Temperature Cuts and Vol of Foreshots

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Telsmere
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Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2021 11:07 pm

Temperature Cuts and Vol of Foreshots

Post by Telsmere »

I’m an experienced brewer but novice distiller. I’m setting up for my first run of a grain mash. I have a 3-gal Mile-Hi Mighty-Mini still that can be run in either a pot or reflux format, I’ll be using the pot still format to start with. Clearly, there is no substitute for experience when trying to figure out how to make cuts, but lacking that experience, I need to start somewhere. After reading materials in your Beginners Guide, I assembled the following table regarding the cuts:
Temperature at top of Column oz per 5 gal of 10% ABV wash ml/gal of 10% ABV wash
Foreshots up to 175 deg F 4 118
Heads 176-196 deg F
Hearts 196-203 deg F
Tails 203-208 deg f

These are clearly a little subjective, but still it comes down to removing the ethanol and various other organic molecules from a mostly water-alcohol azeotrope, so it’s chemistry as well. My Questions:

1. I live at 8000 feet. How should I adjust the temperatures above using an elevation or atmospheric pressure correction to fit my altitude?

2. I can obviously correct the volumes of foreshots for a 3 gal run from the information above for a 5 gal run. However, for a 5 gal run, approximately what volumes of heads, hearts, and tails should I expect to fill out this table?

3. If I use a 10% ABV wash and run two 5 gal batches through a stripping run without making any cuts, and then do a spirit run, will the approximate volumes of Foreshots running a 40% ABV stripping run derivative be about 2X the vol you would expect if I had not made the stripping run. In other words, by stripping two 5 gal batches and combining the product for a spirit run, should I expect about 8 oz of Foreshots or would I somehow get more due to the higher ABV of the product in the still?
4. Does the % of product that comes out as Foreshots, Heads, Hearts, and Tails change any with the % ABV of the wash (or of the product from the spirit run) ? (This assumes I run the process correctly, slowly increase temperatures, and watch all the various mechanical processes accurately)

5. Finally, how would any of this change if I were using the still in the reflux format ?
Thanks for any help you could offer:
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