RUNNING A STILL PART 3 AND MORE DISCUSSION MileHi 4 inch bubble plate column

well as promised part three yes this is my version of i just want to spend a day with you um and we did that on the first two videos and we that was an all-day event uh so i've got probably another all-day event coming at you now we're going to run this 26 gallon still well i've been excited to say the least uh to kind of get started again today so after a full night just kind of sitting back and going through in my head what's going to happen uh i thought we'd turn the camera on and get back in action now we spent all whole day yesterday in the preparation the setup uh the cleaning uh and we discussed a lot of topics so if you missed anything because there wasn't any rhyme or reason it was sort of just like me spending the day with you and just sharing some arbitrary thoughts uh go back and watch these two videos uh they're i think they're full of a lot of tidbits of information that uh you know i probably have covered before but uh this time we just kind of made it a point um look i've got this thing running and uh i actually don't have the still running you can hear the pump in the background see that's that that booster pump because i've got that and i've turned the water on already and now the reason i did that because of my laziness all right about 75 feet away from the shop is the pool and i kind of envisioned since it's a blistering 68 degrees in the bottom of that pool that i would pump that water out of the pool via a hose all the way into here and then run it into that booster pump now that pump that's in the pool did work and did run water through this entire system but i wasn't real confident that i was going to have the head pressure necessary to run both the deflagmeter and the condenser at the same time so i had the booster pump on hand and i figured better to have and not need you know than to need and not have it's terrible to get into the middle of a run and go oops so i put the booster pump and now i've run that and the water's been running and i left it on because i don't want to get up and go all the way over there and unplug that and then turn that i could but i've got like 18 000 gallons and there's no way you know what i mean okay so uh yeah i left this thing full all night long kind of begs the question is and i get this a lot is uh let me ask you the question well how long will a mash last once it's finished fermenting uh you've degassed it and clarified it how long will it last no you know before it you know the oh it's gonna turn to vinegar um how long will it last well believe it or not alcohol is a natural preservative and unless you introduce the acetobacter organism yeah because i've been corrected before by calling it a virus or a bacteria the organism unless you introduce that uh you cannot wind up with vinegar so how long will it last yeah it's uh indefinitely really because alcohol is a natural preservative and it'll just sit there and wait on you i have had a sugar wash that i had set for over a year before i got to it um you know that may not work for everybody but it worked in that particular instance so um there's no need to rush to it okay i get that all the time you know it's always finished fermenting i've got to get to within three days or it's going to turn to vinegar well for those who have ever made vinegar you know that that process takes several months so there's no way it can turn into vinegar in about three days um i've got everything hooked up though this i say i love this this is this is where i get all excited and yeah please just forgive me as my as my excitement just blares through here um i've got my two pulse with modulators up there because i've got two 5500 watt elements in there i already know that i don't need 250 500 watt elements i just happen to have them in there and i'm able to control them so here's what i'm going to do i'm going to turn it on and once i turn let me do that first let me just turn here's my master for one of them and i've got that turned on and here's the master for the second one now um how many amps should i be putting see i'm on 250 amp circuits so i've already split more than safe how many amps should i be pulling through there if i'm running a full power 5500 watt element well you remember from yesterday if you do the math it's pretty simple here and here's my calculator 5500 divided by 240 volts equals excuse me 22.9 or 23 amps so a 5500 watt element operating at 100 is going to pull about 23 amps and that way you know it's well that that's the way it works uh but what if it was a 3 500 watt element well if it was a 3 500 watt element 3 500 divided by 240 equals 14.5 amps so not in theory in actuality what if i just turn these up to so i'm gonna run this one at 14.5 amps oh 17 18 back up george back off there we go see i can hear you can hear it running okay there we go 14 foot okay 13.8 14.6 okay so i'm 14.6 14. oh yeah 14 point about 14.6 in both of them so what do i have now oh think through it i've got two 3 500 watt elements operating okay see how that works uh so instead of having 250 500 watt elements and having an astronomical amount of energy going in there i want to heat this up relatively slow i don't want to go too fast but then again i don't want to go so slow that it takes me all day to do this so i theorize and just i just quick calculations i've got only got 20 gallons 21 gallons so uh two 3 500 watt elements which would be a total of seven kilowatts or 7 000 watts um it shouldn't take too long so we'll give you a time hack uh whenever we get this thing heated up and i'll be tracking two temperatures one i'll track in the kettle just to give me an idea an indicator of where it's at i could actually do without this completely uh but then i'm gonna be tracking the temperature at the head and that is right above the the flag meter now recall there's two ways to actually run um actually there's three ways okay there's two ways that i'll describe and then was what we call the other way all right um okay one way to run a reflux still is to run it as an open pot still first and then draw off your four shots and your heads and then introduce the reflux but that takes a little bit of balancing it takes a little bit of art and skill and once you get really really comfortable with your system it's really really easy to do so that's one way of doing it the other way of starting a reflux