Is A Thumper Better Than A Pot Still? - Distilling Duel: Thumper vs. Pot Still

how's it going everybody it's Bo from M High distilling as you can see I'm sitting here on a beautiful quiet Colorado morning and we're here at Balmer Peak Distillery we are so excited to launch a new series on our channel it's going to be called distilling duels now in this series we're going to be basically taking two units two pieces of equipment that are very similar in what they do and we're just going to be pitting them head to head to see which comes out on top you're going to be seeing videos such as flute still versus regular reflux still which can make the the highest grade alcohol we're going to be seeing downcomer versus bubble plates running those units side by side with different plates to see if there's any differences at all and even things such as copper versus stainless hitting those together guys you know we have to do it right the first time around right this is the beginning of the series we got to start off strong we're going to be discussing today a very very widely talked about Topic in distilling that is do you really need a thumper we're going to be running two units that are exactly alike except one is going to have a thumper in between you're going to be seeing that this part of the thumper is exactly like over here the only thing different is we're going to have that Thumper stem in the middle and we're going to see really what comes out on top between these two units we're going to be running a tequila base in both of these boilers you're going to see that in just one second and we're going to get to stealing get ready guys so the first thing we're going to be testing today is going to be the heat up time between these units now it's in the nature of a thumper we have a medium to heat we have a second boiler it's going to take longer there's no other way around it I'm going to think about 30 minutes longer but we're here today to kind of test that to do that to start there we're going to need to get our fermentations in so we have two batches of tequila made side by side using the same ratio same ingredients everything's exactly alike we'll be pouring them into each unit the one thing we're going to do different to really test how this sumper works we're going to have to have something in the thumper it's not good enough to just basically run through the main pot so we're going to have fresh agave that's going to enter this Thumper so freaking good in the base it's like candy but it's got like a earthy I would say kind of smell to it get that get that beautiful shot for you guys and what I think is the right call here is the viscosity of the Agave is pretty heavy I don't fully know if that Thumper that dip tube on it I think it'd be better to just get a little bit of water and decrease that viscosity a bit just so that Thumper has a little bit easier of a time I'm not sure if that's the right call but it's what I'm going to go with change of plan guys I have a tyrant for a boss and he doesn't want to put it in so we're just going to do Straight Agave no water in the thumper and with that all done we need to go ahead and start testing our heat up times so again Thumper is definitely going to heat up slower no question about it um how long we don't really know my guess is we're going to be looking about 30 minutes for this unit probably about an hour or so for this unit but we're going to put that to the test here I'm going to get my heaters on at the exactly same time we're going to hit a stopwatch and we're just going to see what happens here so heat up time is beginning now so guys almost right at 19 minutes and we have started to drip out of our regular potto here I'm hoping y'all can see that okay we are going to call it there we're getting a pretty sizable drip we're looking at 3750 for that time so we got about an 18-minute differential that was about double as far as drip goes we're a little bit off on that portion of things so as Austin over here at Balmer Peak mentioned and I was thinking as well we definitely have more surface area that we have to start heating we have this extra boil that's got liquid in it volume in it um we have to heat two boilers instead of one so with that said logically we're going to need to provide more power to kind of offset that a little bit so we're going to turn up slightly on our amperage controller on our Thumper unit try to get these at the same output and uh go from there so we've evened our flow out um one thing is we were debating whether we should basically shut down the traditional pot still here after it got uh going and let the thumper catch up we decided against that and because of that we have a small variance we actually are on our second jar in our pot still and this is our first jar of the thumper all it's really going to affect there is we're just going to have to keep a watchful eye uh and switch our jars out accordingly um we know that we are in four shots with our Thumper we know that we are in heads with our traditional so we'll just pay a close attention we may also shut down the unit after we pass through our heads and get our hearts even we'll see on that I don't think it'll really screw with anything we're worried more about Flavor than anything else here in this duel we can still compare our flavor evenly even with having our jars a little out of line with one another now even the methanol has a nice sweetness to it can't really smell much more than straight up methanol right now which is to be expected then over here on our Thumper