Home Distiller

Well a friend bought a really super nice column that mates right to a Sanke Keg. The column is 4 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. Quite a slick setup. We run 10 gallons of shit wine and 5 gallons of shit mead in the 1/2 barrel keg last night to see how things would turn out before we try running my 10 gallons of Corn Wash.

End result = It took about 2.5 hours to get the wine to temp. The liquid gold started trickling out when the temp hit 74c. This is when we turned the cooler on and started capturing the shine. The temp would bounce between 75c and 77c for the next 3.5 hours. In the 3.5 hours we ended up collecting 3 1.75 liter bottles of shine from the 15 ish gallons. We could have kept going as we never reached the next temp bump, but we shut it down as it was approaching 10 pm and we were both tired.

It turned out to be 90% with ever so slight taste of wine to it. Crystal clear and very smooth to drink. Well smooth to drink after you cut it anyway.

It is time to go make more corn mash now. See you all in a bit.

i just love to hear stories like this....
sniff, slobber, wimper, i got a tear in my eye....... sorry, gotta go blow my nose...

congrats on yer 1st. run........ betchur really hooked now !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sounds like you have a very nice reflux still there. You collected impure ethanol, because you collected all the heads that that boil starting at 56.5 C.

So don't drink what you made.

Do some reading about making ethanol on this site or buy this book.

http://www.gin-vodka.com/making-gin.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Set what you made aside and re distill, when you understand the process.

Have a good day and welcome to the world of distillation.

G

i don't think he collected it all in one container....... least i hope not ??

BMAC,
did you make a forshots and heads cuts ??

Yes. We didnt start collecting anything until after the thermometer read 74c. The thermometer is located at the top of the column where the collection tube starts.

We still dumped the first 100ml or so. We sipped just a bit afterwards and it seemed very smooth, just burned like hell when sipped. Nothing we had to choke down so I think we were good for purging the heads.

Boy, there's no feeling like success in the first run. I was never so happy to see the plan come together. My first run was at a pal's house. Just so happened, he was having a little poker tournament (20 or 30 head.) I was nervous as hell. I just knew we were going jail, one and all. I've been a little more selective on location since then.

BMAC wrote:Yes. We didnt start collecting anything until after the thermometer read 74c. The thermometer is located at the top of the column where the collection tube starts.

We still dumped the first 100ml or so. We sipped just a bit afterwards and it seemed very smooth, just burned like hell when sipped. Nothing we had to choke down so I think we were good for purging the heads.

I don't think I would drink it if it came off at 74c, alcohol comes of around 78.4c....are you sure your thermometer is reading correctly?

Boil some water and check if it reads 100c

bourbonbob wrote:

BMAC wrote:Yes. We didnt start collecting anything until after the thermometer read 74c. The thermometer is located at the top of the column where the collection tube starts.

We still dumped the first 100ml or so. We sipped just a bit afterwards and it seemed very smooth, just burned like hell when sipped. Nothing we had to choke down so I think we were good for purging the heads.

I don't think I would drink it if it came off at 74c, alcohol comes of around 78.4c....are you sure your thermometer is reading correctly?

Boil some water and check if it reads 100c

That is interesting. Well considering we are at 1000 ft above sea level, and I believe most of the calculations are done at sea level for boiling liquids. Therefore technically where we are located the ethanol really should have started coming off at 77.7 degrees C. Our thermometer we were using showed to be 1 degree Celcius for accuracy, but I am not sure if it really is that accurate. I have drank small amounts since the run and have no ill effect. I can still see and have not vomitted or had terrible headaches from it.

During the entire run, the thermometer actually flucuated between 75C and 77C. It would hang at 77 for a minute and drop to 76, then drop to 75. Then it would peg itself back to 77. Not sure it is the bad quality of the thermometer. It was the thermometer that came with the column. I do remember we only kept maybe 20 ml of the tail end of the liquor coming off at 74C. Although I can do a second run on this ethanol and make sure it has no heads in it.

By doing the second run on it with a reflux stack would it be better if I removed all the packing from the column and run it as a pot still just to purge all the heads from it????

sounds like your off to a decent start. collect as you did with a foreshot cut and start heads until about 175. collect in small seperate quantitys and let air out and determine what to keep. after about the 7th batch you should have it all figured out. goodluck to you.