what to collect in

[allen42]

ok by next weekend IF the welds & solder hold i should be able to run my 1st BATCH !!! ( i noticed by my name i now be a rum runner !! )

i have been reading about the differnt parts to a run , i am making a reflux design , its complete , all but anyway lol , anyway , been reading about heads , tails , middlerun , so forth & so on , and have read that some suggest collecting in smaller bottles / containers ,, my bolier is 15.5 & i plan on running around 13 gallons , i have read that i should toss around 2oz per 6.5 gall0on run to get rid of the meth , i plan on tossing the 1st 6 oz just to be safe , as for the HEADS being sweet & not mixing them with the netrual spirits , should i just use quart mason jars to collect in & mark each jar ? they have a wide mouth & would be easy to work with ,,

what do yall use to collect the finished product ?

thanks for all the help & advice !!

[knuklehead]

Definatly glass. Also make sure you let your column reach and equilibrium. After you start getting vapour let your still run under full reflux for 30 minutes to an hour so that the head temperature has sat steady at a particular degree for some time. When you collect your foreshots (what you will toss) collect it very slowly, about 1 drop per second. You could easily get away with tossing 3 oz and still be safe. Then the heads will start coming over and they are sweet as you know. You should expect to collect about 30% of your total expected product to be heads. Keep this separate to run again at some other point or you can keep it, carbon filter it for a few weeks and use it to make liqueurs, that's what I do. I would suggest to you to collect in around 100 ml or 4 oz increments smelling, tasting (when you taste extremely high proof product just put a few drops in a spoon and let it run down your tongue, be careful it will take your breath away) ,feeling,and testing the ABV of the product. Once you notice that the product no longer contains the sweet taste you are into the heart of your run. This will be your neutral spirit or vodka. You can expect to collect around 40% or your total product expectancy in the heart of the run. Still collecting in 100 ml increments doing the usual tests once you notice that the product is starting to be a little off then you are getting into the tails. At this point you can just increase the cooling flow and crank up the heat to strip off the rest of the alcohol in the wash for a future all tails run. Don't depend to much on your thermometer just use it as a reference. Thermometers can be off by +/- a degree or two and if you have done all your research you will know that all the temperatures are pretty precise to a tenth of a degree C. So just document the run and make note of the temperatures that different things are happening. Since it is your first run with this new still of yours you need to get to know how it operates. Have your laptop or a pad of paper and mark every thing that you can think of down on it. Temperature, time into the run, ABV readings everything. It will be very useful to you if you do this for the first 5 or 10 runs until you get to know your still. Once you are comfortable and you have been documenting the same thing over and over and over you will just know when and what is happening in the column and your runs will be like clockwork. Then you will be able to collect in larger portions and feel comforable you are not missing something. Good luck, hope I didn't just tell you a bunch of shit you already knew and indented to practice

[allen42]

Also make sure you let your column reach and equilibrium. After you start getting vapour let your still run under full reflux for 30 minutes to an hour so that the head temperature has sat steady at a particular degree for some time.

1st off thanks so much for the INFO !! it was a great help , although i have read & reread I have missed the point above ,, are you saying , start it up & once i see steam , cut the water to the condensor on & lower the heat without letting any steam or luquid come out ?,, is that what total reflux means?

thank so much again for the info KH !!!

when i get home today i plan on putting water in it & just letting it steam clean really good , a few hours worth , this should also test for any leaks ,also want to have the water hooked up & condense soem too just to get the feel of it , although i know sprits will be different

[Uncle Jesse]

you can always use the moonshiner method - plastic milk jugs.

[linw]

,, are you saying , start it up & once i see steam , cut the water to the condensor on & lower the heat without letting any steam or luquid come out ?,, is that what total reflux means?

In a nutshell, yes. (On my first reading I saw "cut the water to the condensor" and I thought, "Oh, no!". But then I saw the "on" after it! )

Total reflux simply means to divert ALL the distilled vapour back into the column packing. Leaving this process for 30-60 min causes the column contents to settle (equilibrate) with the more volatile elements rising to the top.

[knuklehead]

are you saying , start it up & once i see steam , cut the water to the condensor on & lower the heat without letting any steam or luquid come out ?,, is that what total reflux means?

thank so much again for the info KH !!!

