StillSmart

Afternoon folks,
I did my first large spirit run yesterday in preperation for santa

I had 14L @ around 83% from two stripping runs and recovery from my first ever distillation.
2" Boka / 1hr equalistion/ 1kw super slow drip heads / 1.5KW @ 1L/hr Hearts /2kw rip off tails.


Tossed first 200ml

I ended up with
1.3L @95% I'm calling Heads
8L @ 95% Hearts
2.2L @ 67% Tails

Does this seem a reasonable breakdown?



With regards to the heads and tails what should I keep? Do you recycle forever or do you throw some away?

Cheers,

Your collections seem about right.
Out of interest what % did you water the still contents down to? Sub 30% ABV is best for better separation.

Personally I would have stopped collecting tails long before you did, I normally collect about 500mls or so the other side of the hearts before the temp starts to rocket and the output is really horrible smelling. As soon as my thermo moves by 0.1oC I start to choke down the valve on the output to try and maintain it as long as I can be bothered - the out put will eventually drop to a point where its just not worth it any more.

Tails on a column are just too stinky, and don't really clean up all that well, so I only recycle the heads. Other will argue with me on this.

If your doing a large run, and you find the super slow heads collection a bit tedious, you can do it a bit quicker to shorten the run, you wont compress the heads into such a small portion, thus sacrificing some clean hearts - but as you can re-run the heads another day by throwing them in with the next strip - you'll get most of the alcohol eventually.


If I was running a pot still, then everything is recycled.

Totally agree with the Capt and as he said with a pot still everything is recyclable.

I tend to recycle tails to the stripper with the next wash but run heads on their own. On my heads run I dilute to 20%ABV and the heads collected off my Heads Run goes straight down the drain. from a 40lt Heads Run the first 4lt is chucked and the next litre is collected in 2 X 500ml and assessed the next day with optimism rather than any real expectation

AM

Capt'n C - keeps the heads and throws the tails.

Aidanmac - keeps the heads and the tails

Me - I throw them both.

The one consistent thing about this forum is that you never get consistent answers.

Hope that helps

The Captain is talking about a fractionating column and Aidan about a pot still. That is at least part of the difference.

Sorry I should have been more specific.

If I am using either a pot still or a fractioning column I throw heads and tails.

Having gone too all that trouble cutting out the smelly bits I can never bring myself to put them back in the still.

Thanks Guys,


I watered the contents down to around 42% prior to distilling, my boiler is around the 30L mark.


The bit I don't fully understand is.... what percentage of Heads is actually stinky nasty stuff?

If I pour my 1.3L heads back in for recycling in a later batch..(lets says I would have 1.3L heads from that identical batch anyway) I'm guessing I'm not going to remove 2.6L Heads in total from the new batch? So how much heads would I end up with from the new batch containing my recycled heads?


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On another note...
I purchased a Essencia Filter yesterday. I took one of my 95% hearts demijohns which was over half full and removed a litre of product into a fancy bottle recently purchased from the HB shop. I watered down the product in the DJ with Asda Smartprice still water to around 45% and tipped it into the primed filter.

This morning I'd taken around 2L of crystal clear product from the filter and measured its ABV, it was around 25%. Given that the filters were full of water to start with it was to be expected.

So I mixes the 2L with some of the 95% product I removed from the DJ yesterday into that fancy bottle and swirls around and measures ABV again.. 45% ..too much. So I opens another bottle of Asda water and tips some in, shakes and remeasures at 40%. Great..except I now notice my product has gone milky.

So how can my product suddenly go milkY??? Identical water.. albiet from too differant bottles or contmination from the new bottle HB store. (I rinsed it, but not sterilised it) or something else?


Ultimately.. If I tip that milky product into the Filter will it clean it back to a clear or am I going to contaminat the filter?

OK .. further to my milky product.

I noticed I had around 300ml in the fancy bottle of the 95% product.

I mixed some with tap water and some with the same ASDA bottled water to the same ABV and below... neither turned milky.

Now I'm really confused.

Dilute both samples to 40% with their respective types of water.

They will probably both go milky / cloudy.

