More notes on first run of rum

[Jaxom]

Things went MUCH better today. Well, sorta, my fountain pump broke, and I had to buy a new one, but I did it much earlier then my last run to Home Depot.

Contributing factors were, I bought a nice digital thermometer that I can program my cut off points with. VERY nice I recommend one to everyone! I also picked up a 300mL beaker for measuring the distillate as it came out and measuered out how much I got.

One thing I didn't manage to get on my first day off this week was a large measuring pitcher. I've seen them before at a restaurant supply store that's open to the public. Large enough to hold a gallon but also has markings in mL as well. With out this I'm not sure how much wash was in my pot, but I was guestimating about 2.5 gallons. If I did my maths and conversions all right I should have collected about .83 gallons or 3142mL, but my new thermometer went off at 96C when I hit 2850mL's. So that's when I shut it all down.

Learned a few new things today. When I go to redesign my pot still, I must include some type of cooling flow control. The spirit was actually coming out cold. My previous run the other day had me bit scared as towards the end of the run the water coming out of my condensor was HOT. I was only using a 5 gallon bucket with two milk bottles full of frozen water, this time I used a 20 gallon rubber maid and 6 gallon bottles of ice and 15 gallons of water. But my pump is rated at 350 gallons per hour... Need a flow control!

The other things is to slow down my temps a bit. Watching my new thermometer, the temps slowly rose to 50C, but then started shooting up REALLY quick then, I only stablized it when it hit 87C, took another hour and half to reach 96C. During this I was collecting spirit at a rate of 30mL a minute, except for that last two, which took nearly twice as long.

Now for my questions. While doing this run, I was thinking, since I have no clue as to how much I got out of the first run and all, would it be wise to re run that wash? I have that stored in a carboy with a bung on it. From both runs from this wash I have about a gallon and a third of stripped rum. Again, guestimating that I started with 5 gallons of wash, I should have 1.6 gallons of stripped rum.

tia,

Jaxx

[Uncle Jesse]

throw the first run into the still when you charge it with your next mash. then distill it as you would normally, but watch for the distillate to come out earlier. the higher the proof of the charge, the lower the temp needed to start the distillate flowing. you'll learn to gauge it sooner or later.

[Uncle Jesse]

right, it all depends what you want to do. i tend to do single-runs so i think that way. you can easily count that first run as low wines.

[Guest]

Or save all of yer "first runs" and run 'em all together as a "second run".

I like to do 2 runs, too.
strip it fast, final run slow.

[Jaxom]

I think mebbe I didn't state my case right. This "first" run was actually two small runs. The wash being too large to fit my pot still in one shot. The "A" run, I didn't have a thermometer, but the "B" run I did. Would it be wise to re-run the "A" portion of the wash that I'm still holding onto? While I do plan on dumping the "left overs" from the "B" run as soon as I get to it this morning.

I had always planned on doing two runs for this, even before I got the recipie from mack. The first being a stripping run, and the second a slower more defined run.

Some day, when I become wealthy, I plan on getting a larger pressure cooker, one that I can do a whole run at once. This way, I can do rums and whiskies during the winter when it's not condusive to be out in my garage with my soon to be finished keg still.

Jaxx