A good day and a bad day in almost equal measures :) :(

[MrCat]

Ran my first wash through the SS reflux today.
Couple of mods as per suggestions (stainless steel pan scrubbers*3, power controller) and replaced the supplied thermometer (it was wrong by 6 degrees) with a digital one with a programmable alarm.
I set a low alarm on the thermometer of 30 degrees so I'd know as it was warming up and to check it for later.
Powered up and the wash starting to heat up. 20 mins later I'm replacing the fuse in the mains plug in the power controller as although it said 13 amp on the plug it had a 3 amp in it...
The alarm went of at 30 degrees so I re-set it for 40 degrees. 40 degree alarm and on goes the water. I'm measuring the flow and the temp is rising very quickly.
It hits 78 and clear liquid starts to come out of the condenser..
100 mls goes down the plug hole. The temperature is rock solid and I'm getting a great quantity of liquid coming out. I get about 200 mls and put it to one side to cool down
I dialled the power down to 900 watts and the flow slows.
When the 200 mls has dropped from 28 to 25 degrees I drop the alcohol hydrometer in. It was 90% (so allowing for the temperature that is 89%) I was that surprised I got the missus to check it.
I'm still collecting and setting to one side to cool. The best I hit was 93%. I think I need another alcohol hydrometer to check this one as I'm stunned...
I got 4 litres off and called it a day. The ABV is still over 89% and the flow is good but the area is starting to smell quite yeasty and the output is starting to take on a golden colour rather than being clear so I was a bit worried about the stainless steel scourers.
Tidied up and cut the 4 litres down to 50% ready to run through the filter.
Set the filter up, dropped the first 300 ml back in the top bucket, put it on a bit of a slope and walked out of the room to get a cuppa. I'd been out of the room for not 20 seconds when there is a bang and on returning to the room I found the the top bucket for filtering had slid off the worksurface and emptied it's contents all over the floor
I ended the day with 2 litres of filtered 50% - which was enough to start my strawberry spirit so it's not all bad.
Oh well - in all it was a great day, really surprised with the performance of the SS reflux and can't wait to get the next batch through it!!

[Jimmy]

Excellent work, and as always thanks for the detailed information - a lot of people find it really helpful to hear exactly how things went in the \'real world\' rather than just reading instructions. Good luck with the strawberry spirit!

[Opus 27]

Your not alone with mishaps, I got side tracked with a visitor and forgot to check the still, about 750ml at 93% went under the garage door. Could of been fun if the neighbours had lit a match.
Opus 27

[MrCat]

LOL It could always be worse!!

[Opus 27]

MrCat,

Lets compare. I\'ve just run a 30 litre wash in two 15 litre batces. Set up much like yours. 3X Stainless pan scrubbers and power supply control. 1350 watts untill 78c (about 55 Minutes. At 78 dropped power to 750 watts. Took 60ML of head and dumped it. Distillate now smells clean so collecting. Collected untill temperature at 82c. (about 6 hours) collected 2 litres in total at 93%. Repeated for second batch finishing with a total of 4.050 Litres at 93%. Wash was Alcotec 48 with 8 Kilos of sugar and 28 litres of water. Fermented in 48 hours to 0.985 SG about 14%. makes up to 32 litres but I usualy loose a couple of litres fining anf filtering hence 30 litres.

As a point of interest I\'ve found that power requirement is directly proportional to the quantity of wash in the still ie less wash less power.
Opus 27

[MrCat]

My setup is pretty much copied from your posts !!
Your right on the less wash/less power - mine was hovering on 1495 watts for a 23 litre wash. It also took over 90 minutes to warm up - but then some of this was spent with the unit off before I spotted there was no power.
My wash was from a Vinland vodka kit and as it was my first homebrew I didn\'t take an OG reading so I\'m not sure how much alcohol there was there to start off with.
A new \'toy\' for the next run is hooking the temperature sensor up to my laptop to monitor the temperature more accurately. And produce some pretty graphs !

[Opus 27]

What I\'d like to consider is a flow gauge for the coolant water as thats still a \"Judge it by eye\" job. I\'ve wondered if it would be practical to rig a temperature sensor from the condenser to a flow valve in the coolant line. All these ideas suggest too much time on my hands but at my age I have to tax the brain to keep it alive.
Opus 27

[MrCat]

I went looking for flow gauges but couldn\'t see anything that was easily adaptable - what I have got on order though is two cheap digital thermometers on the way from China via ebay. The plan for one of them is to put a hole in the output of the water line from the condensor, put a sensor through and then hot glue it back to water tight. I can then see the water temperature at that point, adjust the flow on a run, watch what it does to the output and the temperature and then set myself up a \'guideline\' so I can judge it better.
I was thinking of going down the road of automatically controlling the flow but it was even tricky to find a nice small pump - I thought it would be best to look at ones for aquariams but I couldn\'t find one that didn\'t need to be sumberged. I had a brief look at water cooling for PCs as they would probably come with all the programs needed but ran out of time.
Mind you the more I think about it the more likely that PC water cooling is the place to look.
Thoughts ??

[MrCat]

I wonder if this would do - I didn\'t realise they made external water cooling supply for PC\'s.
http://www.koolance.com/water-cooling/product_info.php?product_id=831
This is the cheapest in the range but the larger (and more expensive) units can cope with up to 1000w of cooling and they all re-cycle the coolant.Even this one isn\'t cheap but it shows the potential.
If it worked you could control the temp and also free up having to have a mains water supply. I\'m not sure how fine the temperature control is (initially it doesn\'t look that precise and there is no automatic mode for the pump but if it can cotrol the coolant temperature then in theory you wouldn\'t need to vary the rate) but I think I\'ll do some more digging.

[phlogiston]

Regarding the Koolance -- why not just put the output from the still through it, and dispense with the coolant altogether? :-)

[MrCat]

Ok
First of all get one of these
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MCubed-T-Balancer-bigNG-4-channel-Fan-Controller-for-air-and-watercooling-(Auto-calibrates-your-sys)
It's a USB controller that reads temperatures / flow rates etc and from looking at the manual the supplied software allows you to allows you to set up the pump depending on the temperature / flow rate etc.
So you could set it to switch the pump on at 40 degrees, to increase the flow as the temperature hits 78, then really increase the flow above that.
One of these kits could also be a good idea (but you could probably do without it to be honest)
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_3740.html
It's a water sensor kit with a flow meter and water proof temperature sensors. From what I've read the only concern for me is that the flow rate we are using (30 l/h) is quite low for these systems as I've seen a couple of flow meters that won't read that low a flow rate
And last but not least a pump to drive the water
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/EK-DCP-22-(12V-DC-Pump)
Add a few tubes and connectors, shop around and you can probably get it all for under £100 and you'll have automatic water control