This a bit late in response, just found this thread. Yes the unit runs at the full 750 watts and the dial allows you to set a temperature for shutdown. its the alcohol as an azeotrope that makes this work. The boiling point will be held down as long as there’s boiling action. 100% Ethanol boils off at 78c (173f) but at around 82-85c when at lower ABV. So set the dial at 85c and when it shuts down, you have your 80-90% volume of alcohol out of the mash. Its not worth the trouble to capture the rest through additional distillation cycles IMHO. Now, the worst part is, there is a 40% loss of alcohol to vapors. Check out my paper I just finished and posted here (some then pointed me to your thread…). You can add an external ‘condenser’ inline to cool the vapors enough to recondense almost 100% of the vapors. The flip side is, you’re gassing your house with 40% of the alcohol using the standard water distiller, something to think about. Run these outdoors to be safe.
And a big “Hell No” to using a water distiller for shine. Its like riding a miniature tricycle when you need to ride a bike. You’re going to do a hellava lot more work distilling one gallon at a time. And without an external concentrator, you’ll loose 40% ABV right off the top. The thumper acts a little like a condenser, but doesn’t take away enough BTUs to cool the vapors enough for condensation. Again, lotsa work for micro results when you could spend the same dollars and get a 5 gallon pot still on Amazon with a thumper and condenser.
Condenser_Issues-v1-01.pdf (2.6 MB)