side again these are the four shots so not a complete comparison we'll do another one with heads when we get there but even initially on there I'd say because there's four shots there's definitely more of a chemical taste to those compared to the heads that makes sense and then that smell again just pure methanol that's all you can really smell on it but again both are sweet so we are taking our first taste test of each the real one first legit one I'm going to get some other opinions here the working theory is that your Thumper even though this was a little bit slower those heads a lot of that methanol I think it's going to boil some of that off because we have this second boiler So in theory we should have less heads in our Thumper than we do in our traditional potto and right now what I'm seeing is I think we might have even turned a head on the thumper we're filling up our first jar now but I'm really not tasting too much of that chemical it's nothing but real sweet and doesn't burn this one pot still regular traditional Burns a little bit more uh but I think they're both really close to one another I think we might enter the hearts very soon on both okay we just finished our jars of each unit we're at heads number two with our traditional and we're at four shots plus heads a little bit of heads in our Thumper I think we've hit hearts on our traditional I think I wasn't correct we still have a little bit going on in terms of methanol for that Thumper but again I think it's catching up so we're going to see how that rolls I'm really excited to try the hearts in our heads between these units I found that the thumper it just smoother like it it was still heads of course but I think it went down a little bit smoother didn't burn as bad some of that methanol I mean it just burns your throat um Thumper didn't really seem to do that so I'm excited to see how that transpires you might have noticed that our flows between the units changed a little bit now what we're seeing is that I think these condenser lines are set at different angles and I think it's playing with our eyes a little bit in terms of uh outputs and how they should be when we were both at a pencil thick stream between these units we noticed the pot still jar was filling up faster so we've slowed that one down a little bit and now we seem to be pretty even in terms of our outputs we're definitely seeing in the traditional everything smoothing out in there it's got a good amount of flavor I don't know if we're fully getting to kila right now it's definitely sweet it's not bad by any means it's not your traditional Silver there's more of like a I think robustness to it maybe like an U just kind of an earthiness that I can't fully describ but it's it's flavorful it's really good and the thumper even though we're still working through our heads a little bit we're seeing I think more flavor I think when we get to our hearts in both units we're going to see some definite more flavor prominent flavor coming over in that Thumper there's definitely more of like a sharpness I would say to the thumper side uh it's still very flavorful it's got all that but there's like a I don't know it just seems more like a I don't know Sharp I wouldn't know how to describe it so we just finished switching out our jars and I'm not quite sure what's happening the thumper is just not quite there yet um we don't know if it's really hearts or heads it's kind of hard to tell there's just a I always describe it as like a sweaty um sweaty type taste and smell to it some people describe it as like socks um it's just still there in the thumper so we're not getting so much chemical anymore but we're not quite sure what the thumper is doing or where it's at I thought it would kind of even things out but as far as I can see we're now on our third jar of definite hearts on our regular pot still and I'm not even sure if we've reached hearts at all on our Thumper it's definitely going to take a little bit more time to fully test that um probably the next update we give you guys is going to be when we're actually there so as we proceed through this run I can't fully tell what's going on here this Thumper by all means we should be in our hearts we have three hearts worth almost four Hearts jars collected out of our pot still but our Thumper you might notice we don't have any here it's not I can't fully tell if that's just because we're not there or that we don't like the flavor we're getting on the hearts there's something just off about it it's flavorful but I think it's a little too strong I think there's a little too much going going on now your Thumper should be producing stronger alcohol than a regular pot still that's one thing we wanted to cover in here this should be about 160 out of this unit 160 proof this will be maybe 130 140 or so which we'll be testing here shortly but I don't really feel like I guess that's maybe what I'm tasting the intensity of it is just from that higher proof let's go ahead and take a shot make sure that everything's still kind of as I just described yeah I mean it's um again it's good by all means it's good i' say between flavors it's definitely they have the same flavor this one's definitely got a little bit more but hell is it strong it's definitely uh definitely up there in proof let's go ahead and take a proof reading real quick see what we're at so on our regular pot still we're hitting right at 120 and our pot still is at 150 so we're definitely popping out some strong stuff here I guess that's maybe what I'm tasting I'm really curious how this