■ 🕑 57. 
   Ran my new reflux still for the first time on 05-07, Wednesday 
   
   After I took off foreshots, it stabilized at 78.3*C for nearly the
   entire run which means the stuff coming out was 96% ABV. Probably lost
   some due to evaporation, but wow.
   
   The takeoff rate was pretty slow because I'm using a hack until I buy
   a proper needle valve. 500ml per 2 hours. But still, 96%! 
   
   I fed some old tails and heads from other runs into the boiler with most
   of a bucket of 12% ABV sugar wine that had breakfast cereal soaking in 
   it for flavor. Some of the breakfast cereal notes carried through but
   it smells and tastes ultimately like a rum. Dilute down to the low 40%s
   and I ended up with 6 liters from 12 hours of operating time. 
   
   Based on my math, the ~80cm of packing in a 2" pipe is achieving 13 or 14 
   "plates" worth of distillation when refluxing. A stripping run normally
   takes me 8 hours to pull out 4L of 40% that have a lot of off flavors,
   and running 18L of ~35% takes 9 hours to extract ~3L of "hearts" around
   70%. So big picture, the reflux saves a lot of time for producing a 
   clean, strong spirit. 
   
   going to do another reflux experiment next week with the bran sugar wash, 
   curious how it will compare to the cereal sugar wash. I suspect it will
   taste like a pretty good whisky. There are hints of whisky flavor in my
   breakfast cereal reflux (some of the heads/tails I dumped in were from
   my bran sugar wash spirit run) but it ultimately tastes more like rum
   than anything.