Dephlegmator and bubble plate column observations.

[Barney Fife]

I finally got my new 3" bubble plate column, and finally the dephleg together, and ran it last night. My observations for your mulling, especially for those who share my obsession with rums... The first run, with my old standby rum wash, resulted in a whole new dimension of rum flavors that I have never before attained. Thinking about it further this morning, what might be responsible for the great flavor(it's even better this morning!) could be the high input energy. Pugi comments that we need to "run hard; push the flavor out!". He may have been onto something, as I've mentioned earlier. By running hard, we may be caramelizing some of the wash(rums). With a pot still, this caused a lot of smearing of the tails into my hearts, so I would do 5 to 6 strip runs at 4500 watts, then a spirit run at 2250 or 3000 watts to get better cuts. Some of the great caramel flavor from the strips would be lost, unfortunately, but not all. Now, what I'm tasting is very rich in caramel, almost butterscotch in flavor; with the dephleg, we're able to control the reflux, and thus the cuts, quite effectively, which keeping the power up(ran at 4500 watts all the way, after collecting the heads at 1500). So I'm thinking I was able to use the high power to create the caramel/butterscotch flavor notes, while using the dephleg to knock down the heavier tails from the hearts. The transition to tails was quite sharp, though I had to stop short as my cooling water had got too hot. Definitely need a better cooling water system. A radiator is in my near future.

I think the real hero with all these new style stills is not the plates, but the dephlegmator(note proper spelling). Unlike typical reflux columns which send all the vapor back down to be re-distilled many, many times on the random packing, thus stripping away all flavor, the dephleg allows the distiller to finely control the reflux, while allowing the lighter compounds to go straight through the dephleg and into the product condenser. and with minimal surface areas back in the column, the richer flavor compounds aren't being knocked down by all the refluxed alcohol, and can instead make its way north, up the column, and eventually into the condenser. We could test my theory easily by adding packing above the plates in one of our columns and seeing how much flavor we keep, or lose, VS the ABV. I have run mine without the dephleg now, and once without. The dephleg was good for roughly 18-22% ABV higher ABV VS without it, but the flavor wasn't anywhere close to the same.

I'm not looking for arguments; just sharing my thoughts and observations. I reserve the right to change my thinking as I learn to drive this thing further....