StillSmart

At last my SPP's arrived today after nearly 4 months of waiting

I spent over a hour cleaning and sterilising the blighters. I did not expect so many tiny bits of stainless coming off the SPP's. My worry was some of the bits might find their way out of the T500 on a spirit run. A hell of a lot found their way out of a fine colander I was using to rinse them. So, I have placed a stainless steel scrubber level with the spirit outlet half way down the column and used SPP's to fill the rest with a stainless steel scrubber at the bottom. I hope all goes well on Saturday when I do a run.

You only need a scrubber top & bottom of the SPP for retaining the little buggers. I used a "Choreboy copper" at the top, just inside the coil, and SS at the bottom as a retainer.
The spirit comes down an internal condenser pipe from the cooling coil, so putting a SS scrubber anywhere in the column apart from where I said will disrupt the HETP value, see my post http://www.stillsmart.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2825 for a breakdown of a T500.
Initially, I placed a coffee filter in the top of my jars, but I have never found any SS bits since I cleaned them when they first arrived.

EDIT: You want to try to get a 4:1 reflux, that's 4 parts back down the column to 1 part of product taken off, so keep it slow. The water temp will be different to that when using other packings, the ABV may be the same but it will be purer.

Thank you for the info vino-tinto, I have saved the breakdown picture for reference. I went a bit OTT with the Choreboy copper scrubbers and put 2 under the coil. I'll remove the middle ss scrubber this afternoon and see how the run goes tomorrow. Previous to the SPP's I had one copper scrubber under the coil and the rest of the column filled with ss scrubbers, it worked quite well. You posted that mod ages ago and I thought it was brilliant, hence I have followed your advice with using the little buggers.

An interesting run today with the SPP's for the first time. My usual run is about 6 hours but today is was 8 hours. I did a 30 min reflux and then took off 250ml of fores and 350ml of heads and let it run. I used a parrot for the first time to monitor the ABV which started at 96% @23c so I reckon 95% take off. When the ABV dropped to 92% after 7 hours I had 3 litres of spirit. The water temperature output varied from 46c to 50c. I had a taste or ten during the run and it was sweet and smooth....hic
Any advice or comments most welcome.

A big thank you to vino-tinto for all his input and guidance (please continue)

Following vino-tinto

T500 with SPP, I used spirit from stripping runs watered down to 40% a total of 23 litres.
It took 75 minutes to heat up to the top of the T500 column. I turned down the boiler to 1400W, increased the water flow so no spirit came off. Went to have lunch for about 35 minutes and let it reflux. Upon my return the top of the column had cooled quite a bit, is that normal?
I decreased the water flow and had to up the boiler to 1800W to get spirit out? Should I have waited a while before upping the boiler temp? Took off 1 litre and binned it.

Using the parrot I started taking off the hearts, I took off 6 L. Moved a 1 litre ss jug to collect and tasted the output every 5 minutes, after 200 ml it tasted nasty so I switched off and binned the 200 ml.
I must admit, it is the best spirit I have made since I purchased my T500.


Any advice most welcome

Hi fuf

how did u clean and sterilise your spp's

I have some on order....

i wasnt intending to sanitise mine just clean in oxi and soak in citric acid to 'etch'? and brite em??

i have 1l of copper and 1l of ss on order..

cheers..

Where are you guys getting your SPP from?

And how much do you need to fill your T500's, I have a meter of 54mm column to fill so in thinking I'd need a little more but I wouldn't like to have to wait a few months only to find out I didn't order enough to fill my column

Fil wrote:Hi fuf

how did u clean and sterilise your spp's

I have some on order....

i wasnt intending to sanitise mine just clean in oxi and soak in citric acid to 'etch'? and brite em??

i have 1l of copper and 1l of ss on order..

cheers..

Hi Fil,

I did as you intend to do, oxi and citric acid and sterilising solution plus a mega rinse session. Worked for me

Anavrin wrote:Where are you guys getting your SPP from?

And how much do you need to fill your T500's, I have a meter of 54mm column to fill so in thinking I'd need a little more but I wouldn't like to have to wait a few months only to find out I didn't order enough to fill my column

The best person to ask is vino-tinto.
As for the T500 1 litre will do the job.

http://www.istill.eu/#!spiral-prismatic ... liter/c7ok

Regarding SPP, Odin states they have stopped selling SPP's...read on, Odins blog.

OSPP? REALLY?
Yes, I am not making a joke. We just stopped selling SPP. We are now re-introducing SPP to the market place. Not just any SPP. Not just to any market place.

SPP is still available to our customers running 50 liter units. If they need a replacement fill, they can order, and we will deliver.

The same goes for our new OSPP. It is an option our existing clients can order. It’s not for sale to others, simply because we can’t make enough of it.

What OSPP is? Easy, Oversized Spiral Prismatic Packing. And “Oversized” refers to the size of our new SPP. You may have heared about it. I spoke about it close to a year ago. That’s how long it takes to develop something new like this. What? SPP for our iStill 250 and iStripper units. That’s what OSPP is. Bigger sized SPP for bigger diameter columns.

The road to this new and bigger SPP has been long. The problem was the weight to volume ratio. Bigger SPP is heavier. Heavier per volume. And the weight tended to crush or at least deform the shape of the SPP situated lower in the column.

We now solved that and proudly present OSPP. A solution to all of your distillation challenges? Definately not. But it will help you out in certain situations: if you want to set-up your iStill 250 or iStripper for one, and one goal only: to make neutral or vodka.

Please remember that the already existing ceramic packing works increadibly well. It allows the iStill 250 to make taste rich products as well as pure, azeotropic spirits. But if neutral or vodka is all you are after, you may consider purchasing our new OSPP.

It will give you a lower HETP, so more redistillations. It will make vodka production even easier. But please be reminded of this: OSPP will strip out too much flavour, if you are after taste rich product in potstill mode.

We will add it to our product directory on http://www.iStill.eu in a week or so. Stainless Steel as well as Copper.

Are SPP's better than SS scrubbers in a T500 column?
If they are then, where can I get some from?