is going to be diluted I think instead of pitching this next jar even though we're not incredibly impressed with the harshness of it we're going to go ahead and dilute down a little bit get a good idea of what these can produce at a pretty tolerable level of spirit let's get them down to 80 80 proof and see what we got from there that is packed a flavor okay yeah that makes it a lot more noticeable what these are doing I think these are good spirits both but I think that extra proof in the thumper is messing with my taste buds now that everything's kind of at that 80 I'm really tasting that and holy hell the amount there it's both the same flavor but in terms of like the amount I'm getting that number changes it's just more intense in that Thumper as far as smoothness goes I definitely noticed that as well they're still both at ed0 proof but remember there's a purity as well as there's a a proof level um there's two different scales the way I look at it we can distill the same batch out of two machines one at 150 proof and one at 100 proof and if you take those Spirits put them in a bottle and dilute with water both to an even 80 proof I think you notice the difference between those two so when it comes out of the still a certain purity level to it and I think the thumper is kicking the butt of the traditional in in terms of that Purity uh it's just smoother all around it's got a more intensified flavor it's very I guess um again I keep going back to the word sharp it's just very sharp in your mouth it just packed full of flavor it's sort of like what Wasabi does with sushi I mean you have one little bit of it and it just hits everything it's not as gross as Wasabi obviously but it's got like that intensity to it that's really nice and kind of hits your mouth right away yeah that Thumper flavor is definitely improving without even dilution it's coming over smooth it it was really smooth anyways but it's coming over with uh with less of uh a harsh bite to it we are as you can see I'm I switched the jars around but we are on our third Jar of Hearts for the thumper and we are on our seventh Jar of Hearts for the traditional so it's it's running a fair bit behind and it's just going to increase from there I could mess with yields and or outputs and kind of change that up to speed it up but the more I think about it I want to go low and slow I don't want to go too crazy just to try to make it up in time I'll just wait it out as if it takes a little bit longer that's fine I just want to get a good spear the best I can out of this unit in fact we'll probably go ahead and maybe even slow both of these down together we're going to come to kind of a drip drip drip and see what happens with that in the meantime I do have a little bit of a test I want to do here of course we can't really make tequila without making some of it as like a Reposado so we're going to be using some of that Spanish Cedar and just coloring both of these These are both the jar uh number three of hearts and both are Stills that'll probably do a little something to the color by the end of this run I'll report back on this in a few weeks guys as well so keep tuned to our Channel make make sure to like And subscribe if you haven't already to us keep those notifications on we're always pumping out some good content coming up with some new ideas having fun with it so I think you guys will enjoy it while you're at it if you have the chance please go down below on our description from there you can find our Tik Tok our Instagram our Facebook and please be sure to join follow those we appreciate your support so much I think our traditional head might be in its tails we're going to take a proof on that real quick and while we're at it we'll take a proof on the thump we're at the fifth jar in the thumper and the eighth jar in the traditional Thumper is just walloping with flavor there's so much going on there it's really really nice over the traditional the traditional is good don't get me wrong still got flavor but that Thumper is just packing so much more in and it just goes down uh we're in our tails and our traditional so they're going down about at the same smoothness but Hearts to Hearts I think that Thumper is winning so looks like we're sitting at 110 on our traditional head we were at 120 before so I think we might be into our Tails we'll have to see and now we're at about 140 in our Thumper so we're also losing there it's a little bit hard to discern where those heads initially started usually you go off chemical taste but there's also more to it than that there's sort of just like a again that sweaty sock kind of smell and taste there's like a a definite heart harness it burns a little bit more in your heads so we're taking all that into account when we label these jars with our cuts and it's not a perfect science we could very well be wrong we could have had a Jar of Hearts earlier on than we thought in the thumper and these could be closer than we think as far as runtime goes but our definitive way to tell where our tails are at least in our Cuts is going to be through that proof when we start dropping considerably we're pretty sure we're in our Tails so we'll now use that as our indicator to see just how close these are so as we fill up throughout this run I think our traditional is just about spent now as far as things go I'm going to have to take proof on these um I think we're in our tails and our thump uh as far as traditional goes we are definitely under our Tails our proof is dropping we're at about 90 Proof last time we checked and