StillDragon® Community Forum

Welcome!

Be part of our community & join our international next generation forum now!

In this Discussion

Question about cloudy distillate with a brownish color

edited November 2013 in General

I'm running a 15 gallon BH boiler, the top section of the 3" PSII column (two rolls of copper mesh) and 3 SD bubble plates. I use 1/2" needle valves to control the cooling water and a controller firing a 240V 5500 watt element. The wash was about 6-1/2 gallons of diluted low wines (very clear and at 40 abv) from a couple of stripping runs off of a sugar wash made with spent grains from several batches of NCHooch's AG bourbon recipe. This was only my second run with the plates so I'm still getting used to them.

I started up using the full 5500 watts and started dropping back as the plates loaded. By the time the top plated was loaded I was at about 1800 watts with the reflux valve half open. I was taking a very very slow drip of fores and after 30 minutes I started closing the reflux valve a bumping the heat up a little at a time until I had about 200 ml. I bumped up the heat a little more (2000 watts) and slowed the reflux valve until the reflux discharge temp was fairly warm.

Starting with jar 1 (250 ml per jar) and continuing thru jar 12, the distillate temp stayed cool and was very clear. The top of the column temp stayed between 174 and 175 (3" dial therm) and plates were active with clear sight glasses. Takeoff rate was 250ml every 8 minutes. Everything was running on autopilot until I was about 100ml into jar 13. The takeoff rate dropped to about half of what it had been and after a few minutes started surging to double the original rate. Slow for 15 seconds or so then surging for a few seconds. The distillate turned cloudy with a brown tint. There was also fine brown particles building in the funnels coffee filter. I let this go on a lot longer than I should have but kept hoping it would level out. During jar 20 I dropped the heat down and opened up the reflux coolant. I ran this way for about 15 minutes trying to figure out what to do next. Plate levels stayed about the same, full and active but not flooding over into the downcomer.

I shut the reflux coolant off and bumped the heat back up to 2000 watts. Takeoff rate was about the same as it was before, distillate was clear again with no particles in the filter. The parrot was still showing 178 proof and it didn't smell like deep tails. I shut if off at jar 28.

I tasted the cloudy distillate and it wasn't bad. In fact, I didn't really taste tails until close to the end of the run. I kept jar 4 thru 12 for hearts and ended up with 5 quarts of clean tasting 120 proof. Jars 13 thru 20 can't be used because of the clouding but have just a hint of tails. I plan on revisiting 21 thru 28 before dumping them back in the pot even though I know they contain tails.

Any help on understanding what happened to cause the upset would certainly be appreciated.

Thanks

Comments

  • Sounds like you may have puked from the boiler into the column to me.

  • @RedDoorDistillery said: Sounds like you may have puked from the boiler into the column to me.

    Agree, I've done the same thing. The give away sign for me was the erratic flow from the parrot, causing the alc meter to jump up and down. Output was the same a taking a piss when pissed, all over the place, fast squirts, dribble, another burst etc.

    I've replicated this (on purpose) in my system during a stripping run, but I had placed a sight glass tee just above the boiler outlet and could really see what and how too much heat does.

    Interesting it only starts to "puke" or boil up into the column about halfway into the runs, the first half I could not get it to puke at all, was running 7200w trying. After half way I could make it puke with 5000w-6000w. I used this for my learning and understanding of my setup.

    Looks like another video could be waiting for me to show..

    Fadge

  • That's definitely material for a video! Did the boiler charge foam into the column? Did you exceed the boiler's filling volume?

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • I thought about puking too. But, the still was at half capacity or less and had been running for over an hour with no changes in any of the settings.

