Sunday distilling with Murphy

[PalCabral]

Hiya.

Reflecting on Monday morning about yesterday's activities in the distillery, I'd thought I share my experience. I am sure you all know Murphy and his law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Well, yesterday Mr. Murphy came along and distilled with me. No, it's not as bad as the dramatic start, but not great either. Let's just say my pal Murphy is no help in the distillery.

Having 3 out of 4 washes sitting with growing lacto infections, I feel a bit pressed to distill what I've got. I had decided to make a larger than normal stripping run on Sunday but Mr. Murphy noticed that the controller to my Dernord 2.5kw had stopped working after I was already filled up and running on the other element. Once you're full and started heating, I am well beyond the point of no return, so I carried on with my one element. After all the risks of foaming and puking were over, I hooked the Dernord element straight to the socket and ran it at full tilt w/o problems. So in the end, despite the issues, it went well. I was done in little over three hours.

So I decided to be "greedy". I could fit in another +3 hour run after dinner and still be in bed on time. I tinkered a bit with the faulty controller, thinking that if worse comes to worse, I could still run it at full tilt like I had done during the first run. At that point, Mr. Murhpy must have have left the distillery because I managed to get the controller to work again and off we went, fully loaded with yet another larger than normal wash in the boiler. But Murphy was soon back in the distillery again.

Once running, the other element, which I got from Craft Store in the Ukraine, started blipping. It's a b***h to wire and the wires keep loosing their grips to the little screws on the element. I don't know how many times I've had to re-wire the cords to the element. There was a little pop and Murphy made sure the Ukranian element was out of service. Again I was well beyond the point of no return and had no choice to continue running on the Dernord 2.5kw element.

I don't actually know if that Dernord element gives 2500 watts and running only on it and having a 40L/10.5g wash to stripp, 2500w doesn't go far. Hard and fast, they say, this was a stripping run excruciatingly low and slow. Even at full tilt I was only running at a flow of 2.5 LPH. But I managed to finish it before midnight. I still have the boiler full of stillage, need to go downstairs and empty it and hose down the still.

So successful in the end, but I'll not let Mr. Murphy come over again if I can avoid it. Have a great week y'all!