If they do, then add some 95% to bring them back up to 45% and you will probably find that they both turn clear again.

It's Magic. But if it works then it rules out the water. Many people appear to keep their supplies slightly above 40% just for this reason.

I think Asda & Morrisons are really cool stocking "Still Water" just for us, but for the amount that they stock there must be more people out there with stills than I thought.

Yeah Asda are boss for stocking "still" water, I'm going to contact Head office and thank them for catering to such a niche market.

I have diluted some 95% product with Asda water and my tap water down in stages to 10%. They have not gone milky.


I took some of the milky product and increased vol upto 55% with the same 95% product and it remains milky.


I have drawn off more product from the filter and I can not get it to turn milky.

This is wierd.



EDIT:
I've just diluted my 2.2L Tails Demijohn with Tapwater down 20% and it's NOT milky.

Why do I get the funny feeling I've just rinsed out a Essencia Filter with my prized product?

I can't address the milky spirit problem not had that issue, and it sounds familiar but I can't locate a thread on it.
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Boozoid wrote:The bit I don't fully understand is.... what percentage of Heads is actually stinky nasty stuff?

If I pour my 1.3L heads back in for recycling in a later batch..(lets says I would have 1.3L heads from that identical batch anyway) I'm guessing I'm not going to remove 2.6L Heads in total from the new batch? So how much heads would I end up with from the new batch containing my recycled heads?

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I don't find heads that nasty, they are a bit sickly sweet smelling and have solvent overtones - not something I'd want to drink, but not repulsive. To answer your question - you'll collect about the same amount of heads each time by adding the heads in with the next strip.
The actual amount of heads is really really tiny - it just contaminates a large amount of good alcohol - it is just very difficult to split it out as the boiling points are pretty close to that of ethanol. A small amount of the heads (mostly undetectable to us) will smear across the good product too, so after 3 or 4 cycles the amount of heads is pretty constant, as you are adding new heads, but also removing some along with the good product.
IMHO throwing away heads is just throwing away good alcohol that's fell in with a bad crowd, give them a chance to be rehabilitated

For something like rum, there are lots of good flavours in the late heads, I actually include some of these in my white rum that takes about a month of airing out before it stops smelling like you messed the cuts up - after that the flavour is really good, but there is a little bit more of a headache in each bottle - so you have to walk a bit of a tightrope to get it right.
If doing neutral don't try this, make clean cuts.

@Boozoid: Everyone would rather blame "the water" for a milky/cloudy looking final product where in most cases it is purely a matter of trying to get too much out of the run and not shutting it down early enough. That being the case, the levels of fusil oils are too great resulting in the cloudiness when taking the product down toward 40%.

Make your final cut earlier - and then dump the remainder.

If it was fusil oils in my hearts ... I would have thought that my 2L of Tails would have turned Milky after dilution.

The tails did not turn milky following dilution with tap water or asda water.

In fact the only bit of my product which I have managed to turn milky is the first 3L from the Essencia Filter (and I've been trying hard to replicate the milkyness).

Its making me think I've just flushed out a brand new purchased filter with my hearts and picked something up.

YHB wrote:Capt'n C - keeps the heads and throws the tails.

Aidanmac - keeps the heads and the tails

Me - I throw them both.

The one consistent thing about this forum is that you never get consistent answers.

Hope that helps

I turn the T500 off once I've got my 3L of hearts. The 500ml of fores/heads goes into a spray bottle and gets used as cleaner/deodorant. (Excellent deodorant btw, try it.)

Heads need to be stored until there is enough to do a heads run and I already have enough clutter.

Tails are stinky. I don't want them running through my column once let alone again with a tails only run.

Thanks gents,

I figured I'll be following Capt'n C advise as it makes the most sense to me...and I don't like throwing the Alc away. We'll see how I get on.

However I was planning to put the heads in with the next batch ..certainly not collecting heads from muliple runs for a heads run. Is this OK?


John51
"I turn the T500 off once I've got my 3L of hearts. The 500ml of fores/heads goes into a spray bottle"

What size L wash are you running to get 3L hearts