still is to start the deflagmeter at 100 percent so everything that rises up through the column condenses and drops back down and starts loading your plates and then once all your plates are loaded and you start to get the separation activity then you turn your reflux down to control that and then start your collection so there's you see there's really two ways one you can go at it direct or you can kind of go at it backwards and if you want to think of it that way and then of course there's the other way and we don't have to discuss the other way because that way doesn't work figure it out sorry all i can do is be honest um that you can figure it out oh we'll be back shortly because i'm gonna let this thing heat up this should take me old i don't know let's guess uh seven thousand seven kilowatts uh 21 gallons i'm thinking probably 40 minutes we'll find out when we get back it has been 17 minutes and we are now i have uh right shy of 150 degrees or yes 62 degrees celsius somewhere in that neighborhood in the kettle itself so and i can already see that my bottom site glass is starting to fog up so that means i'm developing a little bit of vapor as this thing starts to heat up this is going to be amazing so we're about halfway into it i guess we're going to see how long this takes to bring it up to temperature it should not take that long now um please if you get an opportunity i see i didn't get to it yet did i yeah subscribe share us with your friends and comment below i've been spending a lot of time reading comments i i read comments every day but unfortunately i don't get a chance to answer each and every one of them i mean that would be almost ludicrous on my part uh because of the hundreds but the comments are just amazing and in the back and forth in between different people that are on the channel is just priceless so please keep that up yes all right um i've got a couple of other things out here i've got my mason jars and i i like to collect in these large wide mouth half gallon uh mason jars and and the reason i do that is because i normally will kind of combine everything at the end anyway um look it's different strokes for different folks i mean some people like to collect them as small paints all the way through and that's quite all right i mean that's a little bit different of a price a technique it's not a violation of any process that's a technique in how someone else wants to do their collection i have and sometimes i will use small pint jars at the very end if i'm trying to be very very precise at a cut or i'll use court jars but in this particular case because i have so much i'm going to use half gallons just because i know i'm going to draw an awful lot now i'm also using a reflux so i should get a really high proof and that should run from beginning to end until i shut it off again it's totally up to you on when and where you shut it off but i sort of have my own data points that i'll look at and we'll get to that when the time comes yes oh see how we just kind of tease you into watching the rest of it hopefully you do all too often i'll cover something in the video and on that video someone will comment and ask a question about something i just covered i understand yeah you kind of go fast forward through it because you don't want to watch i got it i got it okay i've got my two hydrometers out here and yeah i know i beat this to death which one should i use we're not fermenting now we're distilling so when you're distilling you use the which one i'm not here yeah there it is yeah the proof and trail hydrometer not the standard beer and wine hydrometer because remember the scales go like this this one only measures to here and then this one the proof and trail hydrometer picks up where this one leaves off so if i drop this one in it would just disappear this is the one that we want to use it's lighter and it will measure the viscosity which kind of like it you know alcohol is lighter than water so it measures really the viscosity about how this floats like to give you a measurement of ethanol so you got to use this one and again make sure i can put this down because i own several and as soon as i put it down it's not going to go anywhere for some reason it just knows that if i only had one of course as soon as i put it down it would roll off and bust [Music] we just carefully insert that there i'm all set now and i've got the water running still uh my head temperature is still the ambient temperature in the shop which is a blistering 81. um and 81 is going to run you somewhere around 227 or so celsius uh yeah i don't um and i can start to see i'm getting some fog activity in my sight glasses but it'll be a while because we are now approaching 106 degrees in the kettle we'll be back you know it's one of those things you just can't help it you know once once i've got a flashlight of course and i'm looking inside the side glasses you know this one's starting to get nice and wet this one's fogging up this one's starting to fog it's just one of those things it's just you know i don't know i likened it to you know standing around a whole bunch of guys standing around a fire barrel there may not even be a fire but for some reason you're just attracted to the barrel itself uh and the same thing happens when you start running one of these you just can't help but watch what's going on it really makes a big difference if you think or if you do fully understand what's happening at this during this process now we did a video that we are oh yeah we're we're closely approaching 170 degrees in the kettle itself um we did a video of some time ago about separation of methanol look i don't want to get all into that because it's a long video about methanol itself and the methanol scare across america when it comes to distilling um trust me no i don't want to say it that way look bottom line you are not going to separate or create first of all and separate enough methanol to hurt anybody unless you separate it in a pure form and ingest that and only that again stop and think about this you know when when when we make beer wine or whiskey we do the first step is all the same it's fermentation but when we finish fermenting beer and then we clarify it and then we put it in bottles uh we do the same thing we get wine we clarify it we put it in bottles but when it comes to whiskey for some reason we separate the methanol because that's the bad stuff well we