LikkerSheWillLoveIt wrote:Out of 6x25 litre washes, I will say I expected more, considering at 10% abv of each wash “theoretically” there should be 15 litres of extractable booze. I got 6. I know perfect world, best case scenario, planets aligning. I’m not saying I’m disappointed, I’m saying I #%?!ed it up. I set up tired and injured and did the run on 4 hours sleep, which leads to stupid mistakes.
The 3 things I narrowed down , too much power, over packed with scrubbers, copper “saddles” at the bottom causing restriction. Too much power I sorted that, too much packing (I shut down and removed some). Copper saddles, removed them too. Maybe the boiler was over full, I removed 10 litres of low wines from the boiler via the drain during the shut down). I still had 20 odd litres in the boiler when I finished.
just smashing out a few rough figures.
after stripping the 6 ferments (not knowing the abv of each or how far you went) would give you
about 13.5L of pure alcohol @10% (but could have been a stalled wash or 9% washes....)
running that again at about 33% assuming 45L into a 50L boiler and getting a 92% efficiency you would end up with about 12.5L of alcohol.
how far did you run the abv before you stopped collecting?
there's obviously still some alcohol left in the boiler and the 10L you took out when you stopped
over powering the column would create more reflux the side effect would be higher abv.... not less alcohol
over packed column would create unstable output
over filled boiler would cause a puking
the copper you added would create more reflux not harm the amount of alcohol produced.
the only thing I can think of is your ferments weren't 10%
you had less than 30% abv in the boiler
and or you have a vapour leak.
BSC_Kilby wrote:correct me if I'm wrong here.
20L of low wines @ 30% give you 6L of absolute alcohol in the charge, right?
yes, but when you pull alcohol out the abv in the boiler drops. so the 20L left in the boiler wouldn't have as much alcohol as it started with.