral spirit that my book keeps talking about.

Thanks in advance

[myles]

Not going to comment on the temperature issue , but I will say that the hops are persistent. You will probably need to do another cleaning run as they will be stuck to all the internal surfaces of the still.

Generally it is not recommended to distill anything with hops in. I would try just steam cleaning it first with just water in the boiler as that might shift it. Run steam with no cooling for 30 mins or so to clean the entire vapour path. Then dump the boiler contents, put in fresh water and condense some of the next batch of steam to see if you can still taste hops in the condensed water.

[Prairiepiss]

It a cm still. Temps on a cm still can and will be different then other reflux stills. The reason being is you are controlling what comes out with cooling. And the temp probe will be after the reflux condenser. RO basically you are controlling that temp with the amount of cooling flow you have selected. If you were to lower the cooling flow later in the run you would notice a temp increase. But cm stills are good at compressing tails so the temps will stay more steady then others. Because you are not letting the hotter vapors past the reflux condenser.

You mite want to read the cm mod link in my signature. It would help you with that still.