You also need to use a parrot along with a thermometer – the alcoholmeter is calibrated for 20oC so if your distillate is coming off hot, then the % will read high.
For instance, when I’m doing a strip on my pot still – the distillate comes off around 40oC depending how much cooling I’m running – I can drop this by increasing cooling, but I believe the warm distillate looses some off the other alcohols that evaporate off and helps clean up the spirit prior to the spirit run. I stop collecting at 20% (at 40oC is actually between 10-15%) for a strip.
When I’m doing a spirit run. My distillate is around 18oC due to the large condenser I use, this means the parrot is pretty accurate during the run. If I run way to fast I can see the difference in the ABV on the parrot, or I can see it drop when I’m into tails.
That said I can still pull around 95% at the onset of tails, so your nose and taste a day or 2 after doing the run, is still the best tool for making the cut, I use the column temp more as a guide of when to reduce the take off speed and switch to small jars as I’m coming out of the hearts.
If you are planning on only running wash in your column and not stripping wash down – a better investment IMO would be a good 0.1oC thermo to replace the top probe – the ones that come with the T500 are a bit crappy so you know for certain what’s going on at the top of the column.
That said, I'd just get a couple of runs under your belt, be safe, and have fun before changing anything
CC
Statistics: Posted by Capt-Cudellez — Tue Nov 08, 2011 8:02 am
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