Typical yield from low wines during vodka spirit run

[rtshfd]

I'm curious what I should be expecting in terms of efficiency from a kettle full if 35% low wines on a spirit run through 20 plates. Anyone willing to share?

[Scrounge]

How big is that kettle of yours?

[rtshfd]

300 G

[MisterStiller]

I always assume 25% heads, 70% hearts, and 5% tails if your getting proper stratification and separation in your columns. So if your charging 300 gallons of 100 proof you should have 150 gallons of ethanol, equating to 37.5 gallons heads, 112.5 gallons of hearts, and 7.5 gallons of tails. Obviously this is assuming a good fermentation and stripping run practices.

Cheers!

[rtshfd]

37.5 gallons of heads sounds incredibly high. Is that not assuming any reflux and compaction of heads? I'm into hearts after less than 5-8 G of a 300G 40% low wines run after 30 min reflux period.

[ebstauffer]

We run about 45 mins of full reflux initially and rarely get more than 5 gallons (on a 150 gallon charge) of heads after we slowly pull them off. FWIW, I always find the heads cut the most difficult as there are some nice flavor in there.

[MisterStiller]

You guys are definitely right on 37.5 gallons being high, those numbers where based on a very wheat heavy grain bill and an inefficient still design. Lately Ive been working with potatoes and ive seen that heads number hover around 10% so I would probably be cutting after 15 gallons. This is for a packed still without plates so If you guys are working on the european style stills Im sure your getting much better efficiency.

Im not saying these numbers are absolutely perfect this is just what Ive been experiencing lately.

Cheers!

[John McKee]

One additional note on heads:

Pot vs Continuous Column styles of fractionation will yield differing ratios of "Heads". In a pot, the ratios discussed above are correct, due to the pot's inability to fully fractionate heads. Better said, a pot still does get rid of all of the heads, but that "heads" stream is also high in ethanol.

However if correctly designed, continuous column systems are capable of much higher degrees of separation of heads and greater ethanol recovery. Moreover, continuous column systems are also capable of fractionating the heads themselves, allowing the distiller to capitalize on "good" heads and their contribution to flavor chemistry (especially in barrel aging) and still be able to remove the "bad" heads (think methanol) from the final spirit.

We use a column system, distill 1000g batches per 8 hours, and if we have more than 3-4 gallons of heads (or less that 1/2 of 1%), something went very wrong in the fermentation process.

Not slagging technique or anything else above, but the "heads" cut on a pot still will always have a high ratio of good ethanol. Noting the agreed upon numbers above at ~3% of the run is considered "heads", you can be assured that a high portion of that is good ethanol that you system couldn't fully fractionate. On small systems this may not present you an issue, but on larger systems, 500g pots and up, you may want to consider other techniques to recapture the remaining ethanol from the heads.

Cheers,

McKee

[aellison]

"and if we have more than 3-4 gallons of heads (or less that 1/2 of 1%), something went very wrong in the fermentation process."

I am curious, what causes more heads from something going wrong in the fermentation process?

[JustAndy]

Some yeast strains when stressed produce more congeners which end up as heads in vodka distillation (and potentially whiskey distillation): so generally higher temperatures, higher sugar & alcohol percentages, poor yeast nutrition or inappropriate yeast strain, low pitch rate. Poor sanitation or long lag or fermentation times can lead to bacterial or non-inoculated yeast infections which can produce elevated congeners and acetic/other acids which increase heads as well.  

[aellison]

Thank you JustAndy !  Very helpful.  We've had some issues very similar to that.  For a 20 BBL batch of 500 lbs distillers malt and 500 lbs of red wheat malt and 3 bricks of Lutra yeast, dried from Omega.  We run it through our mash filter and then knock it out with oxygen at around 70 degrees Fahrenheit (its about 15 Plato) and add the bricks to the fermenter.  The next day we'll do another 20 BBL batch and send that into the fermenter as well.  These first two turns were slow to start.  After two weeks it was done fermenting, stripped it all, spirit ran it all, then columned it all.  Then we did another two turns and tried harvesting the yeast from the first two turns, but there was a lactic infection that got into these two turns.  We might have had the infection all along is my guess, probably from previous batches of kettle sours that were in these fermenters.  Nevertheless, we forgot to turn on this fermenter and it fermented hot and fast--done in just a few days.  Once again, stripped, spirit and columning right now.  We cleaned and steamed the fermenter to try and get rid of the infection.  I collected all the data of how much heads, hearts and tails we got from each batch so I can compare later.  Now we have a third batch of two turns going again that seems to be going well.

It did seem to me that there were a lot of heads in the first batch, so that is what had me curious as to what would make more heads than usual.  I am relatively new at this, so bear with me, but I just wanted to give you some of the specs of what we are doing just in case you were interested in them because I welcome anything you might want to add.

Cheers!

[JustAndy]

Likely 70F was too low for that yeast to finish in a reasonable time for infection took hold. 4-5 days is a good goal to finish out in. Also unlikely you need to do a spirit run unless your column has poor efficiency/performance. 

[aellison]

Ok, thank you for that information about the fermentation. I’ll go hotter on the next batch then. I didn’t realize I could skip the spirit run before running it through the column, but I’ll definitely try that next time and see what happens. When I strip the wash I am around 40 proof ish. Spirit run is around 170 and the column gets over 190. I pull the heads and tails out of the spirit runs and run them through the column after all the hearts go through. It will be interesting to see how the cuts look skipping the spirit run for sure. For the mash do you see a need to hit multiple temperatures?  We do 20 minutes at roughly 130, 140, 150, 160, then mash out at 176. Adding bioglutenase at the lower temperature and alpha amylase at the higher temperature. Yeast nutrient in a quick boil then into the whirlpool for a 20 minute rest ( which I’m not to sure is necessary). Feel free to pick anything apart. I’m fascinated by all of this and really appreciate the feedback, so thanks again. 

 

Cheers!