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Howdy folks, I'm Jeff at Moonshine Distiller, and we're back for one final Heads episode. Now that you've figured out what kind of still you want (which I am sure is a Moonshine Distiller reflux still, like this 3" tower here), we're going to show you how to run it. First thing we've done is set up our water hoses and done a quick test to make sure there is no leaks around the fittings here. If there is a leak, all you need to do is tighten the hose clamps down just a little bit farther. We've set up our parrot here so it's at the right height, so that the collection cup is right below the end spout on the condenser. And we've put in a little sight glass here so later on we can see the reflux action and show you what's going on inside the still. You can see that there are some vapors forming on the inside of the tower here, and that's a good indication that we are just about ready to start our run. So, we'll be back in a few minutes once we get things going.

Alright folks, the vapors just made their way up the column, you could feel it getting hot as the vapors made their way farther and farther up the column. And as soon as they hit the sight glass here, all the fog disappeared. So at this point, we are going to turn our cooling water on, just to make sure we don't get any ethanol vapors out of the end of the still.

So, for the beginning here, we are going to turn the heat up a little bit more and turn the cooling water up a little bit so that we get a lot of reflux moving up and down the column. You can start to see the reflux dripping down the sight glass here. We are going to spend about 5 minutes running the reflux really high so that we make sure our column is stacked properly. And our most volatile stuff ends up here at the top where it is hottest, and our least volatile stuff ends up at the bottom here where it's coolest.

As we mentioned before, the reflux column is all about balancing the reflux traveling down the column with the hot vapors travelling up. As the reflux is cooled and condensed up here by the reflux condenser, they'll slowly trickle down the column, meeting the hot vapors as they work their way up the column. As the hot vapors come in contact with the cool liquid, the less volatile stuff like water will condense down and become liquid, and as it does so, it will heat up that liquid so the more volatile stuff in the liquid, like ethanol, will re-vaporize. And this process basically super-enriches your vapors as they travel up the column. So, we'll give it about 5 minutes to run reflux very heavily here, and then we'll release the reflux a little bit and start getting some product coming out the end here. We'll get back to you in just a couple minutes.

And that looks like it's just about right, we're starting to get a slow drip into the collection cup here and in just a matter of minutes we'll probably see the alcoholmeter start to pop up here in the distiller's parrot.

So, it has been just a couple minutes here and you can see that the parrot has popped up and we've just started getting a flow at the end of our parrot. We're running right around 190 proof, which means that the alcohol is coming out at about 95% alcohol, which is pretty good. We probably could do a little bit further balancing to get it out at about 95% here, just a little bit more reflux. And this begins our heads.

So, this first 100 ml or so here is going to be mostly methanol. We're just going to get rid of the completely. After that, we are going to begin our heads cut. We're going to collect the moonshine in jars until it starts tasting alright and then begin our hearts cut. Typically what I look for is the acetone. The acetone is the compound right before the ethanol. Acetone is basically nail polish remover. So, what I typically do is, if you have a little teaspoon, I use a 1/4 teaspoon measuring cup. Take a 1/4 teaspoon straight off the still, mix it with a 1/4 teaspoon of water, because some compounds are more soluble in alcohol, and they won't break out until you mix it with water and they become less soluble. So, we'll take the mixture of half of my distillate and half tap water, and just taste it and smell it. And once I can no longer taste that acetone, I know we're good to start the hearts.

And, Youtube won't let the description be longer, so for the full transcription, please visit our blog: http://moonshinedistiller.com/blog/heads-series-episode-9-run-dual-purpose-reflux-still/