Day 25:  A funny thing happened on the way to the distillery.  Well actually it was there waiting for us this morning.  Apparently we had filled the Beast a bit too high and filled our bubble bucket airlock to full as well.  This led to about a 10 gallon spill of mash out of a pressure relief valve set too low.  So we found a wonderfully sticky mess on the floor.  I didn't even thing to take a picture.  I'm guessing this is one of those lessons learned, like opening a tri-clamped hose before turning off the water.  So after mopping up and fixing the problem with the bubble bucket, I headed over to the lab with the samples we took yesterday while mashing.  Below are the samples loaded up in the centrifuge.  The HPLC test allowed me to track the rise in sugar content over the course of the mash through each stage, from liquefaction to sacchrification.  I got a reading of about 8 gm/L in the mash before the enzyme conversions began.  By the end it was up to 57gm/L, a 7 fold increase.  Below you can see videos of the Mash mixing just before we added the yeast yesterday, and a quick video of the bubble showing our fermentation was healthy and going gangbusters.  In my down time during the HPLC tests I spent an hour with Kris getting his lecture on how distillation works.  We discussed everything from different types of stills to what is going on in the pot and columns during the distillation process.  We discussed principles related to the Reflux ratio, the concept of Vapor liquid equilibrium ( which relates the amounts of the more volatile components (mvc) and the least volatile components (lvc).  He showed me the graphs of what is happening and what each type of still can produce in terms of ABV.  Many people argue they can get 95% out of a simple pot still.  However, when you see the numbers you begin to understand why this really is not the case.  You may get a bit, but you won't get it all at 95%ABV without a column still.  This talk helped to solidify the scientific concepts involved in the distilling process, but I think I will go over this lecture a number of times to really have it committed to memory.