Ok, back here to finish documenting this run. I had a family medical situation that had all my attention for the past few weeks, but my low wines were keeping fine in a few sixtel kegs. This past weekend I was able to complete the spirit run on this batch.
Saturday around noon, I filled the boiler with 13gallons of low wines at about 35.5% abv and prepped my collection jars while it came up to temperature. When I got first drips, I got the water flow to the PC adjusted so that the inlet end of the condenser was very cool and the outlet was pretty warm, with a good gradient of heat. The water flow was pretty low and the spent water was pretty hot, but not too hot to touch. 120F I'd estimate. I also adjusted the boiler power down so that I was happy with the takeoff rate. I don't have a power meter on my controller, so after some very fine adjustments, I measured the voltage across the element with a TrueRMS multimeter and did some math, and it was set to right at 1500W.
I took off about 500ml of fores then started collecting. I was collecting 500ml per jar. Since this was my first big run after coming here and learning a few things, I wanted to have an idea of ABV on each sample jar and I wanted more specifically to give my senses some practice. I took drips off the spout and rubbed them for feel. I rubbed them on my arm to smell. Just trying to get a baseline for what I might be looking for. The first jar was coming in around 87% abv and smelled sickly sweet, with a hint of acetone.
The smell and feel continued to change a bit as it went, but about 3 liters into collecting (jar 6), something changed and the product smelled much better. I took mental note. The ABV here was 80% and the thermometer at the top of the riser read 79C. I had a gut feeling that I was into hearts here so I raised the power to the boiler slightly and increased the takeoff rate just a little bit. I meant to measure the voltage again for reference, but I didn't. I have a visual indicator on the knob and I remember about where I set it, but I'll have to measure next time. My guess is around 1800W.
I let everything run like this, continuing to feel and smell occasionally. After a good while, I started to catch a whiff of what I presumed to be tails (funky, musty) and checked ABV. It was around 65%. After about another 2 liters, the distillate began to look cloudy and smell even more terrible (50%abv). I ran and kept collecting through a few more jars, collecting down to 40% abv off the spout. I killed the power around 4:30pm, covered everything with a cheesecloth to keep the fruit flies off it, and cleaned up my equipment. And this time, I did what I didn't do before. I walked away and let it be until Sunday.
Cuts were my biggest worry here so I had spent a lot of time reading Novice Guide to cuts, as well as this thread about consistent dilution -
viewtopic.php?t=68702 . I had made a small copper straw with evenly spaced marks in order to get a consistent small sample diluted to 35% abv. This worked wonderfully. I started in the middle of where I thought hearts were and worked my way toward heads. When I got to jar 7, I thought I could taste a tiny bit of heads, but barely perceptible. Still great flavor. I had made a previous mental note that jar 6 might be my cutoff and I was thrilled that tasting the dilluted product seemed to be bearing out what my nose had told me the day before. I tasted jar 6 and it was definitely a little different. Jar 5 was absolutely heads and I didn't want it.
Then I went the other direction and found that my senses were telling me the same story. The flavors changed as I went down the line, but right where I had first smelled that tiny hint of tails, I could taste it too. I tasted the next jar and it was very tailsy, damp dog funk. I wanted to keep pretty tight cuts since this is my first run, but I ended up deciding that tiny hint of tails would be fine since I plan to age on oak. I took the leap and put my selections into a clean stock pot. After tasting, I decided to keep just 100mls from jar 6 also. I was very happy with the final product. It was sitting at 70% ABV, so I did the calculation and added enough spring water to bring it down to 58% for aging. I arbitrarily chose that number because I've seen some of you aging at 62%, others at 55%. I need to read more on that, but I felt like 58% was safe.
In the end, I came away with 2.75 gallons of product. Eleven quart mason jars. Got some 70mm PTFE discs for lid liners. They fit "regular" mouth mason jars. I cut some oak strips to 1" x 0.5" x 5" and toasted them in the oven for 3hrs at 330. I put them in the freezer to cool, then charred them with the torch till they just cracked, like alligator skin. Tossed them in water, then loaded up the jars. And now... we wait.
But I couldn't just wait. So I took one of those jars and did 3 rounds of "nuclear" aging, just to get an idea. I have to say, I'm pretty happy with it right out of the gate, so I'm excited to take another jar down at Christmas and see how they're doing.
This week, I'm going to start a batch of Jimbo's Easy 1/2 Barrel Wheated Bourbon. Hopefully I've learned from this run. I want to take more detailed notes next time about ABV, temperature, power, jar numbers, etc. But thanks to you fine folks at this forum, I've put up something that I think I'm going to be proud of.
