StillSmart

Inherited my pop's air still late last year, and after receiving a fair bit of info from previous posts and asking a couple of questions, I was making some pretty good stuff, after a fashion.
Would like to thank everyone who posts regularly on here and offers other people advice. I've read and re-read most of it and it's been a big help.

Yesterday I went and bought the t500! Sick of running the damned air still half a hundred times per batch.

I've done a fair bit of reading on the t500 forum on here, and at this stage, I've decided that I'm going to do a combination of different techniques that you guys have done.

- Stripping run, keeping the water temp to 60c, and leaving the tails in the boiler. Some people have said the tiny amount left is not worth stinking up the condenser, and that makes sense to me. I'm no good at separating them anyway.

- Spirit run, starting the water temp at 30c and slowly raising it to 50c over half an hour to compress the heads, putting aside the first 100mL as cleaning fluid.
-- Collect everything in 100mL batches and once hearts are detected leaving it run at 50c until it stops dripping.

- Dilute, filter, yada yada...

- Keep the heads and save them up for a heads run.

From what I can tell, this incorporates most of what I'm reading in the forum.
Does anyone have any advice? Am I entirely wrong?

Thanks again for all the help so far.

That sounds like a good starting point to me.
Some of this stuff you have to sort for yourself, there is no manual that is 100%.

Robert.

I use a T500 and have to say I find it difficult to distinguish the heads from the hearts bit of the run but the tails are easy......the still just gets unstable temperature wise and you chase the rapidly increasing temp by increasing the water flow. For neutral it’s great. If you want to cut and redistill then even better results. I personally don’t think it’s worth the effort. Adding a potstill head (see vino tinto build on here) really opened my eyes to flavour carry over and making cuts .......in short a great step up from the standard T500;

H12rpo wrote:I use a T500 and have to say I find it difficult to distinguish the heads from the hearts bit of the run but the tails are easy......the still just gets unstable temperature wise and you chase the rapidly increasing temp by increasing the water flow. For neutral it’s great. If you want to cut and redistill then even better results. I personally don’t think it’s worth the effort. Adding a potstill head (see vino tinto build on here) really opened my eyes to flavour carry over and making cuts .......in short a great step up from the standard T500;

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I reckon I'll be double distilling - I'm interested in making the highest quality, most neutral spirit I can, with little to no flavour carry-over.
Thanks for the tip on the tails detection. So as soon as it starts getting difficult to manage the temp, cut it? Sounds easy enough to me.

Lex

A haven't solved the problem by buying a T500.
I got another AS. Run kale.
I use a freezer to strip. For 25l that's 5 runs gone. The pour off is 30%. 2.5 runs finishes it off.

Fill and forget. No water imo = no dramas & no watching time.

Always another way

Mash is a law unto himself, he has found a way that works for him.
If you have questions about how it may work for you, can I suggest that you ask?

Robert.