Segmented Distilling? Distilling 1 batch over multiple days...
OK, so being married with 2 kids makes my free time pretty limited.
As such, my setup has 11kw to run things quickly so the old lady won't complain.
Stripping runs are easy, brewing up an all-grain mash is a bit more difficult, and spirit runs are tough to manage.
Running a 4" Hybrid Dash (3 plate for whisky, 6 plate + 20" packed for neutral) on a 50L Keg with 2 x 5500 watt ULWD Elements. I have a controller than would allow me to preheat the still to whatever liquid temp I want ahead of time (say 150F) via remote computer control, so I don't count full heatup time in this.
Can I split a spirit run up to save some time? Here's how I see it:
- Day 1: Load pot and build still - 30 minutes
- Day 2: Compress and remove heads/fores (10 minutes to load plates, 40 minutes of equalization, 40 minutes to bleed heads off), figure 90 minutes total
- Day 3: Capture Hearts (10 minutes to reload plates, 10 minutes equalization, 10 minutes of additional heads/fores as needed, ~90 minutes of hearts) - 2 hours total
- Day 4: drain and clean up (30 minutes) - If things go well, I can drain and rinse day 3 and just disassemble on day 4.
I don't care about capturing far into the tails, I'm want quality, not quantity as I can't drink near as much as I make.
Feasible? Or would removing the heads one day and the hearts the next not really work?
I know it's a waste of energy, and overall would take more time, but if it means 2 spirit runs a month vs 1 every other month, that would be awesome.
Comments
I've often done this to collect tails the next day if the spirit run went late into the night. Shut her down, fire it up the next morning and just blast through the tails. I don't see why it wouldn't work here, you seem to nail every negative. I'd love to know what your heads yield is on day 2, some would argue you would, some would argue you wouldn't.
I have done this myself. There is really only 1 issue you need to consider.
Your boiler is hot, expecially if insulated. This means that you need to leave your dephlegmator coolant on and run in full reflux untill it cools down, otherwise you dump alcohol vapour into your room.
I used to run a glycol boiler and when doing strip runs would strip to 20% switch off the boiler power and leave the product condenser running. I would finish the strip run on stored energy in the boiler and the hot glycol.
@Myles - good tip with the dephlegmator. That's not something I probably would have done instinctively. Thankfully, my water supply is cold and basically inexhaustible.
For something like this, it would only require a trickle to keep at full reflux with no heat input. Hoping to start testing this process in the next week or so. I'd love to have all of my low wines run before the holidays.
Ran the first spirit run over yesterday and today. The nice part is that with 11kw, heat up is minimal, about 20 minutes to load plates from power on for ~5 gallons of low wines and 5 gallons of RO water at about 67F. Then drop to 3kw for the run.
Heat up and bleeding heads last night over about 3 hours.
This afternoon, I powered back on. After about 14 hours, the insulated pot was stil at 100F. Ran the still with 3 plates from 170 down to 40 proof. With a pump hooked the the drain, I was able to CIP and drain it very quickly. Pulled about 1.5 gallons above 100 proof from low wines that were stripped from 30 gallons of bad beer batches. Initial tastings don't reveal the best ever, but we'll see after airing out and aging.