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My $.02 that nobody asked for

vagabondmountainman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:25 pm It I'll have to check into the power limits of those bubblecaps RC. That could make a big difference, but I'm not sure how to find to research it.

This is the problem with knock off chinese suppliers. If you talk to the supplier that actually innovated those designs and works with both hobbyist and commercial distillers you'll probably get reliably accurate insight. FYI if you don't know that would be Still Dragon, they invented pro caps and they are on here though they don't make a big deal about the connection and just mostly act like a normal distiller. If you care about performance, fine design detail and reliable guidance, reward a company that has put in the work. If you don't really care about the fine details and nuances then knock off chinese suppliers provide a good value as long as you don't ask a lot of questions and will just accept whatever you get. You sound like you want the benefits of an innovative high support american company at chinese cheapskate prices though.

Of course SD has limits too. They don't do sieve plates. The cynic in me says it's because sieve plates are lot cheaper than bubble cups, much less pro caps and that would decimate their profit margin. The realist in me accepts that the textbook drawback of sieve plates is a smaller operating range due to lower turn down ability compared to bubble caps. A company making gear for everybody making everything in every way probably benefits from only supplying bubble caps. But as Bluefish illustrates, a properly designed and applied sieve plate may perform better in it's optimum window, and do so much more economically than any bubble plate.

If I were trying to decide on a 6" still I'd read the textbooks, do the math, and design it myself. Most people choose to pay someone else to do that, which is what you get from a higher caliber of supplier.

Thanks for the advice Zapata. I've looked at a few major US retailers, but a lot of them have their stills manufactured in China, and the designs seem almost identical. I'm sure some manufacturers have higher quality, but for the most part it looks like they are just playing the middleman and marking up a near identical product. If I had the skills to build a big column myself I would, but for me its much easier to volunteer to work a handful of Saturdays at my job and buy one. There is definitely some garbage coming out of China, but they also make excellent products as well. I think it just depends on the supplier. I've been using a 4inch modular 4 plate copper flute from Distillex for about a year and 4 months now, and have actually been very impressed with the build quality and performance. I've run over 20 batches of bourbon, scotch, wheat whiskey, and Irish whiskey as well as a couple birdwatchers to make gin and apple pie, and I've been really happy with the way it runs. It makes great flavored whiskey on 2 or 3 plates, and my run times seem to be fairly identical to what a lot of other folks get running 4" flutes.2-3 liters an hour for the hearts part of the run is about average. I'm just looking to upgrade to a 6" to cut my run times in half if I can. If I could get 5-6 liters an hour on a 6 inch I'd be very happy. That would open up the possibility of starting a microdisitllery with a buddy of mine as a side job.

Do you have an opinion on the advantages of procaps vs bubble plates? I did some research on HD, but couldn't find much of anything. A couple of the other forums I found discussing it seemed to say that the procaps were better for neutrals and the bubble plates for flavored stuff. But maybe that's just a matter of personal preference, like bubble plates vs sieve plates. I did see that you can run caps at much higher power which I guess is an advantage to run a little faster, but I wouldn't want to run so fast as to get smearing either. Or maybe that's the point of the procaps--running faster without smearing.

My unasked for 2 cents worth.

You can fit more Pro caps on a plate since you don't have to make room for down comers.
Bubble caps are easier to run and doesn't have problems filling its downcomers like a pro cap sometimes does.

I have procaps on my 4" glasser - they are on the 1 1/2" region so theres really only room for 3 on each plate.
Pretty sure they are limited by my plate height of 4" so im still in the 2-3 lph as mentioned. I can push them up to 7-8 lph of smeared mess, limited by restriction of the vapour, not flooding, but petty pointless as I can strip at nearly twice the speed with the column removed - Im talking flavoured washes not neutral.

If i can get some taller glass sections (thinking 8") for my column at a reasonable price I will give it a go and see in theres much of a difference, will be subjective though and possibly a waste of $$, might vindicate my need more plate height mantra. I'm scungy so they would have to be very cheap lols.

Imho the pro caps would be wasted on that 6" plate height, but I can't back that up with actual data, ymmv.

RC Al wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 2:58 pm
i will give it a go and see in theres much of a difference, will be subjective though and possibly a waste of $$,

Sounds like something I'd do.

shadylane wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 2:49 pm My unasked for 2 cents worth.

You can fit more Pro caps on a plate since you don't have to make room for down comers.
Bubble caps are easier to run and doesn't have problems filling its downcomers like a pro cap sometimes does.

I think the pro caps actually have fewer per plate. They are bigger around if I remember correctly. They do run quite a bit faster than regular caps. A good design, but I found sieve plates faster, cheaper, and have a plenty wide operating range.

bluefish_dist wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 4:17 pm

shadylane wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 2:49 pm My unasked for 2 cents worth.

