Al The Chemist

I've made a heavy Rum and placed it in a virgin 4 Gal (white oak, medium toast) barrel for aging. This is not one of those hobbyists ornamental barrels, it was professionally made and charred to order. Its been just over 2 years now. The Rum was very pleasant pre-aging, and I was expecting that beyond the tannin and caramel/vanilla notes, the oak aging will mellow pit the Rum further as well. Though the longer its been aging the "hotter" its becoming. Its becoming hard to drink. I was hoping it would reach a peak and then stat to mellow, but I'm seeing no sign of that. Any idea as to what might be going on?

I completed the run and I would say it was a success. The plate along with running the still gentle provided really good control. I was able to buffer out the undesirable flavors much deeper into the run. The flavor is much cleaner and more along the lines of what I had in mind for that recipe. The copper plate didn't soak up as much smell/residue as I was expecting, still needed a cleaning though. Oddly, I'm having more trouble removing the residue form the steel column.

Hey Gwydion, I've been making absinthe for quite some time now, and have recently updated my still. Even when running very low and slow, I'm finding it difficult to extract the aromatic content I'm expecting without running into heavier byproducts I'd relegate to tails. I need an added level of separation, or to collect so slow that the still upgrade becomes void. It giving me a good tasting product, but it will likely cause headaches. The cleanup is what I'm more worried about. The kettle I keep separate though I use the same column. If I do use a plate it will be dedicated to the absinthe. I imagine it will soak up far too much of the oils to use for anything else. If I end up doing it I'll post my findings.

Thanks guys. Good to get the validation.

I know this may sound a little nutty, but has anyone tried distilling a heavy botanical (like absinthe) using a bubble plate for more control over the profile?

I tried this method and am getting corrosion on where the water dries off. Looks brand new while in the acid (using cheapCitric.com distillers residue wash). Any ideas?

I use PBW as first stage. Its the concentrations of citric acid in Ketchup that clean the copper. I'm worried about flavor contamination though. I use cheapCitric's distiller's residue cleaner. Could I be using too high a concentration?

I'm trying to clean my bubble plates. I stared with a "Five star" bath and then over night in citric acid. While in the acid, the plates looked brand new. I thoroughly rinsed them before drying. When the plates finished drying the water drying pattern left dirty/reactive looking patterns (see picture). Anyone else running into this?

Besides the SG that's pretty much mu procedure. I use back-set to lower the ph and add some "flavor". I use V1116 yeast. Once I balance things out I'll start playing with Shermanii and Butyricum.

Very valuable insight. Thank you Beach Time!

That makes sense. I'll tune the recipe. I'm still training my nose to what constitutes "off" for Rum. Any hints?

Understood. Cheers.

So higher ABV in the wash is actually detrimental? That seems counter intuitive. Can you elaborate?

I'll give that a go, though I am then no longer really doing a pot distillation.

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I ran 2 strip runs with a non plated pot still run. I then ran a finishing (spirits) run from what I collected. In the spirit run I ran 2 plates with a deflegmator. I used the reflux to compress the heads and to allow ester formation. Once I turned the coolant to the deflegmater off I did not turn it on again. Essentially completing the spirit run with an alembic style process. I expected to have around 5-10% heads, 70% hearts and about 20-25% tails. I ended up with 60% tails (stopping at 74%). I'm wondering what went wrong. Did I not collect deep enough?

The initial intend on this one was not to run blend cuts, but just to cut off before reaching too far into the tails. I just didn't expect the deeper tails to come up so early with this configuration. I haven't tried using 3-4 plates, but from reading up I'm led to believe that level of fractioning will lead to a lighter product? Did you manage to pull a heavy product using the 4 plate configuration? How deep did you collect? If I can reach a good tasting heavy product, I'd rather run from base wash to final spirit, far less work. I like working with top column adjustments far better than heat adjustments. The results seem easier to register. I did run the deflegmater at full for a while to push for some in column esterification, but when that was turned off, it was only the 2 plates regulating the distillation. I made no heat or reflux adjustments. So what would be your conclusion, I ran too hot?

This is intended for barrel aging. I'm looking for a heavy product. I'm not pre-charging, the plates become self charged very quickly once the system comes to temp. These are just standard bubble plates, nothing like a thumper. I agree, I didn't think 3000 watts would push too hard on the kettle. This was a 15 gallon low wines run. Though things seemed to dip into the heavier tails far to quickly. There was plenty of good spirit left to collect.

I'm using a new still configuration for this rum recipe. Its a 4" column with 2 bubble plates. 3000 watt heater. This was a low wines run. I stop collecting hearts when the distillate was around 74% (and when I start noticing a tangy, almost sour note). I stop collecting tails around 10%. I collected 2 gallons of hearts and 3 gallons of tails. This seems way off on the ratios. Any ideas? Should I add another plate to improve separation, or increase the height of my column?

I'm using a new still configuration for this rum recipe. Its a 4" column with 2 bubble plates. 3000 watt heater. This was a low wines run. I stop collecting hearts when the distillate was around 74% (and when I start noticing a tangy, almost sour note). I stop collecting tails around 10%. I collected 2 gallons of hearts and 3 gallons of tails. This seems way off on the ratios. Any ideas? Should I add another plate to improve separation, or increase the height of my column?

That I have. In hopes I cut back on the nutrient regiment enough. Heh, It’s hard to “eyeball”.

Thanks FC, Foreshot, Surprisingly enough, fermentation took off like a house on fire. Far more aggressive than my standard fermentation. I think the lower PH of the backset is doing wonders.

So, I've prepared my first wash with added backset (roughly 1/4) . I still calculated my SG based on all water and ended up with a ridiculous 38.3 Brix. The backset is much thicker, though I'm not sure its viscosity accurately represents the sugar content. My calculations put me closer to 26. Any ideas? Should I dilute to a lower Brix or let it roll and see if fermentation kicks off?

Have you tried running a full reflux first run? Curious how the flavor loss in the trails would be.

Interesting. Symbiotic fermentation of bacteria and yeast. I'll start approaching this like making Kombucha! https://patents.google.com/patent/US2386924A/en <-- Very informative. Cheers.

I've read some references to using a bubble plate column design with 1-2 plates active for minimal separation. Then collecting down to a low abv and still getting a heavy product using the that minimal refraction to help separate the desired tails from the dunder. Has anyone tried this?