Continuous Distillation - Still a little confused :)

[tiramisu]

I am going to say some crazy shit... please forgive my ignorance...

I understand how you can inject a measured amount of beer into the system that will be heated up rather than filling up your pot in batches.
BUT what continues to be a bit magical for me is how you separate your bottoms as you add more beer.

You could

1) do it like mini-batches draining bottoms and refilling the boiler based on temperature but I don't think that is what we mean by continuous.

2) inject your beer high up in the column ala plate 3-4-5 and draining bottoms down at plate 0/1 at a measured pace such that anything that makes it down there is essentially bottoms and drain it off.

I just watched Still Dragon promoting their continuous distillation hardware as a solution for whiskeys but whenever I start thinking reflux my head thinks vodka, not whiskey. With continuous still that uses 2, rather than mini-batches, it would seem to me that you would be stripping too much of your intended flavor.

Am I completely misunderstanding the process/mechanic and outcomes of this process?

Thanks,
t.

[Setsumi]

From a hobbyist, i think vodka on continious needs a dedicated refraction column, probably batch... for flavour spirits myself would like more refining as well BUT aging may clean it up if you have correct collection points. Or so i understand.

I think SD has the lead at this point.. if flavour is the goal look at the 3 chamber still. look at Manu and Yummyrum posts on continious stills. There are others as well, Windycity?? further, look at comments on LM vs VM take-off... but myself on a hobbyist scale would rather look to refine stripping runs.

[Hügelwilli]

2) inject your beer high up in the column ala plate 3-4-5 and draining bottoms down at plate 0/1 at a measured pace such that anything that makes it down there is essentially bottoms and drain it off.

Yes, this is how they do it. The inject point is named "feed" normally. For Whiskey the feed is almost at the top of the column, so there aren't many plates for rectification above, and behind the column is only a "doubler", what rises the abv only a bit further. For Vodka the feed is also very high placed, but instead of a doubler they have an additional column for rectification, placed beneath normally, so they have a "stripping column" and a "rectification column" or "analyzer" and "rectifier".

[Demy]

I don't know if you can help, there is a video of Jessie (on a commercial scale) perhaps it will give more information than me.

[Yummyrum]

2) inject your beer high up in the column ala plate 3-4-5 and draining bottoms down at plate 0/1 at a measured pace such that anything that makes it down there is essentially bottoms and drain it off.

You are on the money here .

Essentially there are two ways to do it .But both require steam at the bottom .
The simplest is like what Larry was talking about in that video were you have a small boiler under the column . The stripped beer ends up in the boiler which has a outlet which has a fluid lock on it . This allows the liquid in the boiler yo remain level and the excess overflows out to the drain ( or via a bottoms heat exchanger to regain some wasted heat ) , the the fluid lock ensures that the stream produced in the boiler only goes up the column .
This is the method I used in my continuous stripper .


The second method is more commonly used . It requires a seperate steam generator which pipes steam into the bottom plate section . This is also where the bottoms end up so again there is a fluid lock exit port ti ensure the steam only goes up the column but the bottoms can escape .