again where we end up in our run we can continue going as long as we want I mean we it doesn't really there's no set cut off it's just as long as you like the flavor I would recommend keep on collecting and you can even collect past that and we can keep those for low wines for different runs but for this we're not liking the flavor and I think we're just going to stop collecting as soon as this fills up so let's take a second here let's rehash everything we've been through now as far as this distilling duel has gone let's start raing a few things what we're seeing here in terms of heat up time we did see about a 100 100% increase in time with our Thumper as compared to our regular traditional we were at 19 minutes and 6 seconds with our traditional head and we were at 37 minutes 50 seconds with our Thumper so almost completely double that time we're going to go ahead and give heat up time to the traditional now as far as speed output per hour that these units are doing what we saw at the very beginning was we did go ahead and have this traditional be one jar ahead it heated up faster we ended up producing one jar before the thumper started but that's easily traceable if we're looking at both of these yields right now we're definitely going to see that the traditional held the lead and we try to keep these outputs incredibly similar for the entire run even in this jar alone these started as fresh jars oneon-one completely the same and we're seeing a slight increase in that uh traditional so speed traditional gets another point we're going to give it to the traditional again that just makes sense we're going to go boiling up and directly out of condenser line on this unit for this one we're going to boil up go through our traditional head into our Thumper boil again and then out of a condenser line there's more in line it's going to take longer I don't think it was too bad but we do have a little bit of an increase in speed with our traditional now as far as smoothness of a spirit goes now this one it's pretty obvious the traditional definitely has a pretty decent smoothness to it but it still Burns at that back of your throat when you take a sip it can mellow out it mellowed out a little bit during the later part of the hearts and into the Tails but compared to the thumper when we're doing jar number four of hearts with Thumper versus jar number four of hearts with our traditional we saw an increase in smoothness with that Thumper we're going to go ahead and give a point to the thumper on that one as far as flavor goes on everything this one by a mile the thumper is going to win we saw such a drastic Sharp change in that flavor using this Thumper as opposed to our traditional we're not even the in the best part of the run with the thumper we just started getting into our Tails which is my favorite part we're still going strong at about 140 130 proof or so and it's doing phenomenal we're really liking what's coming out it's a whole bunch of flavor right in your mouth from the get-go so definitely on that note flavor is going to go to Thumper with that folks today on distilling duel episode one Thumper versus potto we have a tie and guys as we get to the end of this video here I wanted to once again thank you so much for watching we love all your support if you guys are digging this series please by all means comment down below let me know how much you're loving it please be free to give us any suggestions that you might have if you want to see a distilling duel we're more than open to suggestions I do have about five or six in the works right now I discuss a little bit on the intro here for those of you subscribe to our Tik Tok you're aware that we started coming out with a cocktail of the week series and we're going to be doing that every single week trying different recipes those recipes are going to incorporate a lot of the stuff we make here so look out on Saturday for those Tik toks go ahead and follow us on Tik Tok we're maybe coming to YouTube shorts soon as well we still got to work out some Logistics there but please by all means watch those and have yourself a really nice cocktail every week with us okay before we close out guys shut time baby I got two here I got pot still and I got my Thumper if you have more than one type of booze around your place or if you just want to take two shots of the same stuff I don't care how you do it but you got to take two shots with me today guys let's start with our pot still thank you guys for watching got it one more time I mean that pot still I don't want you to get twisted that's still got a a ton of flavor in it that's still a really decent spirit and it's still pretty smooth I didn't have to take a chaser of water or anything for it still coming out pretty decent but I think we need to compare to the thumper once more thank you guys that's what I mean they're both great but man that really comes out in that Thumper that literally just tingles your taste buds I'm not even lying to you I've got this little tingly feeling on the end um I'm really happy with what what we've done here today I'm happy we've had this test hopefully we gave you guys some nice info on these two units if you are in the market for a thumper and you're considering it but are not sure if it's worth it I can tell you right now that's going to be worth it guys we will see you guys next time thank you so much for watching

Channel: Mile Hi Distilling

Views: 2,020

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Id: 23C7VwBeeG0

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2024