Squeezing out the most from a wash

[Akear1970]

Newbie here with a question that im sures been asked a thousand times. I hear a lot of debate about how much spirit we should distill from x amount of wash. Ok so I have a still spirit airstill I put 4lt of wash in and the guy who sold me the equipment says I take off 800ml of spirit and no need to remove the heads I think it's called. My spirit is a little smelly so thinking of removing the first 50ml then collecting 800ml. So here's my question after the first 800 ml can I then continue to draw off more lesser quality spirit and store the bad spirit till I have 4lt in total and then distill the spirit to get a more pure result and if I did that how much would you advice to take out of this batch???

Regard
Alex

[mozr]

If you do that you are going to the heavy tails, and are going to end up with fusel alcohols which are never going to clean up very well.

Most of us on here do stripping runs. We take the first 1500ml of a 4litre run, then when we have 4 litres of stripped wash we run it through again in a spirit run, then discard 50ml foreshots, save 200ml heads (for a future 'heads' spirit run), then take 500ml hearts, and 100ml batches of tails until the ABV drops a lot. Anything under 60% for me is no good (but I may save some lower than 60% to dump in my next wash to bring the abv up).

You will not get 7 lires of 40% alcohol this way per wash, as wineworks would have you believe. What you do get is 4-4.5 litres of good quality alcohol, and every few washes you get enough heads to dilute and do a heads run that nets me 2 litres easy of decent 40% alcohol.

The problem with collecting tails with a low ABV is that you cant water it down to do another spirit run, meaning all the fusel oils are just concentrated. The cleaner you put in, the cleaner you get out.
People do heads and tails runs. But I steer clear.

There is no set way that is correct. It is all down to personal experience and taste.

There is one rule. You should chuck away 20ml of a single spirit run at least.

It's where all the crap is.

Good luck!

[Akear1970]

With the T500 how much spirit at 94% do you get out of a 24 litre wash??? I'm a right in thinking the external water supply that circulates round the column then drains away?? That being the case does it no waste gallon after gallon of water??? Sorry for all the questions but I'm a newbie so have a least 500 questions left lol

[Admiral Toad]

Yeah agree with IDD the T500 does work well for amatures like me.just got 4.25 litres off 25 litres of 8kg classic wash, you get less off a 6 kg vodka star of course.
I tend too use the hot run off cooling water to wash and sterilise things as I go along and when you see how much is used it's not that much compared to what you use in routine brewing and household use.
I've learnt a few tips and techniques as I've gone along both from myself and the great guys on this site
One day I'd like to take the next step and make up some of the stills the Cpn's got. Most impressive
Whatever you do enjoy !

[Jimmy]

My advice would be the usual - learn about the process by keeping notes, specifically the strength of what you put in is important, which can only really be calculated if you measure SG before the ferment and work it out afterwards.

If you know the strength, you can use the calculator (as described on the main website) to work out the strength of the spirit which is actually dripping out of the nozzle at any given time. You can then get a good idea of which parts are good and which are causing the bad smells and tastes.

It's also handy to try collecting in multiple containers, keeping them in order, and then comparing them all to see what the different smells are like. You don't have to do that all the time, it's just helpful to get it into your mind about what is happening.

Key part is that there isn't a firm line where one thing starts and another stops. It's a gentle curve, the first stuff is bad, then you get gradually less bad and more good, till the main hearts part, then the tails come in and you get more and more bad mixed with the good. This might help explain it:



Image borrowed from here:

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11913

Important to remember - a little bit of tails will make a big difference to the taste, but if you collect the earlier tails (say 16, 17, 18 in the diagram) then you can make a run which is more hearts than tails, and it is worthwhile as you can then get a whole new 'curve' with pure hearts again. It's personal choice where the line is drawn, for speedy decent spirit ditch everything with tails in, but for more efficiency process them depending on how cheap you are!

[YHB]

Seeing your diagram has made me resurrected a thought process that has been going through my mind for a while, perhaps this is time to ask the opinions of others.

The thought is with regards to cuts.

At some point the foreshots / heads will have been removed from the still but still be present in the take off tube and parrot. The only way that you can get them out of the tube is to wash them out with good quality distillate, therefore loosing some of your hard earned alcohol and making the change from foreshots/heads and heads/hearts a more gradual process than it needs to be.

Would it not make sense to have the facility that after the foreshots were finished the distillate could be directed to a new pipe or tube that was free of foreshots and eliminate the risk of cross contamination ( I believe the technical description is smearing ), similarly the diverter could switch to another clean system for the hearts to prevent it being smeared with heads.

This picture was made a couple of weeks ago to try and get the concept in my head - it may be a common idea that I have not come across - it may be such a bad idea that nobody bothers with it - does anybody think the idea is worth pusuing?




This method uses a valve either brass , which I am trying to avoid or stainless which will cost too much. I am working on a fabricated copper threeway diverter.

[Capt-Cudellez]

Brian, I think it is a good idea, but whether it's worth the cost of the materials is another question.

With your LM design, I would think there is more issue with smearing being caused by the pooling distillate in the lower plate than the internal surface of the small diameter tubing. - maybe, maybe not.

My parrot holds about 55ml so has the same pooling issues, so when I run my VM I do not use my parrot during fore\heads removal - I rely on tasting the output to see when i am out of the heads and rough measurements that I expect around 12% of the total alcohol available to be in heads.

I have no option with my set-up to use the same condenser throughout the run, so I will experience smearing - is it a major issue? - I don't think so. Anything that doesn't make the cut will be recycled and rerun later on, running slow and collecting in small containers at the start and end of the run make making the cut easier and you don't "lose" a large jars volume of spirit that is slightly contaminated.

The only design I have seen that looks to help reduce smearing is a VM - RLM combo - heads are pulled off using the RLM section - and VM condenser is not used until into the hearts so no smearing- its a clever design.

The other way of minimising this effect is to go big, I strip 100+L of wash, down to 30L@40ABV for the spirit run - Your collecting so much hearts, its just not worth sweating over a few hundred mls at the transition from heads that "could" be cleaner, as it's all going to get reused at some point.