Full Run of Rum. Arrrrgh.

[muscashine]

So after all my Liebig construction issues and the cleaning/sacrifice runs, is was time for a full-up test run.

My still: 13 gallon boiler running 4500W element on a DIY SSR controller. 4 foot liebig coming off a 2 foot tall, 2" riser column to help the Liebig get a decent angle.

The go-juice: 5.5 gallons of rum wash, aged in the Carboy for a year. Why a year? Because I made it before I scrapped my old still. It wasn't doing anything but sitting there looking like dark wine, so I left it alone, only racking it off every couple of months. Very minute amounts of grunge in the bottom this last time.

So, I put the still together and poured in the wash. I cranked the heat up about 3/4 and waited until the bottom started getting warm. Then I maxed it out for a few minutes until I started hearing that "sizzling" sound that tells me it's getting close to boiling. I backed it off to around 3/4 again. When the top of the still started to warm, I cut the cooling water on to the Liebig. When the first few drips appeared I cut the power back to 11 amps, which seemed like a good setting from my sacrifice run. The drips turned into a little stream. My Liebig maintained a nice even gradation in temps from the bottom to the top. I let it run until it was down around 40 proof and the output had a strong wet cardboard/feet smell. I shut it off and let it cool. I had 6 quart jars of clear liquid (mostly clear, the last jar was getting oily looking) starting at around 130 proof.

Cleaned the still and dumped my stuff back in, adding a gallon or so of water both to get the proof down and to give the heating element a good amount of clearance.

Fired up the still again. Less wash in this time so I ran it lower from beginning to end. Maxed out at 3/4 power to warm up, cut the coolant on to the Liebig and then dropped to 11amps when the first drops appeared. Once a fine stream began flowing I dropped to 9.5 amps. Collected the first 200 ml as foreshots/heads and tossed it (my math says throw out the first 100ml on a 5 gallon wash, so I was being conservative.

first jar (quart jar only half full) was Heads at 150 proof (temperature corrected). Next three 1/2 jars were between 150 and 120 proof. Last jar came out around 100 proof (again, I should have kept better records for you guys), but was starting to smell funky again, so I cut everything off and tossed the last jar. The middle three jars were nice. Jar 2 Was pure awesomeness.

Proofing time:
I mixed the middle three jars (total of 1.5QT) in a BOP and watered them down to 85 proof. The "heads" jar I watered down separately and smelled and tasted at 85 proof. I couldn't tell any difference between a tongue and smell test than I could with the others, so I dumped it in the BOP and swirled it around.

Now here's where I fooked up.
I took my finished and proofed stuff and poured it back in the jars I used earlier for the stripping run. I had rinsed them with water but not the lids. So now they have an ever so faint smell of feet/cardboard from the lids and maybe the piss poor jar cleaning I did. Really made me mad at myself, after all that work. But I have 3 jars of my first really shitty rum (that I'll probably wind up throwing out or pouring back in a still when I do another rum in the future).

The still worked well, I had NO problem with the controller (although I'm going to add a fan to the hintsink), and the liebig was satisfactory. The distillate is coming out just a little warmer than I'm used to with a worm (about 80-85 degrees) but I'm knocking down all the vapor. I'm running 1" over 1/2 so I'm thinking my outer sleeve may not be completely efficient. I understand 3/4" over 1/2" is supposed to be better. I also think I ran it WAY too fast. I completed my stripping run in two hours from power on to power off. My spirit run was the same way. I only had 5 or so gallons in it the first time and like 2.5 the second time, so that might be it, but it seemed WAY faster than I thought it would be.

As an aside: after I decided to cut off the stripping run, I disconnected the Liebig and attached my worm (20 feet of 1/2 copper in a coil inside a 7 gallon fermenting bucket). I cut the still back on and VERY quickly the worm was producing a cold, nasty distillate between 20-30 proof. The worm works fine as a backup - I built it before I replaced the old still, but I never used it. The Liebig seems more popular, and I had a lot of problems with my previous worm. The buckets always started leaking or cracked. After a Pint of oily grossness came out of the worm, I cut the still off again and poured that stuff down the drain, and rinsed my worm and arm out.