You can fit more Pro caps on a plate since you don't have to make room for down comers.
Bubble caps are easier to run and doesn't have problems filling its downcomers like a pro cap sometimes does.

I think the pro caps actually have fewer per plate. They are bigger around if I remember correctly. They do run quite a bit faster than regular caps. A good design, but I found sieve plates faster, cheaper, and have a plenty wide operating range.

Do you think switching from bubble caps to sieve plates would make my 4" flute run significantly faster for bourbon? I can pick them up from Distillex for $13 each or just a bit more from Mile Hi, which is pretty cheap if they make any reasonable difference. On my last run I tried cranking the heat up higher to see if I could run any faster, and just ended up smearing a lot. 2-3 Liters and hour seems to be the absolute max I can get from the bubble plates, and that's just for the hearts. Obviously I have to run much slower for fores, heads, and to keep the tails back once the proof starts dropping.

My experience with 4 perf plate 4 inch columns suggests to me that anything more than 2 to 2.5 LPH is looking for trouble.
Most folk that I know don't try to push beyond that amount / speed...there does however seem to be a small percentage of folk who claim that they can do so successfully.
All stills of all types have their limits before they start pulling tails.......I don't know why some folk seem to think that plated columns are different and can be pushed beyond their sweet spot.

vagabondmountainman wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 4:49 pm
Do you think switching from bubble caps to sieve plates would make my 4" flute run significantly faster for bourbon?

Based on my limited experience and wasted copper.
I prefer bubble caps over sieve plates.
Sieve plates force you to run faster and faster isn't always better.

My 4” sieve plates run about the same as Saltys .

I think from memory , I had 1/16” holes on a 1/4” grid while Salty had 1.5mm on a 5mm grid . Sorry correct me if I’m wrong Salty .

Both of us have 4” plate spacing .

I think bigger plate spacing would allow more power and takeoff rate , but from those with 5-6” spacing , it was around 50% .

Yummyrum wrote: ↑Mon May 02, 2022 11:53 pm while Salty had 1.5mm on a 5mm grid

Correct Yummy, on both 4 inch and 6 incher.

My plates were 1.7 or 1.8 mm, don’t remember the spacing, but around 200-225 holes for a 4”. Used the fill feature in cad for the layout. 3/4” downcomer. I used std still dragon sections which are around 5” spacing if I remember correctly. Been a few years and I dont have that column anymore. I never found tails to be my limiting factor, was always flooding. Maybe a lot of my speed was how I ran. I would pick a abv (temp) and then adjust reflux to hold that abv. This meant that I was increasing reflux the whole run and decreasing output. Then at the end to squeeze out the last bit of product, reduce power by up to 30%, in 10% steps. Could do 4l per hour at the start of a run, would taper during the run.

With 2-3 runs per week and long days, I worked to get runs as fast as possible. I started out with the 4” on a 120 gal still, then went to 6”. The difference between sieve and regular caps was a lot. I liked the pro caps, but the cost was a lot more than a sheet of copper and some time with a drill. Granted it did take 3 hrs to drill the 500 holes in a 6”plate using a cnc.

bluefish_dist wrote: ↑Tue May 03, 2022 6:17 am I never found tails to be my limiting factor, was always flooding. Maybe a lot of my speed was how I ran. I would pick a abv (temp) and then adjust reflux to hold that ABV. This meant that I was increasing reflux the whole run and decreasing output. Then at the end to squeeze out the last bit of product, reduce power by up to 30%, in 10% steps. Could do 4l per hour at the start of a run, would taper during the run.

Picking and ABV/temp and adjusting dephleg to hold it is how I've been running once I get into hearts, but maybe I'm just running way to slow through fores and heads. How quickly do you take those off Bluefish? And if its 4 liters an hour, what is the secret?

I run much slower at first, then speed up later when I get into hearts then slow back down and increase depleg/decrease heat to hold back tails when they start to show up. I tried to speed up the beginning of my last run though, and it was obvious I smeared the heads into the hearts pretty far. I've been reading and trying to make adjustments, but its a lot of trial and error, and honestly the best runs seem to be the ones where I get the still up to heat for producing and just let it do its own thing with relatively minor adjustments.

Once my heat is set initially, it will naturally increase the speed its running at between fores, heads and hearts without me needing to do anything until I'm into hearts and increase it a bit. All my attempts to make farther adjustments don't seem to make a huge difference in the total time although I can dial in the proof I'm taking off at.The dephleg makes it rain in the column pretty hard through the whole run, and I have nice big fluffy bubbles on all the plates so I know its working. I've adjusted from using as little water as possible to the dephleg to keep the plates loaded, to adding more heat and more reflux now, which definitely makes adjustments easier, but I don't seem to be getting much faster.

