StillSmart

I only used my still spirits alemic kit a couple of times as my water is metered too and the wastage was shocking. My advise would be to try sell the condenser arm and either find someone to build a much longer one or try and make one yourself if you can?

BH You have come to the same conclusion I did. The issue is not the kit. The issue with water usage.

There are options...

Consider recirculating it. What about a beer chiller and a reservoir drum with the solar pump?

I have to say this is one of the reasons I have never bought a watercooled still. I solved the problem, with freezing and the doublebarrelled AS. Just too easy. Its whatever suits.

Building a bigger air still worked for me.
Electricity can be very "Green".
A 25 litre boiler with pot or reflux column is all I need, but I bet you could go bigger.

Robert/

Mash I did look into water recirculation but reading about other people's attempts I decided against it, I do have solar but my moonshining is usually done at night

The used hot water goes straight into fermenter and is ready for yeast the next morning, if I don't need washes it'll go on the garden or occasionally used for satinizing bits and bobs so the waste is minimal

I've got a 25L VS wash that I'm planning to strip either this evening or tomorrow. Would it be worth taking out the T500 packing and running it as a pot still for the strip? Would that be quicker? Or should I just stick to what I've done before and run it as a reflux still?

I would run it as a pot still for stripping. Try it you might like it

IMHO unpacking and repacking the column is a real pain in the arse as you need to seperate all the copper from the stainless, however it doesn't hurt to try.

I always dk stripping and spirit runs with packed column. Takes longer, but its just the way I do. Also makes my math easier for spirit run.

A simple observation.
If you can build or buy a second column, to enable you to swap at will, you have the best of both worlds, strip or spirit.
I can understand the work in un-packing a column.
Equally, I suspect that using the same column for strips and spirit just has to cause issues.
But, hey what do I know?

Robert.