Bubble Tees Without Reflux

[YHB]

I am now resident in my shed and have managed to get a few hours building time in between other comitments.

I will hopefully be in a position to test out the bubble tees in the non too distant future. To give them a cleaning run I am intending to simply place them under my Pot Still Head without reflux.

I am also building up a supply of sweet-feed low wines.

So the question is, would the sweet-feed benefit if the spirit run was done through three or four bubble tees without reflux? If so why?

I am assuming that I will get higher strength distillate, but will I lose much flavour during the run? I can also see that with the higher strength distillate I will have to add more water and therefore dilute the taste even more.

Is it worth it? or should I save the tees until I have the reflux system sorted?

Any advice gratefully accepted.

[ShiFu]

A bubble plate still is much closer to a pot still than a packed column concerning flavor.   
It seems to take a LOT of plates to remove flavor.   
With your copper Tees you will probably get enough passive reflux to keep the plates active.   

A bubble plate still is a strange beast. You can get close to azeotrope with only 4 to 6 plates if you run very, very slowly. And the distillate will be flavorful.   
For every plate you add, you can run a little faster and keep the same purity.   
I hear it takes 20 or more bubble plates to begin to get anything close to a neutral.  My experience is that is true but I need to run the same spirit several times through the still since my ceiling height won't allow for a 20+ plate column.     

With active reflux you enable the "suppression" feature. Draw off the heads while suppressing the hearts... draw of the hearts while suppressing the tails.   

The final flavor profile is most greatly effected at the cutting (or blending?) table. A little late heads and a tiny splash of early tails will do more to the final product than adding or removing a plate or two.   

I've noticed that with four plates the hearts have plenty of flavor. If your hearts cut is in, say, 5 jars each jar will have its own flavor profile. And there will be one jar that is outstanding.   
You will have to decide for yourself to blend that jar with the others or to keep it separate. That is probably one of the more difficult decisions to make.   

Congrats on your shed and build progress!!

[Myles]

I have been told that even with 6 plates you get loads of flavour coming through.

What has been reported to me is that with 4 plates you get a drop in product ABV over the course of the Hearts phase. However, with 6 Plates you can dial in any Hearts ABV that you wish and it remains there consistently until the tails start.

Even some of the big commercial plated columns run without reflux - they just pre-charge the plates with water, especially with the split column rigs where the reflux condenser is only on the second column.

[ShiFu]

Good to see you finally chime in again, Myles!   
Yep, with 4 plates the proof will fall during the run. 6 plates and it is steady at high proof. 

I don't know much about pre-charging plates and running without reflux.  Only know about what I do. And for me that means adding plates to get to high proof at a decent takeoff speed. 
11 plates for me is the sweet spot and that's far from producing neutral. Gets good clean spirit from wash or from strip and great flavor. "Clean" don't mean neutral, it does mean it is not heads or tails.   


11 plates is just my current setup. I could also do well with less or more plates.   

My feeling is if you have a 4 plater you will wish you had a 6 plater.   
After 6 plates, any additional plates just increase the take off rate while maintaining high proof.   

[Meatheadinc]

formerly I ran 5 plates. now 3 to 4 plates and a large inline thumper. ( approx. 8 litres)
3 and 4 plates and the deep bath thumper has less flavour than the 5 traditional plates 
so in my belief, large bath depths reduce more flavour than more plates.
the benefits for the large bath thumper is that take off is rock solid as far as take off %
eg todays run. boiler @100deg c, thumper @ 97 deg c, 3 bottom plates fogging and still  90+abv take off.
The head temp then jumped, and so did the alcometer in the parrot. love the compression however in the future for flavour spirits I will load the thumper with wash.

speed increase may also help although was pulling around 3.5 litres per hour

[law-of-ohms]

7 plates here atm, ran my molasses wash thru and the flavor at ~95% is amazing, so much rum flavor has come thru.

Only running at ~ 10 to 12L per hr, so its still a day event for me.