separate it because there's that one added step we we can we're in the distillation process and we know when when it comes off so we can kind of separate that but in beer and wine we don't worry about it it's not even an issue of concern uh you see you're making the same amount it's just you spread it out equally over all of those bottles um and it's minuscule so it's not you know the solution for methanol poisoning is an overdose of ethanol uh because ethanol competes with the methanol that's the way that if you had methanol poisoning they would just give you a bunch of ethanol uh what a way to recover huh yeah so but so if you got all that ethanol spread out and you've got a little bit of methanol you see that the methanol is competing with the methanol the whole time and it's there's not enough there to really hurt you so my point being is that when we're going we're going to collect and i always use an average uh this is sort of like a rule of thumb you know the the first two ounces of every five gallons is what i call the four shots and that are you that that is your higher level alcohols your acetones your methanols a methanol comes off at 145. uh ethanol doesn't start to uh evaporate or vaporize until about 173 ish so you've got that big wide gap so if you could take off your methanol at the very beginning because that's going to happen at 145. but see we've got all these plates and a lot of activity going on here so what will hap what will happen well invariably it will start to rise condensed drop rise condensed drug we know that that's okay but it still will be the first thing that comes off now i've read this and this is absolutely true there is methanol from the very beginning to the very end of your run we don't normally talk about it because it's it's in such small quantities uh that it's almost imperceptible the majority of your methanol and your unwanted alcohols your your higher level alcohols come off at the very beginning so if you pull those off what you have left is not worth even discussing uh so that's what we'll do so i've got this 21 gallon so i'll pull off what two four six eight about eight ounces will be what i would consider my four shots um now my other rule of thumb for heads is twice the amount of four shots so another 16 ounces or so will be right at the point where i've got my heads pulled off but see in this particular case you know heads is a moving target depending on your mash so just pay close attention to it the easiest way the easiest way to tell when you've gone from heads to hearts is when you see an initial drop in your proof if you drop three percent of yeah three proof points drastically that's a drastic drop in a very very short period of time a few minutes well then you've gone from one set to the next set which is from the heads to your hearts now heads are full of flavor um and people love heads and some people even use the heads to go back and reintroduce those into the final product in order to get a balance in a flavor profile they're looking for so totally up to you we are rocking and rolling i'm still at 80 degrees head temperature and we are now at 180 degrees in the kettle what more can i offer you now what we're right now at about 42 minutes and 42 minutes now my bottom bubble plate is starting to fill two things are happening though i've got a little bit of foam you'll see that start to pop up but uh it's also filling up because you'll notice that this top one is starting to fog up so that means that all the vapor that's up here is dropping back down and it's filling this bottom plate now i'm gonna allow that to foam for just a few minutes and that should settle itself back out i can actually see the second plate starting to fill and we'll let these fill all the way up okay now now you'll notice that this is great this is great uh these have started they've settled down and this bubble plates loaded that's loaded this one's loaded and some activity this one is loaded with activity and this one's loaded so i've got a lot of activity my head temperature is right over 160 which is a little over 72 degrees celsius and i'm right at oh about 190 degrees in my kettle so i should be running now a full reflux because nothing is escaping so far now i gotta make sure that i turn these down to about what if i turn them down to eight amps each that means i'm only running 4000 watts i wanted to give you a close-up of this just so you can see this is uh there we go there's your bottom bubble plate there's the second one there's my third bubble plate you can see the activity in that and there is the top bubble plate now if i continue on up you see there's my head temperature and if i work my way back down it's top there's the second third the fourth and the fifth bubble plate and now i'm waiting patiently for my opportunity to turn down the reflux because what i'm doing now is i'm loading this column well now for the sake of explanation okay you'll notice when we did a close-up you'll notice that my side classes were a little bit dirty on the inside and that's because i had a lot of foam that since i've got such a high level of high volume in here and it's just a side effect it happens and that's quite all right but it foamed up and it foamed up through these side glasses and it actually pushed itself all the way up but remember i mentioned a lot way way back you know about checking and making sure there's no leaks and all that stuff you know because once you get it going it's it's a bad time to have to fix a leak well what happened was earlier on before i even got started i removed this top sight glass i just unscrewed it off i was like that's really neat and i've screwed it back on but when i screwed it back on i had it kind of cocked so once this plate loaded it started leaking so i was like oh my goodness i shut everything off real quick and then i fixed that which thank goodness it was an easy fix then i turned it back on so everything was okay brings up a question george can i start my run and then something comes up can i stop it and restart it later on well you certainly can uh but remember that all depends on where you are in the run if you're really really close to the end of the run sort of like the question is you know why would you at that point i mean just you know kind of call it quits and keep what you got and move on but if you have just started your run oh yeah it's perfectly okay to just turn it off