There's an off-limits race going on. Or at least there was. Imagine there's freaks out there, in remote places like Siberia and Finland, that love constructing stills and that love to take the long, hard, cold winters to improve on their distilling contraptions and use them ... to set a new world record. Mostly Nordic "Einsteins" meeting via the internet and challenging each other. Rules of engagement? The column needs to be 2 inch in diameter, the product their stills produce needs to be 96.5% strong, and the low wines that go into the boiler need to be 30% strong. The staggering world record, up until a few years ago, was 2.25 liter per hour. That is 2.25 liters of 96.5% per hour. Then, like 2 years ago, one of the competitors came up with an innovation (don't remember what it was) and took this unofficial ( I mean, it is not in the Guiness Book of ...) world record to 2.5 liters per hour. When we hit the market, with the fully automated iStill 50, equiped with a 2 inch diameter column, we immediately breached that trash hold. We shattered the existing WR of 2.5 liters and brought it to 3.5 liters per hour. Now, I am proud to inform you that, even though our world record hasn't been challenged, we took on the challenge to beat ourselves! With the new PMM, the new thermoprobe aray, and the beefed-up Firmware, we "upped" the world record to 4.25 liters per hour just a few days ago. That's with 70% power input. Did we try 75%? Yes we did. And it works. I didn't take the time to measure performance. It might have been a little higher. Maybe 4.3 to 4.4 liters. Not sure. Not sure because I couldn't resist upping the power to 80%: a staggering 3.2 KW on a 2 inch diameter column. Believe me: 75% power input is the max. And that's only in case you want to set a world record. Since we already did that, no need to go there. Dialing in 70% in Pure Mode is great. Move towards 80% and you will flood the column. What 70% power input in Pure Mode gives you, apart from a WR kinda experience? Faster collection rates and more stability. Throughout the run, the temperatures at stabilization point and take-off point differed no more than 0.1 degree. We actually measured a temperature at the bottom of the column (T_in) as low as 78.6 degrees C. That's only 0.3 degrees shy of pure, azeotropic temperatures. To summarize? The extra power enabled the iStill 50 to fill up the whole column with pretty much 95%+ ABV. Do you want to translate that to your iStill 250? Please do! The iStill 250 will automatically switch from 18 KW power input during heat-up to 9 KW during the actual production run. In Pure Mode, please try to up the power to 11 or maybe 12 KW during hearts collection. The iStill 250 will produce quicker and run even more stable at that.

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