Newbie Advice

[goshawk0]

Hi I am new to distilling, I have made a St St Still, from a 50lt Beer barrel c/w a 2” stainless steel column, which is packed with a St St scrubbing pads and copper tube cut in to small section in the top.

I ran some home brew wine through the still, but it has a strange smell, is this right?

Also next time I will be running 25lts of mash, can you tell me how much head and tails I will get and how I can tell?

Any help would be great

[YHB]

Hi,

A nice looking still with a strange smell?

It's a new still, the accepted method of cleaning a new home made still is to boil a 50/50 mix of water and 10% vinegar for a couple of hours then rinse it with clean water.

The first run with alcohol should be considered a sacrificial one to clean the still and get rid of any flux and nasties that are still there. I would considere your strange smelling spirits as cleaning fluid and not to be drunk.

If you have not made any cuts then the heads hearts and tails will all be mixed in, adding to the strange smell.

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It is standard custom and practice to run a wash through the still twice, a stripping run and a spirit run, this method will make making the cuts easier.

The stripping run is a quick run at full power and will reduce your wash by two thirds and increase the % of Alcohol, how much and what strength depends on the strength of your wash.

If your 25 litre wash is say 10%ABV then there is 2.5 litres of Alcohol in the wash. You will probably strip the wash down to 50%ABV so in theory you could get 5.0 litres of strip at 50%. You will not get all the alcohol out of the wash, the last bit is not worth the effort, so in this example you will probably get something like 4.5 litres, the exact figures depend on the strength of your wash and the effiecency of your still.

When you have collected enough strip it needs to be watered down to less than 40% for safety sake and redistilled in a spirit run. The spirit run is where you make your cuts between heads, hearts and tails.

This is far as I am going to go, I too am a beginner and only just starting to be able to differentiate between the hearts, heads and tails. I will find some threads that I have found helpful and add them in a few minutes after I have eaten.

OK I'm back here's one with some people who know what they are doing, it is in another Forum but they are a friendly bunch, you may have to join to see the posts but it is worth it. http://forum.moderndistiller.com/viewto ... f=23&t=105

Hope that helps, if not ask again.

[goshawk0]

Thanks YBH, i will have a look.

I will also do proper clean on the still.

It has been TIG welded so no flux should be left.

Thanks