Dilute with backset or no?

[Username]

I'm running grain and sugarhead ferments in tandem at the minute. My latest sugarhead ended up with a lot of gunk* in the bottom that I'm not putting on top of my elements.
As a result I'm a bit shy on liquid in the boiler for a stripping run. I want to run both strips tomorrow as I have time and thats scarce at the minute.

This is what I've come up with.
If I run the grain stripping run 1st, pre-heat the sugarhead as I go and rather than dilute it with water to ensure my elements stay covered I use some of the backset from the 1st stripping run to add volume.

Am I missing something obvious or should this work fine

*the squeezing's of the bag, mesh may be a bit large

[MooseMan]

Firstly, going forward you should cold crash if you can, this will drop the "Gunk" out of suspension and gain you more beer to strip. Time will do the same but you don't have that right now. (Bentonite will also do this job FYI)

Yes by all means leave some of the backset from the first strip in the boiler, worst case scenario it will shorten the second strip time due to latent heat energy.

[PalCabral]

Not sure if your plan will work, Username, but I'm not saying it won't.

It's not going to help you now, however, but Moose is right. What you want to do is to cold crash the ferment. It will settle the gunk and allow you to syphon it off to a secondary vessel or the boiler for distillation.

Let us know if your approach works!

[subbrew]

Do it. Backset has more flavor than water. And, depending on how low you take the stripping run it may even have a bit of left over alcohol. Think about it, all you are really doing is diluting the ABV of your wash with more low alcohol wash.

[Username]

Thanks fella's that's what I was thinking Subbrew.

I did actually cold crash and the gunk was lovely and compact. The problem was the net curtain I used as a grain bag
I've always separated the grains before

[Username]

Mid 2nd strip now. I decided to embrace the feck up, so I left a good 20L of hot backset in the still.
It's also the 1st time I have tried to pre-heat a 2nd strip with the outflow of the condenser, through my wort chiller (thanks Mooseman).
Holy energy saving Batman, I had to take the chiller out when I saw the steam rising

With the hot backset and fresh beer going in @45C I was back producing in a little over 20 minutes

I read somewhere that a lot of whiskey distillers will strip down to the abv of the beer, that's kind of been my rule of thumb. If the beer is 7% I'll strip down to 7%, I'll go deeper with this 2nd one to make up some for the losses in the fv.

[Username]

Playing with a puke on warm up, watched by the still house spirits

20260509_091953.jpg

[MooseMan]

Mid 2nd strip now. I decided to embrace the feck up, so I left a good 20L of hot backset in the still.
It's also the 1st time I have tried to pre-heat a 2nd strip with the outflow of the condenser, through my wort chiller (thanks Mooseman).
Holy energy saving Batman, I had to take the chiller out when I saw the steam rising

With the hot backset and fresh beer going in @45C I was back producing in a little over 20 minutes

Glad you got to see the efficiency gain for yourself man.

I'm a tight sod, and always looking for ways to use the energy I'm putting into the still for some other purpose.

One day I'll go all out and build an actual pre-heater.