Hell yeah. With my wash ringing in at a final 1.000 SG, I fired up the Turbo 500 still for it’s inaugural run on Monday. All I can say is: wow.
The still fired up quickly, and boiled hard for little over an hour before putting out product. Not expecting it to start putting out so quickly, I ended up taking 150mL heads instead of 50mL (dissapointing) and got things underway.
In a little over three hours the still put out about 3.25L of spirit at a whopping 95%. Hooray. On the first run I managed to control the water column temperature fairly evenly - however on the second run I had to play about with it quite a lot.
The second run performed the same as the first, 3 hours, 3.25L of spirit at 94%. Joy. I wonder if the difference was because I didn’t do the mandatory wash of the column packing between runs. Wash number three, which is scheduled this weekend - will be sure to give an indication.
I also need to get a small amount more of column packing - as there’s a small amount of volume in the column that needs packing. That should increase the efficiency and produce better distillate, but at these percentages I can’t really go much higher before the product starts using the moisture in the air to dilute itself.
All in all, very happy with the product - so now I can produce a bunch of base spirit for testing flavourings with.
So far the coffee liquer (not using my base) is delicious. It started off tasting like it was coffee added to spirit (funny that), but has aged really quite well.
I’ve also kicked off a Mint Liquer. 3/4 cup crushed mint, 150mL of 94% spirit and 150mL of sugar syrup. It smells crap now, but hopefully after a few weeks the mint flavour and odor really comes out and I can take it off the leaves.
Also in the works: Pear Schnapps, Apple Schnapps and Coconut Liqueur. I’ve got the ingredients, but now need to find a chance to put them all together.
Updates soon - I promise :)
UPDATE: Oh noes, it turns out I committed a blog faux pas - I’ve already got an article called Smells like teen spirit! Oh well…