Switching number of plates or adjusting deflemator?

[Mathieu]

Hello Everyone, 

I've seen an article about a distillery that switch from 4 bubble plates to collect the head to 2 plates when they collect the heart. What will be the difference between reducing the number of plate during the distillation (4 to 2 plates) instead of reducing the water flow in the deflegmator with 4 plates?

 

(Ps: do you know the name of the distillery, i don't remember it)

Thank you in advance

[Alex_Sor]

On 7/25/2024 at 4:54 PM, Mathieu said:

I've seen an article about a distillery that switch from 4 bubble plates to collect the head to 2 plates when they collect the heart. What will be the difference between reducing the number of plate during the distillation (4 to 2 plates) instead of reducing the water flow in the deflegmator with 4 plates?

🙂 Physics and Chemistry are the same for everyone.
Reducing the number of plates leads to the fact that the degree of separation of alcohol-water-impurities will be worse.
So that I don’t write a lot (what everyone already knows), I’ll say that the cooling of the reflux condenser depends on the amount of recirculation (reflux) and not on the number of plates 🙂

 

[adamOVD]

If you are running four plates with enough cooling from your dephlemator to stack them all with liquid, then you slowly turn down the cooling to the dephlemator, the liquid in the plates, starting from the bottom plate will boil off, and you will be getting very little reflux from the unstacked plates.

It takes a lot more attention, and fiddling, but you can certainly run a four plate column with just the top 2 plates stacked.

I'd guess the the additional head separation of another 2 plates in the beginning would be pretty minimal though, and if i want a "2 plate whiskey", I use 2 plates. I just throw my late heads into the next run, so there isn't really any loss there anyways.

They probably just have a very simple way to flip a valve and switch to 4 to 2 plates though.