    I was using a 3" SD screen on the top of the torpedo ( top plate ) and when I installed the copper mesh in the column I slid it to the top. When I broke everything down the mesh was sitting on top of the screen. I'm wondering if it might have slid down the column during the run disrupting the fractions stacked causing the erratic output? If so it makes sense that letting the column restack let everything settle back down. I still can't figure out where the particulates came from and the brown tint in the clouded distillate since the wash was clean and clear even after the run

    Thanks for helping with this

  • @piddling, I'm sure this has NO bearing on your particulate anomaly but I ran an experiment using a filter disk and a 4" x 100mm glass section packed with activated carbon just below the dephlem. It was a failed experiment as I could detect no improvement in the quality of the distillate so I removed it.
    The next run produced tiny black specks working their way down the plates and it took some time to realize that the specks were not gnats but carbon chips that had blown into the dephlem.
    It could have been a contaminant from a previous run that dislodged during this run?

  • The carbon filter and filtering the distillation is not a good idea. Experience shows that the best filtering occurs at very low tempaeraturze and the concentration of the distillate at around 50% alcohol. Unfortunately, I do not I come to this, but I use it safely.

  • It was an experiment. Don't you ever do that?

  • Of course I understand. This hobby is just the coolest :) My statement did not mean to offend you. I expressed an opinion only.

    Regards

  • @Lloyd,

    " ... could have been a contaminant from a previous run that dislodged during this run?... "

    I guess it could have been. I keep the mesh in a vacuum seal bag when it's not in use so not much chance of trash etc. getting in it. A prior run could have left something in it, I'll boil a pot of water and flush them out to see.

    How do the plates usually react when moving from hearts to tails? I didn't notice any significant change from heads to hearts except for a slight drop in abv.

    thanks

  • You should notice a bit of fogging on the site glasses starting from the bottom up. The first one off of the boiler may show just a bit of fog for much of the run depending on heat input.

    If you get get your power and dephleg dialed in just so,,you will notice the collection speed will slow significantly when moving into tails.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • is there a chance your element was getting dry, slowing the heat induced into the liquid, then the distillate drops back down in on a red hot element and surges? this is pure hypothetical, such a thing would have never happened to me because the element was aimed upward a few degrees and was higher than I thought...

  • edited November 2013

    @Smaug If you get get your power and dephleg dialed in just so,,you will notice the collection speed will slow significantly when moving into tails.

    I feel like I was doing ok with the heat and reflux coolant settings, no fog on the sight glass and full plates, not sure about takeoff speed at 1.5 to 2 liters per hour. The output did drop off a lot right before the upset occurred.

    @CothermanDistilling The level in the bolier was still close to half full after I shut it down. I was only running 9 amps (2200 watts) after warmup on a 240 volt 5500 watt element.

    Thanks

  • edited November 2013

    For what it's worth, if puking was the culprit, here's a possible reason why the wines were clear but the distillate had cloudy fractions.

    Most sugars and salts start precipitating out of ethanol as it reaches higher proof. As the boiler puked the wines up higher into the column, the sugars/salts would probably start precipitating out as the proof increased.

    If they made it all the way over the top and into the product, even a couple drops of sugar-rich wine could cloud a whole fraction of high proof.

    I found that out the hard way trying to sweeten high-proof to make "sip". Does the clouding go away in those fractions if you bring it down towards 80-90 proof?

  • @Fluxed Does the clouding go away in those fractions if you bring it down towards 80-90 proof?

    I just went out and had a look at the clouded distillate. Most of the clouding has settled to the bottom and looks like a very fine "silt" and very little of it. I took one of the jars and cut it to 85 proof, then filtered it thru a coffee filter twice. The end result was almost clear and I couldn't really see any sediment in either filter.

  • @piddling said: I took one of the jars and cut it to 85 proof, then filtered it thru a coffee filter twice. The end result was almost clear and I couldn't really see any sediment in either filter.

    Slightly off topic, a few cotton balls stuffed into the neck of a funnel, with the coffee filters on top produces very clear product. I've found that over-time, some silt drops out of suspension when only using coffee filters.

  • @Philter, Thanks for that tip. I'll give it a try on the next run.

Sign In or Register to comment.