Weak Yield/High Pot Temp
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Hello,
I am having some trouble with my still and would appreciate any help.
I had a sugar wash that fermented for two weeks with distillers yeast and I have a simple pressure cooker fractionating still very much like this one: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Lab-Quality-Distillation-Apparatus/#step0. I was measuring the temp at the top of my fractionating column, but no matter how hard I tried I could not get the temp to stabilize below 212F. I was using a gas burner so it was a little tricky getting the heat right, but when I would turn it down to get things below 212F the temp would continue to fall all the way down to 120F or lower(it appeared to just keep on falling). Does this mean that I didn’t have enough alcohol in my wash or was there a problem with my heat source?
I am planning on installing a thermometer in the pot itself before I do my next run, but wanted to see if there was anything obvious that I was missing.
Thanks,
Andy Loper
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Andy,
What was your recipe for the sugar shine? How many pounds of sugar? How any gallons of water?
Did you take an original gravity reading of the mash?“I was measuring the temp at the top of my fractionating column, but no matter how hard I tried I could not get the temp to stabilize below 212F.”
Andy I would not worry about temperature as much as flow- I would suggest cranking the heat until you start producing- then dialing back the heat until you have between 5-9 drips a second. I like to keep it so I can see each drip, not quite a stream of shine.Go by flow no temp and you will be fine.
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