First of all you are very welcome and I see linw has already answered your question.

[allen42]

i do this by cutting the cooling water on & turning the heat down ?or just one or the other ?

[knuklehead]

What style of reflux still do you have allen42? The answer is both. When you have your heat cranked up for a fast heat up then when your boiler temperature gets around 80C you should have your cooling water running already. If you don't have a thermometer in your boiler then you have to judge by feeling the top of the boiler and the column. Make sure you have your cooling running well before you start to get vapour. Your head temperature will sit steady at the same temperature as the room during heat up and then it will take only 10 - 20 seconds and it will shoot up real fast. Depending on what your heat source is you may have to turn down the heat or you will force the boil and it will fly right past all the temperatures you are tiring to hit. What I do is I get ready and sit by the control when I am expecting it to shoot up. This is usually indicated by a one or two degree slow rise in the head temperature. Then I know I am about to get vapour. When I see the temperature start to shoot up I slowly adjust my heat just to slow down the "shoot up" a little. Then when the head temperature gets to 78.2C I keep my hand on the control and if it tries to move to 78.3C I slightly turn down the heat and so on and so on until it doesn't try to climb anymore. Then what will happen is the head temperature will slowly a tenth of a degree at a time start to drop as the separation starts to take place in the column. When I run sugar washes it will slowly drop down to 77.6C and then it stops its downward climb. It usually takes around 15 minutes for it to get to this point and then I let the still run like this for another 45 minutes "under total reflux" before I start my run. At this point your condenser should be dropping all the vapour and returning it down the column, it will climb up again and the condenser knocks it down and so on. If you have an NS-Reflux type still it is very simple to just close the output valve and have the reflux valve open so that all the condensate is returned down the column.

[allen42]

my reflux is 2" X36 " , just like the one on tonys stite , or at least very close to it , the reg reflux one NOT the valved one

yesterday when doing the steam cleaning , i know it was starting to boil , i had no water running to the condensor yet as i was wanting vapors to clean ,,, anyway , even with just plain water , you described the temp thing to a T , it sat there at 77 degress even when it was starting to boil & i couldnt figure out why the temp wasnt moving !!! , then WHAM it moved a few degrees & then took off & didnt stop till it reached 208 F & it stayed there till i shut it off !!!!

thanks so much for your time & wisdom KH !! & everybody THANKS SO MUCH !!

[knuklehead]

No problem allen42. So you have the column with the though tubes? Do you have gate valves installed so you can devert the water where you want it?

[linw]

KH, your description of your run is exactly like mine, even to the temps which are exactly like mine! Suppose it is not that extraordinary seeing that we are talking physics/chemistry of the same wash! Never mind, it still struck a definite chord.

What is your draw-off rate? I average 500ml/hr over the run.

[allen42]

KH my reflux colum is 2"copper X 36" high , the water tubes are 1/2" & they pass through the colum 18" apart about center of the colum & enter a 1 1/2 water jacket around the 1" condersor hmm no valves , what are they used for ? to control the flow to the water jacket ? , never though of that , it would also save steps when its time to turn the water on ,,,, is that what ya use the valves for KH ?

[knuklehead]

@ allen 42, I am not at all familiar with running the internal reflux model such as you have. Can you knock down all the vapour with the through tubes? What I meant with the gate valves is so you can divert all the cooling water just through the cooling tubes in the column. First of all I am very sorry to say but this is not my favorite design, hope your not upset about my opinion. However if you can divert all your cooling water through the cooling tubes in the column and knock down all the vapour that your heat source produces without getting any product or vapour coming out of your output then you are running under full reflux. Get your cooling water as cold as possible for this. You don't have a lot of surface area of cooling so if you are running a pump to circulate your cooling water use lots of ice to chill it down for this part. Set your heat so that your cooling tubes can knock down all vapour and run it like this for 30 - 60 minutes before you start your collections. This will allow for the separation and concentration of the different elements in your column. The methanol (if there is any) will sit near the top because of its lower boiling point and further down the column you will have the ethyl acetate which will come over in the heads of your run and taste very sweet. Grayson has posted a magnificent yet simple formula to calculate and use as a guideline for when the heads are nearing completion and your product will start to be "pure". Look it up and if you can't find it let me know. For neutral you will collect very slowly but it will be well worth it, trust me. Follow the advise form the experienced distillers on this site and you will be amazed at what you will produce. The unfortunate thing will be that you will forever shutter at the taste of commercial vodka, not to name any names cough*Smirnoff*cough

[knuklehead]

@ linw, this is a brief summary of my sugar wash for neutral runs.