On a 20 gallon run, I usually reflux for 5 minutes or so at the start of the run, take off fores at a slow drip 1-2 drips a second for 8-16 ounces proof usually in the mid 180s, temp around 160-164. I speed it up to a medium-fast drip that occasionally alternates to a broken stream for a few seconds through heads until proof drops down to around 160 or so and head temp is up around 180 and then I run out the hearts at as fast a stream as I can without the proof dropping below 120 or so. The thing is it always seems to take at least 2 hours to 2.5 hours after initial heat up to start pulling hearts, so I'm around 3-4 hours into the run before I get hearts. Normally the volume of fore/heads is around 2.25-2.5 quarts so I guess thats aroud 1 liter/quart per hour. Once I'm in heads, everything goes pretty quickly. Is there a trick to get through fores and early heads faster without just smearing the heads into the hearts? Or is that about the general speed you would expect as well on the 4" column with a 20 gallon boiler charge in the 7-10% ABV range? Maybe I'm just trying to get the still to run in a way it doesn't want to.

At the start of the run, I take fores off pretty slowly. I would open my valve 4 turns out of 20. 2.5 turns was minimum takeoff. I would take a gallon of fores (110 gal of mash), (164-165 deg) then start opening up the valve. For two plates I would hold 180-185(135-140p), for 3 plates 175 (165p), packed 163.5-164.5 (190.2-190.4) I would usually end up 10-12 turns open. I found opening way up early and quickly would make the column unstable. Abv would drop a lot quickly. So instead I would open a turn, wait a few min, then another turn, until the temp starts to raise close to what I wanted. If it was a high abv wash like rum, I might run all the way open for a bit. For reducing temperature, I would go 1/2 turn at a time when the temp hit my set point. So for 2 plates, hit 185, turn 1/2 turn in. It might go back down to 178-189, then creep back up. Would adjust again until I got to 2.5 turns, then I would reduce power. For the 6” I would drop 1000w at a time until I was down 4000w or one heater, then shut down. I ran 5500w on 208, so only 4K per element. Ran 12kw total. So would use half that for a 4”

I would run 5-6kw on the 4”. Pulled about 1 gal/hr at peak. Didn’t run it long as a 4” as it took forever.

Thanks Bluefish. That is really great advice on how to run the dephleg. I will change up my process. Initially I was just trying to do the whole run with as little reflux as possible, because I read you wanted to use the valve to hold back the exit water, and use as little relflux as possible. I was still able to keep my plates loaded that way, but didn't have a lot of room to make adjustments other than with the natural gas flame adjustments.

Through trial and error I realized I could run faster if I started with more reflux , then backed it off gradually to let the speed of the run increase, and let the proof decrease. But exactly what you described has been happening the last couple runs--the proof drops way to quick, which I guess means I've destabilized the column. I would make a pretty big decrease in reflux all at once when I hit hearts, and my proof would quickly drop from 160 or so down to 120 within the next 16-32 ounces or so. I've been racking my brain to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Your approach of starting with just a little reflux and then adding more and more gradually as the run progresses makes a lot more sense. In all the reading I did on the flute talk forum as well as various U-tube videos, I either never came across it or some how got it all completely wrong. Thanks a lot for the lesson. Your experience and advice is so invaluable to guys learning the craft like me.

Glad I could help. I didn’t talk a lot about how I ran when we had the distillery as I felt it was part of what gave us the BlueFish profile. My impression is a lot of people run a CM more like a pot still during the hearts, ie little to no reflux and then control the purity by how much heat they use. Not to say that’s not a valid way to run, that’s just not the way I did. I started with vodka, so I ran my other spirits the same way, holding a minimum abv and adjusting reflux to hold it. I have had other members say they do a similar method in PM’s.

I think because I always ran a VM I found that I could not reduce abv all that much by simply reducing reflux. If I ran it with less reflux I just got more tails and didn’t really reduce the abv. To get around that I started to run fewer plates and more reflux to get a lower abv instead of 3 to 4 plates and less reflux. My hypothesis is that a number of plates has an optimal abv for its output. I found for my setup, a clean vodka 18-20 plates, a drinkable white 3 plates, barrel aged 2 plates.

Thanks. That chart is really helpful as well. One more question for you if you don't mind. I currently have my 4" column attached to my boiler by a 4" to 2" triclamp reducer, since I had a 2" triclamp fitting welded on there for my potstill. I was advised that would be fine for running the 4"column since the vapor speed would be fast out of the 2" opening and then would equalize once it got into the 4" plated column. Do you think I'll still be fine attaching the 6" column the same way with a 6" to 2" triclamp reducer, or would the 2" boiler opening cause a problem? I could have a larger triclamp fitting welded on, but I'd rather not for the time being if I don't need to since it still allows me to run my old 2" pot still if I want, and I may end up holding onto the 4" column for a little while as well to use for smaller runs.

A 2” to 6” should be fine. It might not be quite as efficient if it’s a packed column as it will take a little time for the vapor to slow down, but won’t effect it significantly.