Looking to use an old e-brewing kettle for a boiler and I’m wondering if I start with 3 gal of wash, how much liquid is left behind after the alcohol is boiled off? I want to make sure I don’t dry fire the element boiling off to much volume.
Noob question - amount of wash left behind
- Thread starter jeeppilot
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Considering that most yeast has a tolerance of 20-30% MAX and most less than that, what would be left behind would be 70-80% of the three gallons starting volume.
It is dependent on the ABV of the wash. But as a general rule you're ONLY going to get out 1/3 of what you have in there. So in a 3 gallon start you will likely have 2 gallons left behind. Of course again ABV dependent and how far into the tails you go. Rum makers go DEEP, REALLY DEEP into the tails to extract the oils but even then its not much more volume than the normal 1/3rd
Keep it as LOW as you can.
Cheers
Jay
Keep it as LOW as you can.
Cheers
Jay
It's going to depend on whether you are using a pot still or a column still. A good column still will output ~95% ethanol, so the collected volume will be:
If using a pot still, your output will start fairly high (~80% ABV) and drop off as you distill, so calculating the residual volume gets much more difficult. If we assume that the average ABV of the collected product is 50%, we can use the above formula, with 0.95 replaced by 0.50. The lowest residual volume for 3 gal of 20% ABV wash would then be:
Looking at some data I got from somewhere, the average ABV collected from 3 runs was 60%, so 50% seems like a good worst case value to use.
In any case, the residual volume will be your starting wash volume minus the collected product volume. So, figure out what minimum volume you need to cover your element, and don't collect more than starting volume minus minimum volume, and might be good to put a safety factor on that number.
Brew on
Collected volume = Starting volume * Wash ABV / 0.95
Thus if you start with 3 gal of the following ABVs, the residual volumes will be:10% ABV: Residual volume = 3 * (1 - 0.10 / 0.95) = 2.68 gal
15% ABV: Residual volume = 3 * (1 - 0.15 / 0.95) = 2.53 gal
20% ABV: Residual volume = 3 * (1 - 0.20 / 0.95) = 2.34 gal
If using a pot still, your output will start fairly high (~80% ABV) and drop off as you distill, so calculating the residual volume gets much more difficult. If we assume that the average ABV of the collected product is 50%, we can use the above formula, with 0.95 replaced by 0.50. The lowest residual volume for 3 gal of 20% ABV wash would then be:
Residual volume = 3 * (1 - 0.20 / 0.50) = 1.80 gal
Looking at some data I got from somewhere, the average ABV collected from 3 runs was 60%, so 50% seems like a good worst case value to use.
In any case, the residual volume will be your starting wash volume minus the collected product volume. So, figure out what minimum volume you need to cover your element, and don't collect more than starting volume minus minimum volume, and might be good to put a safety factor on that number.
Brew on
Last edited:
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