20 liter wash at 20%. Run under reflux for an hour and then collect 50 ml of foreshots at one drop per second. Then I adjust my flow to, the question you asked, 10 ml per minute (600 ml/hour) in case you can't do the math . Then I will collect 1.2 liters as heads which I will carbon to death and then use to make liqueurs. After this I will continue to collect 1.6 liters at 94% from which I will make neutral vodka. After I notice the smell and taste being a little off I stop my collection, close the reflux valve on my NS-Reflux and turn up the heat to strip off another liter of tails which I save to do a tails only run.
Once the product is run I cut it down to 190 proof (45%) and add a 1/2 a cup or a full cup of KC06 activated carbon to each liter of product. I cover the openings of the bottles with coffee filters and let it filter, age and air out for a week. After a week I will put the caps on the bottles. When I am ready to filter it off the carbon, the day before I will put the bottles in the freezer to make filtering more efficient. Once I am ready to filter I will set up my brand new filtering station I just built which is built of all 304 stainless steel and one pass through the system filters three times. I will post pictures of the set up next time I use it. Anyways set it up pass each bottle of product through the system 3 times in total and since there are 3 filters in each pass it is 9 times filtered and I might add it can all be done virtually unattended. If you have ever used carbon you will find that you can filter and filter and filter and still have carbon dust trapped in the filter after each run through. Even if the product looks clear it may not be free from carbon dust which still holds the nasty shit you wanted to get ride of. After passing all the product thought the filter 3 times the "heads" portion tastes alright but still has a little sweet taste to it. I don't mind that since I use it to make sweet liqueurs anyhow. And the Vodka/neutral is unbelievable. If you pour some into a glass, and smell the contents, you smell nothing. Nothing at all, it is odorless. It doesn't smell like alcohol or anything. The taste when sipped "neat" is smooth, pleasant but yet you know you are not drinking water. It has a nice warming feeling going down. If you add a few ice cubes it is almost like drinking water. When friends and co-workers ask to have a taste they can't believe that it is 40% (after airing out and carbon filtering I find the % has dropped). Then I pull out a spoon, pour in a sample and light it up. It is a great feeling to see someone take a shot of something you have made yourself and not make the cringed face they expect to make. Then they doubt that your product is at the proof you claim and you pull out a lighter and ignite it and watch there expressions. Anyway, I just filtered another batch and had a few glasses so I am rambling like I do when I am sipp'in . Hope you find this information of some use for comparison and hope others do as well.

[allen42]

lol @ KH , get upset with you ? NEVER !! that is why i came here ,, TO LEARN the right way ! , not saying that i wont be hard headed & try things on my own , but i really give you & the others thanks for helping me out so much ,,, the still i have is from a design i found on the web THAT cant be all bad as he list's this forum as a resource !!!! ,, its called **HOW TO BUILD A WORLD CLASS STILL ** , i pretty much followed his design esp with the collum & condensor ,

anyway , i am kinda on the side line till i can get some SS & some help & this weekend being Thanksgiving here in the US its gonna be hard ,i think i can do what your decribing with my reflux & just cut the heat down when it starts , that along with the water running should keep the vapors knocked down , i have a DIG THERMOMTER now BUT , damn it , it doesnt read in 10'ths what really ticks me off is that i have found one that does that was cheaper than the one i have !!!

thanks again KH !!

[knuklehead]

That is the same site I got my still plans form only I built the "valved reflux" instead of the internal reflux. Oh yes I am sure you can make it work just fine. Good luck allen42.

[Goofy]

I was reading through some of the old posts and thought this was a really good one. It reminded me of some of the things I had forgotten and so I thought I would bring it up again for some of the new guys. (and for some of the old ones that needed a refresher)