StillSmart

7.5lt from the hearts collection! I think the first litre at least is possibly heads but that's a job for another day, to be fair I think changing to SS scrubbers has made more difference than the torpedo but who cares, it's a good haul :-)

well done. do not underestimate the effect of the bubbler. The rock steady high speed high abv output will be largely down to that rather than the scrubbies I think.

Hi Ant

How hard do you think you could push it in terms of output rate, 2lt per hour would be nice :-)
I'm gonna push it harder next time but I'll have to wait a month until I've got enough strip to run it again :-(

I'll be adding another plate before Xmas, that's for sure

What length is your packed section, I used SS scrubbers for years and was able to get 95.6% with 39", I'm surprised your not getting more ABV. Do you check your column is plumb when running?

As for running for speed, there is usually a trade off, I go for just under 1.5L/h, I can run at over 2L/h and still pull azeotrope, but the resulting spirit is slightly hotter.

If you are taking off spirit faster, you need to be putting in more power to maintain the reflux ratio else something has to give, then you'll hit physical limitations on how much power can go in down to column diameter an packing you are using.

Anavrin wrote:7.5lt from the hearts collection! I think the first litre at least is possibly heads but that's a job for another day, to be fair I think changing to SS scrubbers has made more difference than the torpedo but who cares, it's a good haul :-)

Yes it is a good haul, Nice job. I particularly like your clean collection protocol. Kilners and Cotton Swabs, way to go and worth every penny for a good setup like that.

You might consider getting a SS saucepan lid for the Essencia. I picked one up in a charity shop and it won't break no matter how many times I drop it

AM

@Capt-Cudellez

My packed column is approx 1meter I'll have to measure it to be precise but it's close enough, the distillate I was collecting was actually reading 93% but it was coming out at 14.5°c so I added 1% for the temp difference (0.2% per 1°c lower than 20°c I think is the rule)

I had my VM valve half open, next time I'll open it up more and check the % to see if it remains constant, the beauty of the sight glass is you can adjust the power exactly to the point you get reflux and you can constantly check it's still going as you increase take off, my coil has a few kinks in it and is restricting the flow, so I'll use another next time also.

Think I've got the plate bug now, I can see 8 of them in my dreams!

@AM

Killers and swabs are well posh, I bought a few at a time from GT's £1.75 each for the 500ml ones, adds up but you only pay once I guess.

I'll collect more in each one next time, when I started the run I would have been happy with half the collection, that's why I only did 250ml cuts, I ended up pouring the first cuts into bottles, just so I could re-use the jars again, then used all my small jars, then the last 500ml went in a Demijon, lol

I didn't see my glass steam up but I could smell tails with my head next to the boiler, then the temp went up from 81.1 to 81.3, the output dropped by 0.5%, I called it a day, I'll check the cuts tomorrow if I have time.

I was just gonna say Capt is the man for that question but he has already answered. He is our resident expert on bubble column hybrids. I only have theory so far. He has experience.

Just got round to sorting my cuts last night, I kept about 4.5 litres to make 10 litres at 40% could have taken more, I had no tails but could I could detect heads to some extent in the first 4 litres, last time I was too critical about cutting heads and ended up with a bland, almost dry tasting neutral, this time I'm much happier, just sampled some that's passesd through the Essencia filter and it's my best neutral so far, Ive said that before more than once but this time I'm properly impressed