Switched to electric, now I know nothing
Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2025 7:49 am
Hello my fellow distillers,
I have been making rum in my 15.5 gal beer keg with a 2' x 2" copper column and a 41" liebig condenser. I use a 40 gal tote and I cycle water through it will a little pump. I add frozen 2-liter bottles of water to the tote to cool the water. I had been using a turkey fryer and propane to heat my still and over the past 3 years, I've come to make some very good rum. I do barrel aged, coconut, citrus, spiced, and cherry. It was good enough that a family member who owned a distillery let me come and do a batch this year. We made spiced and coconut and it sold out in a day. The lease on his building increased exponentially and he closed his doors recently; however, I still want to make rum for myself and keep doing what I love. After using a professional still I wanted to get away from propane. I built an SCR controller, drilled a hole in my keg, soldered a 2" tri-clamp ferrule into it, and ran the 240v service out to the garage. It's a 240v 5500 watt LWD ripple fold back element (Dernord). I did my first rum run with it this month. I'm back to square one. I feel like everything I've learned is no longer valid. Here's what happened.
1. I was under the impression I could put my wash in my boiler (keg) and turn the scr controller to 70? to 80% until I started to get some drips and then drop it back down to about 50 - 60% for a good stripping run. Everyone always says run it fast and hot when stripping.
2. When I was using propane, a short while before the first drops would arrive, this beautiful, delicious smell would start to permeate the garage. With electric, it smelled acrid. Something was wrong. When I finished the stripping run, I noticed the heating element had a brown coat on it that was incredibly challenging to clean (mostly due to the shape of the element).
3. The second run I tried to heat up slower. Starting at 30% power. After an hour, the vapor temp was not rising. I thought electric was supposed to cut my heat up time drastically. I'm ok if it doesn't, but I just don't know which way is the right way. So, after an hour, I cranked it up to 80% and again, no amazing smell, just the acrid smell.
4. The third stripping run, I just set it at about 70% and let 'er rip.
5. I had a 38 gallon wash and after my three stripping runs I ended up with 11.33 gallons of low wines. I had no feints to add because I did an all feints run in the spring. The 11.33 was at 37% ABV. I was happy with the yield. I let the low wines sit for a week (while my bottles froze up again), and the smell they gave off wasn't bad, but certainly stronger than ever before.
6. Did my spirit run yesterday. I started at 50% for about 45 minutes. Then increased to 70% for another 30 to 40 minutes. Foreshots came firing out in a stream, and I dropped the power back to 45ish%. foreshots smelled like they always do, acetone. The heads were coming our ok, perhaps a bit fast, but had a bitter taste. They ran far further into where I normally make my heads to hearts cut as well. Since doing the big batch at the distillery, I have since started making my cuts on the fly and that's what I was doing here as well. I feel the distillate between my fingers and rub it a little on my gums to taste it. This method has worked very well for me. I also check the ABV to understand the ranges I'm working with. I usually cut somewhere between 79% and 77%. Yesterday I was at 75% before I felt like the bitter was gone and even then, it was still there a little.
7. My hearts cut ended way too quickly. It went from 75% to 65% in less than an hour. I pushed it down to 60% and then the bitter was too much for me to be comfortable with. I ended up with less than 2 gallons of hearts.
8. I'm going to try the hearts a little today to see how the taste is, but I'm guessing this will be carbon filtered and flavored if I can do anything with it at all.
Sorry for the long winded explanation, but this experience really jarred me. I'm wondering if I should just cap the element hole and go back to propane and see if anyone wants this sweet controller and heating element I've sunk $200 into. Then I calmed down and remembered there are awesome people like ya'll who can help me learn how to use this new setup. Any advice would be great. Thanks for reading. I'm sure the first thing I'll hear is that I need to go slower. Just a huge difference that I wasn't expecting. Ok. I'm shutting up and listening now. Thanks everyone!
I have been making rum in my 15.5 gal beer keg with a 2' x 2" copper column and a 41" liebig condenser. I use a 40 gal tote and I cycle water through it will a little pump. I add frozen 2-liter bottles of water to the tote to cool the water. I had been using a turkey fryer and propane to heat my still and over the past 3 years, I've come to make some very good rum. I do barrel aged, coconut, citrus, spiced, and cherry. It was good enough that a family member who owned a distillery let me come and do a batch this year. We made spiced and coconut and it sold out in a day. The lease on his building increased exponentially and he closed his doors recently; however, I still want to make rum for myself and keep doing what I love. After using a professional still I wanted to get away from propane. I built an SCR controller, drilled a hole in my keg, soldered a 2" tri-clamp ferrule into it, and ran the 240v service out to the garage. It's a 240v 5500 watt LWD ripple fold back element (Dernord). I did my first rum run with it this month. I'm back to square one. I feel like everything I've learned is no longer valid. Here's what happened.
1. I was under the impression I could put my wash in my boiler (keg) and turn the scr controller to 70? to 80% until I started to get some drips and then drop it back down to about 50 - 60% for a good stripping run. Everyone always says run it fast and hot when stripping.
2. When I was using propane, a short while before the first drops would arrive, this beautiful, delicious smell would start to permeate the garage. With electric, it smelled acrid. Something was wrong. When I finished the stripping run, I noticed the heating element had a brown coat on it that was incredibly challenging to clean (mostly due to the shape of the element).
3. The second run I tried to heat up slower. Starting at 30% power. After an hour, the vapor temp was not rising. I thought electric was supposed to cut my heat up time drastically. I'm ok if it doesn't, but I just don't know which way is the right way. So, after an hour, I cranked it up to 80% and again, no amazing smell, just the acrid smell.
4. The third stripping run, I just set it at about 70% and let 'er rip.
5. I had a 38 gallon wash and after my three stripping runs I ended up with 11.33 gallons of low wines. I had no feints to add because I did an all feints run in the spring. The 11.33 was at 37% ABV. I was happy with the yield. I let the low wines sit for a week (while my bottles froze up again), and the smell they gave off wasn't bad, but certainly stronger than ever before.
6. Did my spirit run yesterday. I started at 50% for about 45 minutes. Then increased to 70% for another 30 to 40 minutes. Foreshots came firing out in a stream, and I dropped the power back to 45ish%. foreshots smelled like they always do, acetone. The heads were coming our ok, perhaps a bit fast, but had a bitter taste. They ran far further into where I normally make my heads to hearts cut as well. Since doing the big batch at the distillery, I have since started making my cuts on the fly and that's what I was doing here as well. I feel the distillate between my fingers and rub it a little on my gums to taste it. This method has worked very well for me. I also check the ABV to understand the ranges I'm working with. I usually cut somewhere between 79% and 77%. Yesterday I was at 75% before I felt like the bitter was gone and even then, it was still there a little.
7. My hearts cut ended way too quickly. It went from 75% to 65% in less than an hour. I pushed it down to 60% and then the bitter was too much for me to be comfortable with. I ended up with less than 2 gallons of hearts.
8. I'm going to try the hearts a little today to see how the taste is, but I'm guessing this will be carbon filtered and flavored if I can do anything with it at all.
Sorry for the long winded explanation, but this experience really jarred me. I'm wondering if I should just cap the element hole and go back to propane and see if anyone wants this sweet controller and heating element I've sunk $200 into. Then I calmed down and remembered there are awesome people like ya'll who can help me learn how to use this new setup. Any advice would be great. Thanks for reading. I'm sure the first thing I'll hear is that I need to go slower. Just a huge difference that I wasn't expecting. Ok. I'm shutting up and listening now. Thanks everyone!