r/airstill

My friend has a still spirit air still. Seemingly perfectly fine unit, no leaks no defects.

They get stupidly low yields on the heart fractions of spirit runs, maybe 25%.
That's around 450ml drinkable 60% abv spirit for each 10.5 (TEN POINT FIVE) liters of 13% sugar wash, with ridiculous amounts of feints being produced.

This was not what people on here and online say about the air still, with hearts usually being mentioned to be around 50%.

This is making them think air stills are completely worthless for anything other than stripping runs if making neutrals.

How do they make this process worth their time? Are air stills really this awful? Do they need to upgrade to something bigger with a reflux column to make this remotely worth the effort?

They use it like so:

1. Run 3 stripping runs, which have around 3.7L of 13% sugar wash each
2. Put the resulting ~1.8L low wines + water to fill to "max" fill mark in the still for a spirit run
3. separate the output in ~10 open/covered jars, wait a day.
4. make cuts. thats it.

Is just plugging the still spirit air still for spirit runs not enough? must they use a power controller?They thought the still spirit version was able to do spirit runs without.
----------------------

EDIT: Friend tried doing a feint run. They got ethyl acetate sickly sweet taste smeared across the ENTIRE output, right into the tails. what the fuck. If the still spirit airstill does that, its just completely worthless for serious distilling

I have a little trouble making moonshine with my vevor air still. I have tried to remove foreshots and sort out hearts and tails. But i can’t really tell any difference anywhere. I can adjust the temperature on it, but its still just an electric air still… My product does not smell or taste ok. Does anyone have a step by step answer on how to make my next batch better?

My parents have an AirStill Pro, they bought it used and the first few times it worked fine. However the last couple times when they turn it on it brings itself to the boil and then just stops. No beeps, no warnings, nothing. Start it back going again it does the same thing.

So far all Ive checked is the thermostatic switch, it operates and resets ok however does have about 8ohms across it which seems high too me, I have ordered a replacement.

Any other ideas? Maybe the relay on the board dropping out? But seems unusual it would be so repeatable?