Test 1: goals

Let the fun begin! I just checked the new hoses I bought and everything seems to work. I can't get water thru the system though, now that it is switched off. I guess the water valve is closed when it doesn't work. Makes sense. Okay, so what's the goal going to be? Well, originially I was planning to make a neutral out of a turbo. But the turbo isn't done yet. So it was fastforward to plan B. Fractionate my Maillardized rye/wheat UJ. I asked you to choose a setting: with or without carbon filtration? A little over 70% choose to run the program without filtration, so that's what it is going to be. But what do we want? And what's to expect? I have like a little over 24 liters of this wash. It is about 10% strong. So total alcohol by volume at 100% should be close to 2.4 liters. At 95% that's 2.1 liters. Now that's a first number we can dial in to: an expected total return of about 2.5 liters of azeotrope. I could be mistaken. Not really sure about wash percetage. let's find out. I normally don't bother, because the striprun would tell me. Collect 1/3rd at 30%? Wash abv would have been 10%. Now I don't strip. But what about taste? Have I something to compare it with? Yes I do. The stripped and CM fractionated vodka I made with generation III of this recipe. Was it drinkable? No. Why? I suspect the Maillard reaction is over the top. It gives so much taste that a strip run and fractionating run would not take it out. Hot. Not nice. To be perfectly honest with you guys, I may have switched to hearts collection a bit too soon. Some heads present in this non-successful vodka of mine. What goals to set? Easy. Can it produce a better spirit than my previous run tastewise? What do I expect? I expect the better control - even though this wash isn't going to be stripped first - will give me a cleaner result. But my experience with this rye bread recipe wash is such, that I expect it to make what I call an Eau de Vie out of it. Not a vodka. And surely not a neutral. For me, a neutral is about not taste at all. Nice to mix other stuff in, but not nice to drink. A vodka has some residual graininess left in taste and mouthfeel. A whiskey is full flavour grain taste. What I call "Eau de Vie" is more or less in between whiskey and vodka. A heavy vodka or a very light whiskey. If it gets me to that Eau de Vie sweet spot with this wash recipe, I will be very happy. Some more numbers to compare. On my CM rig, I would take like 3% a fores, 17% as heads and some 55 to 58% as hearts. So my total hearts collection on this recipe would be around 2.8 liter. Fores & heads would sum up to 0.5 liters. Tails I don't collect on my fractionating run. Now I will try to do that. This is quite the challenge we set here. Okay of to the still it is. Let's see if we can get some numbers and first impressions!