by skurvy84 » Mon Nov 06, 2017 11:29 am
So, took a 4hr drive to the nearest HBS and picked up some dominos and DAP, the local stockfeed shop in town had bran at $9 for 3kg not exactly the cheapest but still okay for me.
Vinegar run went well, steamed for 20-25 mins than i shutdown, seemee pretty clean beforehand anyway but being a 2nd hand shop purchase figured better to be safe than sorry.
Cleaning run next, want to use a cask of stanley for my run but turns out casks over 2ltrs aren't sold in my town so 4 bottles of the cheapest instead.... probably abit short for a cleaning run at about 30-45mins but collected a good 250mls ( after getting to temp) and i already knew i wanted to take 200mls of foreshots and 250ml collection jars so realistically almost 1ltr of feints before i figured hearts would start to come through when i ran my spirit run.
So i had a TPW ready to go sitting and clearing for a few days so straight in she went, after getting to temp she stabilised at 78 on my t902 thermocouple and stayed rock solid, this is the only time i was sort of confused it says that (in the instructions) once you've collected foreshots to open the valve to fast mode, then after the temp has risen 2degrees from your initial temp (mine was 78 so i was waiting for 80) to close the valve back to slow mode and continue to collecting. This was different for me since the instructions say it should be in fast mode for approx 2hrs, mine was much shorter than that, maybe an hour. Once the valve was closed back into slow mode the temp dropped back to 78 and stayed there. Still quite fast collection and did up the cooling water to about 1.5lpm
All up from a 23ltr tpw, through the Pure distilling ultra pure thingy that makes things pure, aired all my collection jars for 24hrs, i got 1ltr of what i will call hearts (super clean, warming on the way down not a burning kind, almost zero fragrance. About 500mls either side of that that still seem pretty good and i took 200mls foreshot, 3xheads @200ml .
Still using essence at the moment, saved 500mls of the cleanest hearts to age on 2 american oak dominos, 1 plain and 1 lightly chared about 35gms into 1 ltr at 65%abv since the 3/11 checking daily.
its a vast improvement over the still spirits super reflux.
Currently have a FFV Bubbling away for next week after nightshift, need to arrange some more storage containers, or just bite the bullet and by a 23L Glass carboy..