adamOVD

Thanks for the replies. I ran the rest of what I had with no real problems. The first run out of 5 runs was the worst for some reason.

Here's a pic. Looks more like protein than hops. Same stuff is always at the bottom of the kettle mixed with your hops after boiling beer, they call it the trub pile, or the hot break. Think it has something to do with hops making proteins precipitate out of the beer. I should know more about it as a former brewer. I do think I'm getting some hop particles puking up into the final spirit though. I was going to try to filter them out before I barrel.

I recently ran some ipa from the local brewery. It was fined and looks pretty clear, but wasn't filtered. I was pretty shocked how much trub was in the still after the run. From about 100 gallons there was maybe a total of a football sized chunk. It mostly looks like long strands of protein. The proteins seem seems to work it's way up the column while I'm running tails as well. I just have perforated plates in my column. I'm a little worried about then getting clogged somewhere. Anyone else have experience with this?

I'd try just adding heat and nutrient first to see what happens (as long as you pitched the recommended amount of yeast), then repitch yeast if nothing changes. That's just my opinion though, and I don't know your entire process.

That's pretty cold for any ferment. Id add more nutrient and try to warm it up, and see if it takes off. Aquarium heaters work well depending on your fermenter size.

What was your starting gravity, PH, and fermentation temp? A lot of people use bakers yeast for rum, and it likes it pretty warm. I use about twice the nutrient, along with DAP, but that will change depending on what kind of sugar or molasses you are using. I'd try to get the ferment to finish out before running it, and use it as an opportunity to figure out what needs to change to speed up future ferments by adding nutrient, heat, or repitching yeast.

How much yeast nutrient did you add?

We used an aliphatic urethane. It looks fantastic on the bare concrete and goes down easy. Only been a year, but it is holding up great. I did have an overnight slow dripping leak of peracetic acid once though, and it did not react well with the urethane.

What does alchohol made from taro root taste like by the way?

I cut the top off 15.5 gallon kegs and welded wheels and a 1" tri clamp fitting into the bottom.

High tech gadgetry like Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry I'd imagine. If there's more that 5% fusil oils or other "tails" found it's not a true neutral. I'm just guessing though. Also if you were going to add more information with your guide, I really struggled with the TTB reporting. There are guides on the .Gov sights but they are pretty cryptic at first. Possibly short a section on proofing as well as it isn't really mentioned.

It's going to be very difficult to make cuts with that small of volume, as they will be happening so quickly, and nearly impossible to do it in one pass on a pot still, as the cuts will smear into each other a lot. You'll be able to get a lot more helpful information for a new distiller on a small scale on a home distilling sight like homedistiller.org than you will here.

I just scanned some it pretty quickly, but I think you did an excellent job covering a ton of key of information in a very concise way. Best guide I've seen so far. Think a lot of people will find this very helpful. Couple points I found especially interesting- n 2017, testing was done to all of the spirits submitted to the ADI spirit competition and 80% of the vodka submitted had chemicals in them that indicated that it had not been distilled above the 95% alcohol required to call them vodka As you can see, those two rules of thumb illustrate the vast difference between the two distillery models: a distillery bar will need to sell 13 times less booze than the distribution facility.

@PeteB Some people dilute their faints or low wines to under 30% alchohol so fusil oils and whatnot separate and float to the top. They then skim them off the top or pump from the bottom, and leave them behind.

Yes. I've heard it is a problem for anyone with a distillery, brewery, bakery, Kim chi factory, or any other fermented or yeast using product. I've also recently discovered the same mold that wants to grow in the ice maker, and requires a regular tear down of the machine, is also growing in the swamp cooler. It's pretty disgusting.

Volume of dunder will replace the volume of water from the last batch. Be careful of your PH though. The dunder will lower the mash PH, and your yeast will not like a PH that is too low, which will also drop during fermentation.

That's awesome. Congrats. By saying "all feints", i assume you don't do hydro separation on them? How deep do you go into your tails? I realize you may need to protect your trade secrets now that you are hot s**t now and all ?, so feel free to decline to comment. Thanks for the reply.

+1. when you add up how much time it saves, it pays for itself pretty quickly. At the very least, try the free trial

First off Paul is correct. he did not make the condenser, and that was where the problem was. That and operator error. The pot is fine. As far as the modifications I made, I put some copper scrubbers in the reducer cone above the condenser to work as a pre-condenser of sorts. violentblue also recommended I make a copper coil or spring and insert it into the tubes of the condenser to elongate the vapor path, and I suppose create some turbulence. I would guess You are not having the same problem if removing the vent solved it though.

Any opinions on how many "generations" you reuse your feints before the fusel oils start to over accumulate and you dump them or reprocess them into a vodka or something. Alternatively do you find doing a hydro separation or shallow tails cut every once in a while is enough. Realize it's gonna be pretty dependent on the desired product and equipment, just looking for a very broad opinion if you've tried different things and prefer a certain method. Thanks.

Just in case someone cares, or reads this down the line, after a few runs, I'm pretty sure the surging was due to the condenser. I made some changes to it to make it more efficient, tweaked some settings, and was more careful with how much cooling water i was sending to the PC. Thanks so much to everyone that took the time to throw some ideas my way.

After a great deal of thought, I am almost certain @ViolentBlue is correct about the condenser being the source of the problem.. Ever piece of the puzzle fits perfectly. I've read in other posts about very cold water causing surging, but it all kinda went over my head, as many other ideas were also being talked about at the same time. I think i finally get it now though. The massive cloud of heated vapor hits my over-sized condenser, which due to it being a somewhat simple and inefficient design, I am running too much cooling water to. The vapor quickly shrinks down to a small quantity of liquid, creating a vacuum that sucks the vapor out of the column and a the same time lowers the boiling temperature, making the surging even worse. That continues until the surging vapor heats up the condenser enough that everything equalizes, and then the whole cycle starts again. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Can't thank everyone enough for all the feedback, fairly certain I can get things dialed in for the next run. Hopefully this helps some else out down the road as well.

Thanks @ViolentBlue I'll play with that as well. That would help explain why it only does it intermittently. Whenever I run too much water, or the take off rate slows or gets hotter at the end of the run. I'll be more diligent in holding the spirit in the parrot at a set temp. Just to be 100% sure, you are talking about the final product condenser. Not the dephlemator right?

Here's one of the plates. I agree that the burp tube probably isn't the problem, but it literally takes two seconds to put a cap on it and eliminate it as a possible problem. Hopefully it is a surge boiling problem, caused by the limited heat transfer intrinsic to a bain Marie still, running at a higher altitude??, and my own inexperience running a still. I think Paul's got me on the right track though. Thanks for all the input. I'm excited to tell you how the run goes on Monday, but I am cooking, bottling and bartending till then. Thanks again for all the input.

@meerkat Yeah, I rigged up the "burp tube" because sometimes I get a lot of uncondensable gas escaping. Think it happens when there is a lot of yeast in the pot. I'm sure that doesn't help the inconsistent the flow rate, but I don't think it is the cause of it, as it happens whether gas escapes or not. I'm going to cap it off whenever it seems unneeded in case @PeteB is right and cold air is being sucked in through it. I also have small vent holes in the parot. The rush of spirits is never so great it would push spirits out of the T, or even the vent holes of the parrot. The flow rate when fast is about 2 or 3 times faster then when it is slow. I can still get through my runs, but it makes making my cuts a lot more difficult, and keeps the plates from stacking consistently through the run.