50litre beer keg and t500 reflux

[Leatherman]

Hello everyone,

I got my self a 50litre beer keg and would like to make boiler from it. Would like to use it with t500 reflux still. Any ideas on it? Will this still handle 50 litres? I mean cooling.
Was thinking to use two 3kw heaters and shut one off when reach boiling point.

And most important, maybe someone could give advice what would be easiest way to mount still on keg?

Many thanks for an answers!

[H12rpo]

Check out distilling dominoes. They do a kit which goes on the top of the keg and uses a tri clamp to mount the column. Your keg will need a bit more work than that though as you’ll need a drain port and a port so that you can get your hand in there to clean it, and a port so you can fit an element (or two )

http://www.distillingdominoes.co.uk/

[Capt-Cudellez]

my experience of the T500 column was it barely handles the 2kw it has, ran much better on 1500w.

The boiler is the tricky bit, if you are able to mount 2x 3kw elements, then knocking up a much larger cm or vm column will be a skoosh.

Btw running 6wk @ 230v will draw 26 amps, you'll be running for hours at a time, that's beyond what most ring mains are capable of, hopefully you'll have that on 2 circuits?

[Anavrin]

Hi domasj

I run a 50 litre keg with one 3KW element, filled to 40 litres, which is the most I ever put in, it takes roughly an hour to heat up in winter and about 45mins in summer, which is not too long in my opinion.

A 2” tri-clamp can be connected directly to the standard keg outlet, you just need to modify the seal so it’s smooth on one side, if your handy with metal work, you could build a much better column for less money than a T500 would cost.

Here’s my current setup, I fitted a bottom drain in my keg and had a 2” tri-clamp ferrule welded in the back for the heating element and a 4” ferrule for the column, the wider opening is good for cleaning it out as you can see inside better.

[Easydrinker]

Both the Capt. and Anavrin speak wisely.
From my distant past I remember a keg still I made with no cleaning port.
That was the worst of my mistakes there.
Just sayin'

Robert.

[Mash]

If you are fitting two elements, you could use both to boil and then shut one down and use a controller of the other to find the sweet spot for running.

Have you considered how you are going to plug in 6kw! It will blow trips if on a single ring.

[Leatherman]

Many thanks for all answers. As I see i will stand back with 6kw heating element. I am not very good in electricity so had no clue that home grid might not handle this

It looks like, that I wount go far without a bit of welding. Looks like TIG welding needed here, or anyone has an advice on it?

My primary idea was, to do striping runs with 50l keg. And carry on spirit run on t500 kit, which I already have. Just to save striping time.

[Anavrin]

I bet once you’ve built a keg boiler you’ll want to do more than stripping runs with it

The biggest advantage I’ve found is you can increase the size of your washes, I now have two 60 litre fermenters that I use for 40litre washes, these produce 8-9 litres of 50% strip at a time, it speeds the hole process up as it takes the same amount of time to ferment 40litres as it does 25litres, but now I only have to do 2 washes instead of 3-4 before a spirit run