First off, I try to keep the ferments as consistent as possible. 6kg sugar in the fermenter gets 4 x 2L of boiling water. Good stir, leave for 5 minutes then stir again to make sure all is dissolved. Cold water to 25L then add a Packet of Vodka Star a couple of hours later.
Lowish temp ferment, about 14/15'C. Over the winter I've had a 4 foot green house tube heater with 2 fermenters either side. (Room for 3 a side.) fwir, lower temp ferments get you a bit more %vol.
2 strip runs collecting 1350ml each, ~40%vol. Then a careful spirit run, 2 x 1350ml of strip, water to 4L. Collecting lots of fractions to see where the heads stop and the tails start. For me that's after 250ml plus 50ml foreshots and 1L of hearts.
Now I know where to start collecting hearts, it's a simple matter to charge the airstill with both strip runs plus the 250ml heads from the previous spirit run. Once again, water to 4L. 1 hour at full power then the fores start dripping so I wind the power down to 160w. By the time the 250ml of hearts are collected the drip rate is nice and slow.
Once I've got a litre of hearts, I turn the still off, I'm not interested in collecting tails.
I pour the litre of spirit into a large Pyrex bowl then add 750ml of water. This gives me 1750ml (2.5 bottles) of spirit at near enough 40%vol.
I know I could collect more but with more hassle. Including leccy, it works out just under £9 a ferment and imo that's a reasonable price for 7.5 bottles of 40%vol.
At some point the heads are going to build up enough to smear but I'll keep a note of the number of spirit runs and deal with it when it happens.
Statistics: Posted by John51 — Sun Apr 14, 2013 3:16 pm
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