Double distill

[Admiral Toad]

In an effort to make as neutral a spirit as possible to appease my fussy vodka drinking friend I am going to do a second distillation in the T500.I will be loading it with about 18L at approx 45% ABV so looking to get 8ishL out about 93%
my question is how long might it take ? Does the distillate come off faster or at same rate ie might take 7 hours
If so would it be better to charge it with say 20L at 25% ?
Any thoughts appreciated guys

[Capt-Cudellez]

I would do it by putting cut spirit in the boiler - meaning you have already removed the heads and tails, throw the heads in the boiler with the next wash you do.

Also charge the boiler under 30% ABV as this allows for better separation.

So this time you'll have no heads to worry about, but I find you will still need to make a tails cut. And you will run a bit faster.

[Admiral Toad]

Hey C'ptn
took on board what you said, as it happens the spirit I had available was about 4.5l just run @93% with fore shots removed but quite a bit of tails plus some 40% previously run cut and filtered
Mixed this with some filtered water to make a 25l charge @30ish% as you advised
It ran well pulled about 400ml of heads off and cut the hearts as soon as the first hint of tails.
Double filtered and produced about 12l at 40% which on several first impressions seems very good smooth no odd smells or aftertaste.even quite liked it myself !
Think this is the answer

[Admiral Toad]

Well did a second batch of double distilling with 22 litres @ 29% including some older bottled up SS vodka and it ran really well just over 6 litres of clean hearts 200ml heads and 450ml decent tails definately the answer

[heggsy]

A_T, how can you tell when tails are starting to come through?...and how did you know that it was 200ml of heads?

[MrCat]

A_T, how can you tell when tails are starting to come through?...and how did you know that it was 200ml of heads?

Experience !

Making cuts is a whole step up in your 'game'.

You might have read that a run is divided into four sections

In order of appearance

1. Foreshots. These contain the real harmful chemicals that yo don;t want to drink
2. Heads.
3. Hearts
4. Tails.

The quantity of each section depends on what was in your wash so it's difficult to say exactly how much you will get in each part of the run.

On my final run (I triple distill) I collect into numbered 400ml mason jars, I leave these jars overnight to air, the next day I then smell them from the middle jar out. As you get towards jar one you will notice an increase in the 'smell' from the jar (difficult to explain but easy to spot when you do it) - on smell alone jars one two and three will normally be 'discarded' and the last three jars as well.

Then I'll mix a teaspoon from each with a teaspoon of water and taste it. In my run then might keep jar four or maybe not depending on if it 'burns' to taste. this is more noticeable with the later jars (tails) as the burn tends to increase the deeper into the tails you get.

On todays run which was the first column run I tested towards where I expected the tails to be and when I recognised the typical burn I stopped the run and threw the boiler contents away.

The heads can also get 'smeared' longer into the run. You can compress the heads by increasing the amount of cooling water.

What I do is when the lower temp gets to 35 degrees I turn the water on pretty high. This immediately drops the lower temperature (increase reflux to 100%) and hold it there for a few mins, then I slowly decrease the water supply which will increase the lower temp. When the top temp gets to 60 Degrees I let it sit for 5 mins before decreasing the water flow. I steadily let the top temp rise to 70, again wait 5 mins, then 73 for 5 mins, then 74 for 5 mins etc until I get to 75. Then I let the top temp sit for about 20 mins. From about 74 degrees you will get a few drops of output - doing it this way ensures that the more volatile vapours make their way to the top of the column first.

If I were you though I'd file this information away until you have a few runs under your belt - IMHO it's too much for the first run!

[heggsy]

Bookmarked, MrCat!

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain that thoroughly. I've done a ton of reading on this subject, but there are just so many things to keep in mind...not to mention all the new terminology and jargon to get used to.

You are spot on...it'll be baby steps for me, but I can always come back to this bookmark when I'm ready to move up a league.

[MrCat]

The great news is that your first run will be better than most commercial stuff and that with every run you will get even better.

When I think back to my first couple of runs and to what I can do now there is no comparison but it needed me to make mistakes to learn

Enjoy your early runs, make your mistakes, read learn and then before you know it you'll be the one answering questions

[Admiral Toad]

Hey Mr Cat when you say discard I presume you rerun with another charge later, lots to be cutting, the hearts must be perfect ! Are you aiming fo vodka spirit or just a super smooth base spirit ?

[MrCat]

I keep all the heads and tails until I have a couple of gallons and then rerun them to salvage what I can out of them.

I don't filter though so I only take the very cleanest hearts. It's a lot of work, a lot gets sacrificed but I'm happy with the end result.

I aim for a little character in my output which is why I tend to use molasses washes as even after a triple distill it has a little edge of taste.

I keep on thinking about filtering but I really can't be bothered with another piece of equipment!

[Capt-Cudellez]

I do something similar to Mr Cat, when running the column, I collect the heads in a large container and collect 10% of the total alcohol in the boiler - I've never got the heads less than 10% without it being a painfully slow process so I feel safe it's all going to be heads, before switching to smaller jars.

The heads and feints on the head side get watered down to 30% and I have a 30L SS keg for just this. I add 1 teaspoon per litre of calcium carbonate, and when the keg is full I'll do a separate heads only run - the product from this is really smooth, but is slightly different on the nose to a normal run. I collect about 10-12% heads on this run, and the rest is all hearts bar a very small tails cut

The feints on the tails side get put in with the next run, and I don't collect tails as these are so concentrated on the VM (for me) its not worth collecting and stinking the condenser up.