Weird grey silvery paste inside my column

[PalCabral]

Hiya distillers.

After running a (long slow) stripping run today I was disassembling my still to clean the parts. Beteeen the 4 to 2 inch reducer above the boiler and my copper column, I found lots of grey, slightly silvery gooey, like s paste. Right at the joint, so both parts are really mucky. I cleaned some of my hand and the muck hardly gets off when I wash my hands with soap. In fact, some is still in my finger!

I flushed the copper pipe yesterday and there was nothing on it then, so this muck must have come in this run.

I really wish the issue with pictures could be solved so one could upload pictures again. I’ve read threads about a powdery substance that was believed to be from tails, but this is more of a paste. I stripped down to 2% abv so I definately was sniffing in the deep tails. Someone else posted something about Zinc.

Should I be worried about the low wines I produced. There were no discoloring or odd crap with it.