by db1979 » Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:27 am
I didn't bother with mine. If the cups are full when you start your next run then you'll get vapour lock a lot faster. That is, vapour doesn't go through the downcomer instead of the sieve holes.
The amount of fluid that downcomer cups hold is negligible compared to the volume of your wash, so even if you did a rum wash and then changed over to running a neutral wash you wouldn't notice any change in flavour from a tiny bit of rum distillate left in the downcomers. Besides the mix of chemicals that are in the downcomers at the end of the run will be exclusively tails and they'll find their way into the boiler pretty quickly, being displaced by lower boiling point components of the wash.