now things to consider um the temperature that it's setting there at it's going to continue to vaporize at least for a little while so are you going to lose a little bit yeah potentially you're going to lose a little bit but i mean really it's not that much at that point for you to really be concerned about so yeah perfectly okay for you to turn it off and then come back tomorrow and turn it back on and try to finish the run um keep in mind though just keep this in mind that uh that when you turn it back on and start to complete that run uh your results are not going to be duplicate of the results you had when you first started it you know that's just i mean that's that just that's common sense so um i think we're just about at the point to where we've yeah we've got this thing loaded um and what i've been allowing this to do when we call loading the column is we've got a full reflux so very very little if any if any at all of the vapors have passed through down into the condenser uh and i know that because there's nothing in my parrot and it's been running here for about a good eight minutes or so so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna turn back the uh the water flow in my the flag meter keep this in mind what is happening right now let's describe that okay i've got this heated to a point to where the ethanol and some water with it is starting to vaporize and it's rising up this column and as it rises up this column it gets to the very top where it goes through we call it a deflagmator but it's really it's a condenser and we've got that thing running at full bore 100 so we're actually condensing everything and we're allowing it to drop back down as a liquid and as it drops back down as a liquid it's landing on these individual plates and it's v re-vaporizing and rising again that is the description of reflux okay reflux it's vaporizing condensing dropping re-vaporizing and the most volatile substances being the ethanol and the water drops out is rising again and this continues to happen and each time it happens it becomes more and more pure and it also becomes more and more pure on each one of these plates so at some point once we're loaded this would just sit here and run like this for quite a while at some point we just turn down the water flow and we adjust that from 100 down to a percentage that allows vapor to pass through our condenser and we'll know when that's happening when we our head temperature changes okay our head temperature should start to climb slightly and we won't let that climb to like 175 ish somewhere in that neighborhood in each one of your stills will be a little bit different so let me slow this water flow down like one quarter turn and i'll just be patient and this may take a quarter turn down you know an eighth of a turn and then another half a turn but it'll be this balancing routine that i'll go through uh as i slow down this reflux and when that happens and i finally get it balanced we'll come back and show that to you too i wanted to show you this at this point because we are now uh that was 40 we're an hour and five minutes 65 minutes and we're starting to produce our four shots uh my head temperature is slightly over 170 which is what we're looking for uh here's what i had to do i had to get the water flow adjusted just precisely and but i had to balance that with enough energy going into the still to keep the bubble plates active so right now i've got i still got both elements i could actually shut one off and run the other one full board but i've got them both at like 11.5 to 12 so it's like running one 5500 watt element now i'll be able to slow that down shortly uh once we get this thing to balance but i'm pumping out 195 proof oh i know i got to get a close-up because you're not going to believe this there's my 200 proof mark so i'm at like 195 and that's what this thing is starting to produce right now and i've got everything balanced what do you think is going to happen next well now we're at uh we've i've collected like 250 milliliters plus whatever is in the parrot of uh four shots so gosh i all i get to do now is sit back and what and just let this run um i can gab for several hours but i'm not going to bore you we shall return as soon as i get these four shots and the heads pulled um and then i'll show you what those look like well i've collected now i'm at 750 milliliters and that is uh roughly i'm just shy of a quart okay um so i've already passed my four shots uh my four shots was only what was it two four six eight eight ounces um so i'm really into drawing the heads now what here's here's where it becomes sort of like touchy feely okay this is just my technique it's totally up to you i remember i told you that the difference between heads and hearts the only clear-cut separation besides smell taste feel those things is going to be the difference in proof and that's when you get that initial drop in proof that change now remember that this proof is what we call a lagging result a lagging result is a measurement of something that happened previously you follow that yeah i mean it's already happened but it takes a little bit of time because of course it's got to go all the way down through here and it's got to smear and mix in with what's in the parrot so if this drops by a proof or two to give it two proof points when it drops to 93 percent i will consider that the end of my heads so i guess it really boils down and asks the question well george what happens if it doesn't what if it's so pure coming out that it stays at 95 percent well you know i'll cross that bridge when i get to it but remember i said earlier also that my heads are normally twice my four shots so if i draw an additional 16 ounces then that would be my heads so and again a lot of people use heads to go back and reintroduce that for some of that flavor profile but i'm going to wait to see if this drops just a little bit so i can consider that a cut

Channel: Barley and Hops Brewing

Views: 40,564

Keywords: neutral spirit, sugar wash, barlerandhops, hops, home, Sugar (Ingredient), sugar mash, distilling, barley, corn sugar vs cane sugar, corn sugar mash recipe, making a wash for distilling, running a still for the first time, first distillation, using yeast, mooshine, whiskey, making rum, making vodka, bourbon, baby step bourbon, making bourbon at home

Id: d6-JPCkXaqI

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021