How to run a Flute ?

[kenfyoozed]

With all the talk of the Flutes I thought this might serve as a starting point for new flute owners. The flute talk thread seemed more about building and design. So if you flute owners who have a certain way you run your flute , could you please describe your flute and how you run it. My hope is for this thread to help others along the way running this setup.

I will running one soon , so I am very interested in this.

Thanks guys.

[ThrownOlive]

I am interested in this as well. Haven't read much about how folks run their flutes.

I see it has been a while since you posted. Got your flute running? Any thoughts on how best to run it?

[mash rookie]

I have helped a few. I will chime in as soon as I get a chance to write something up. Dont you already have A-lean-a? Happy Thanksgiving Kenny

[NcHooch]

this is from my 3" flute thread .

when I run mine, it goes like this...

Charge the boiler and turn on the coolant to the dephleg.
Turn the burner on high.
Once the heat travels up the column (you can feel the column) to the dephlegmator and starts dripping on the top plate, I throttle down the heat considerably.
Run it at full reflux for 30 mins + or - .
If you start seeing large quantities of liquid on the top plate, turn down the heat.
Then I slowly start turning off the coolant to the dephleg which diverts to the product condenser.
Eventually (10 mins maybe) the dephleg heats up enough to pass vapor though, and then the elbows on top heat up and pass vapor too ....once the vapor gets that far, you start seeing distilate starting to drip out the takeoff tube.
It seems you need to throttle the flow down to near nothing on my dephleg (like trickle-drips) to let vapor pass.
If the dephlegmator is not hot, then it's going to prevent vapor from passing and it'll produce nothing, but you need to balance the heat/vapor from the boiler, and coolant in the dephlegmator for proper operation.
I tend to run mine sorta slow (I can afford to do that with a 5 gallon boiler) because I want to prevent smearing, and I think it works out nice.
hope that helps.

It goes without saying that you want to keep a fairly equal amount to distillate on all the plates

[Sungy]

I run mine similarly.
I charge the boiler and start up the element. I usually turn the power up to 20 amps and let it warm up aprox. 40 min. As the column warms up you will notice the bottom sight glasses forming stripes of fluid on them. This is the start of the fun part. I turn on my cooling water pump and water cooler system. I place the water valve to full reflux or full flow threw the deflagmater and lower the heat to 17 amps. This will condense all of the vapor into liquid and flood the top plate. Because of the design of my flute I have to cut off the heat and allow the flooded plate to fill the trap. This is because the vapor is flowing up the downcommer . I start up the heat and repeat this until all traps are full. At this point I let full reflux continue for about 30 min. You will notice all plates are full of fluffy light bubbles. I then place a collection container under the product condenser. I reduce the flow rate to the dephleg and watch the temp of the outlet water. At around 50 'C outlet water temp I know we are close. I watch the temp of the vapor coming out of the dephleg as well. It rises to 168 'F and I start to collect foreshots. As the temp rises on the vapor to 172'F I change the collection container again. This first container is then scrapped. I then collect about 250 ml of distillate in this second container. This container is kept for my next run and placed into my next boiler charge. From here on in we collect the hearts at 188 proof. I monitor the flow out of my parrot as well. I tend to run my flute slowly for higher purity. The stream that flows out of the parrot will have a breaking point. Meaning the stream will break into droplets dorring its fall into the collection container. I adjust my take off speed by this break point. It will change height depending how fast you are collecting and with the increase in cooling water temp. Durring this process i monitor the outlet water temp and as it rises I increase cooling water a little. I am fortunate to have a sight glass under my bottom plate which allows me to monitor how much over flow I have from the bottom plate into the boiler. I use this sight glass to adjust the amount of reflux needed to keep my plates full. Also monitor the bottom plate fluid action. Meaning that the bottom plate will eventually have the lowest concentration of ethanol on it . This will make the plate lazy. The bubbles will be stringy and have little action. This is a sign you are taking your product off to fast unless its the end of the run. At the end of the run I lower the heat a bit 16 amps and increase the reflux to help stack up the plates a bit. I monitor the vapor temp and stop collection at 175'F. That is all I collect for hearts. That being said cuts are made n the standard way. Look, feel ,smell and taste. When things are dialed in you can pull off a complete run with the vapor temp pegged at 172'F. This is where the work begins...Shut down every thing and.....
Clean up.

[Stimson]

I run my 3 inch flute as described above. I have run it about a half a dozen times (spirit runs).

I do 3 stripping runs (thru a pot still) and end up with 4L of 40% for each run. Combine all 3 runs in the boiler with another 4L of water. After heat up, 30mins reflux i take out 150ml fores and then collect in 330ml stubby bottles. I reflux well and get 94% out of it.
My only grey area is how much heads to leave out. So far I allocate the first 2 stubby bottles as heads (say 660ml of 94%) and keep from stubby bottle 3 onwards as my hearts until tails set it. Is this about right?
When the head temp creeps up to 79deg and the bottom 2 sight glasses reduce bubbling i switch to a tails container and usually end up with only a single 330ml stubby bottle.
Sound OK for other flute owners?

[NcHooch]

My only grey area is how much heads to leave out. So far I allocate the first 2 stubby bottles as heads (say 660ml of 94%) and keep from stubby bottle 3 onwards as my hearts until tails set it. Is this about right?
When the head temp creeps up to 79deg and the bottom 2 sight glasses reduce bubbling i switch to a tails container and usually end up with only a single 330ml stubby bottle.
Sound OK for other flute owners?

this has little to do with actually running a flute, but the following is from the Novice's guide to cuts in the new distillers reading lounge:
Procure a good number of small (say 500ml) jars, number them, and get a big ol pot that is big enough to hold everything you'll want to blend. Collect your run in these numbered jars, and leave them to air out for a day or two with a coffee filter or similar over them to keep out the bugs and dust. Some of the more volatile and unwanted components will evaporate off over this time, and you'll be able to make better cuts and blends.
After 24 hours of airing, what you'll want to keep should be quite obvious by smelling and tasting.

[Durace11]

When the head temp creeps up to 79deg and the bottom 2 sight glasses reduce bubbling i switch to a tails container and usually end up with only a single 330ml stubby bottle. Sound OK for other flute owners?

One thing you might want to try next run is when the bottom plate(s) start to dry up put it back in full reflux for about 15-30 min to stack up the tails on the bottom plate(s) and push the remaining hearts up. Depending on how much ABV is left in your wash you might get another bottle of acceptable hearts out of it. Then be ready with your tails container to swap it in.