StillSmart

Hi

Just a quick shout out and a little introduction.

I have a vineyard in the UK and we were hoping to make some wine this year (4 years in) - however Mother Nature is a proper bitch to work for and this year's weather put paid to making any real quantity of wine. The thought of having half a ton of unripe grapes withering on the vine after all the hard work to get this far, made me think about distillation and making grape brandy.

On reading more (and even more) information on the art of distillation I now find that there are many and varied beverages one can make with different types of stills. I am going to start to make some neutral spirit and source some fruit to make liqueurs to compliment what we will hopefully be doing in the vineyard next year.

I'd also like to make flavoured spirits at some time in the near future and know I will require a pot still head for the t500 boiler and not the reflux head it ships with. I can't seem to source these in the UK - though I know they are available in the Southern Hemisphere.

I'd build one myself but my workmanship is very much less than average, does anyone provide such a build service I could take advantage of?

I am happy to start with neutral spirits and see what we can do with that but I feel the strong urge to make some corn whiskey sometime soon, and take advantage of the large amount of corn I can get my hands on. It would be a damn shame not to....

Anyway, hello to fellow distillers and I'll continue to read here and elsewhetre to gain more knowledge in advance of the t500 purchase.

Many thanks to those posting the info

Cheers

C

Welcome to the forum.

When the time comes for a pot head, I am sure we will be able to help you out.

In the meantime enjoy your T500 an see where it takes you.

Thanks Brian

Still ordered.

Now a quick question for the forum.

Water : I am thinking I don't want to run water to waste down the drain so I'd rather recycle it, or use an existing external reservoir. I have an IBC container filled with rainwater x 1000l. If I use a recirc pump @2800 lph that should be more than enough, won't it?

How do I control waterflow and therefore column temp?

Is this idea a non-starter?

Cheers

C

cocwg wrote:
How do I control waterflow and therefore column temp?


C

Please ignore.

I've found the answer on this site already

The aggregated 'stillers search by cc found it when my usual search terms failed me.

C

With Cooling Management systems, of which the T500 is one, the temperature of the coolant should be as constant as possible.

Using a recirculation pump the reservoir will gradually warm up requiring adjustments to the cooling flow control valves, to overcome this people add some form of cooling to the recirculation system.

The T500 does not use that much water, and I would suggest that you first try it using the main supply, it will take one variable away from the process while you are learning to drive your new toy.

In the fullness of time when you are used to the still and you still feel that you are using a large amount of water, perhaps then would be a good time to think about this.

Normally at this point someone would advise you to get some alcohol ready for the still arriving, with you having a vineyard I think that in your case this advice is not required.

i think I've seen somewhere that the t 500 uses
about an average bath full so not a lot really

Well its arrived - had a brief fiddle with setting it up at lunch today.

First impressions - looks good, can't wait to get started.

Couldn't shake all the ceramic saddles into the housing, I have four left over... like screws in an IKEA flat pack!

Housing the thermometers looks fiddly, I think I'm missing a piece of something, can't see how that connects to the condenser at all.

Anyone got a close up of the thermometer/condenser attachment?

Ta

C

Hi Cocwg if i were you i would remove a handfull of the saddles because i read that an over packed column can cause flooding issues
Cheers

billmcc wrote:Hi Cocwg if i were you i would remove a handfull of the saddles because i read that an over packed column can cause flooding issues
Cheers

Oh.

OK, willdo.

Thanks for the tip.

C

Actually after reading a bit more it seems that copper scrubbers are better than the ceramic saddles in anycase?

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16455&start=24

Shall I not even bother with the saddles at all and go straight for the copper scrubbers, or should I just run it as is first of all and see what she does before jumping into mods before we have a baseline

c

The internet is a wonderful place and you will find all sorts of theories an opinions. Here is another, this time by our very own Mr Cat.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1149

The T500 is very good at what it is supposed to do, give it a try as it comes out of the box and then you will know when you modify, adopt, improve, tweak it you will know if it is an improvement or not.

That's an interesting alternative view.

Thanks for the steer YHB, I don't want to reinvent the wheel or ignore any proven improvements that others that have gone before, have found.

I'd best just get on with it, and lets see what fate brings,

Cheers all

C

Well that was rather straightforward.

Made a 25l sugarwash using wine yeast and 8kg of sugar.

Had problems fermenting with the cold but decided to run it today anyway. Wasn't bothered about %age alc volume going in as it was simply a means to learn how to drive it. I should have really.

Anyway I got 1.5 litres of 93% alcohol out the other end after 2.5 hours which made nearly 3.5l at 40ish% .

And its very drinkable. Slight tang/aftertaste but for the proof of concept run that'll do.

I suspect that my initial ferment was very low in alcohol.

I should have measured it going in shouldn't I - lesson number one.

Merry Christmas all and thanks for the help so far

c

I am glad things worked out for you and you have started your journey.

There is nothing like the real thing to see what it is all about. Many percieved problems dissapear overnight and you wonder what all the fuss was about.

I filibustered for far to long and designed my still around problems that only existed in my head.

I am fermenting in a cold draughty shed, I have a very well insulated box that I put over the fermenter. I have a 40w bulb in the box hooked up to a room thermostat. The fermenter is about 25deg and the yeast seem very happy.


8kg seems a lot of sugar for a wine yeast, perhaps you could try 6kg next time, what nutrients did you use?

Brian, yes you are probably correct in that 8kg's was too much for the wine yeast, though it should have been able to ferment to 17%, also I was a little lazy with the ph adjustment. A bit too much tartaric acid to start then maybe a little bit much of the potassium carbonate to try and correct I'd never fermented in the current location before so was unaware what the ambient temps were during day/night - and we had a very cold snap too. I did use 3x brew belts in the end to get some reasonable movement.

Nutrients? Well I hydrated with Goferm protect and used Fermaid-k after a couple of days bubbling.

If I'd have been clever I could have used the water out during a run to start a new ferment too - but things are getting a little crazy this time of year for all this forward planning!

I do have a temperature controlled 'pod' to conduct ferments but it was full of rose from this years limited harvest. I shall use that in future. That should do nearly 3 runs worth at a time.

I think I may have a slight hangover.