Pot Still Vodka- 5x distillation, positive experience

[bluefish_dist]

With 20 gallons I would go bigger than 2”. I could get between 1 to 1.5 qt per hour out of a 2” for a neutral. A 4” bumped that to over 1 gallon per hr. From low wines, at the start of a run I can pull 1/2 gallon every 20 min at azeo. That at about 5500w. So for a 20 gallon, I could heat up in 1.5 hrs, 1 hr to stabilize, then 30 min for fores/heads. Then 8 hrs or so for a run of 20 gallons of 40%. 11 hrs, but you would have 7 ish gallons of 190+ proof. Toss about 25% as heads and dilute.

[Up in the Shed]

Just wanted to post a continuation to this experiment.... After the last batch of TFFV, I repitched 10 bags of sugar on the yeast cake, buffered a little, and let it ferment out. It took a little longer, and only dried out to 1.002, vs .992 from the first run, but ended up at 8.2% abv. Stripped 110l in two runs discarding about 500ml of fores on each strip.

This time I modified the spirit run slightly. I really diluted it.... probably down to 6-8% ABV... ran it very slow for the first litre.... discarded as heads. Went through the rest fast and stopped collecting at 35% or so... Left the rest in the boiler.

3rd Distillation, really diluted again...to 6-8%.... took over another 500ml of heads very slow... ran fast to 30% and left rest in boiler.

4th distillation... Just diluted enough to safely cover my element, and slowly collected in jars down to around 30-35% and stopped collecting. I think I ended up discarding less then a litre on the heads cut.

This time I did not run the 5th distillation. It did not need it. I ended up with a 57%abv hearts cut, which yielded around 11 litres when diluted to 40%. Cost was $20 for ingredients

We did a taste test vs a bottle of my original 5 times distillation vodka from back in the spring, which we felt was almost completely neutral. This new batch was somehow cleaner. It was literally tasteless, and it was only off the still 24 hours.

I ran the 2, 3, 4th distillations in one day... taking about 10 hours.

I think this is a legitimate process to get a neutral on a pot still. ]There is no disputing a reflux column will get you a higher percentage of alcohol out of your wash, in probably just the one spirit run. However, for those who only own a pot still, and do not have the money or resources to build or buy a reflux (Like me... Covid absolutely destroyed our business) This can reliably get you a good neutral

I think the keys are
- Slowly collecting heads each time, and not trying to dump all the heads in the first pass.
- leaving the tails in the boiler each time
- its a no stress run....once you take of a bit of heads, collect quickly in a larger container and not be switching jars and trying to make perfect cuts.
- On the last run, the water has cleaned up the wash so much, you can easily smell where the heads stop... and you can easily smell when tails start.

Just wanted to share. Thanks for reading