Much better spirit run today :handgestures-thumbupleft:
I learnt a lot today. 5 hours watching drips will do that lol
My cooling water tanks cooled down to 23C overnight. That's much better than starting at 36C.
Tested the cooling, about 1.6L/min. All good to go. For this run I've decided just to run the cooling flat out and see what happens. Low and slow, as they say.
Fired up the boiler. 20 minutes later I start getting steady drips at about 39C on the cooling output. 20 minutes later I've taken 200mL of fores at 92.5%ABV.
I continue at a drip…drip..drip.dribble.drip..drip…drip throughout jar 1 and until almost at the end of jar 2 and then the drips slow right down at 40.1C, then all of a sudden the temp spikes to 40.8C and I get a fast dribble. Jar 2 takes 20 minutes to finish and weighs in at 91%.
Jar 3 continues at a fast dribble and only takes 7 minutes to fill. Temp stable at 40.5C. However it comes in at 85%! (checked twice)
Jar 4 is interesting. It's a drip, drip, dribble for the first 170mL and then slows almost to a stop. It takes a total of 52 minutes for 200mL with the temp at 42.5C at the end. (again, cooling is running flat out). The really interesting thing is that jar 4 comes in at 87% too. (End of heads?)
Jar 5 is up and starts with drips slowly getting faster and then finally settling into the famous "drip, drip, dribble" after 30 minutes. Temp is now 45C. ABV returns to 92.5% :handgestures-thumbupleft: Am I now into hearts???
Jars 6-11 are pretty uneventful, each takes about 10 minutes to collect 200mL at a fairly constant drip, drip, dribble and all weigh in at ~93%. Temp has steadily increased to 47.9C by jar 11.
Jars 12-13 start taking longer and I think I'm now into tails. Temp has just kicked 50C by the time jar 13 fills and it takes 31 minutes. After that I call it quits and shut her down.
Ended up with 2.6L (plus fores) over almost 5 hours, but much, much happier with how the run went. How the take off rate went kind of told me that the still was refluxing how it should and that the various alcohols came through in stages ("stacking?"). Jars 5-11 definitely tasted better and didn't leave a bad after taste like the other jars did.
Anyway, will let the jars air for a couple of days and then try and take cuts.