StillSmart

according to a few on the new distillers mailing list......

One of the members asked about them, I replied that I find it to be a good piece of kit, that successfully makes quite reasonable quality spirit, without having to go through the palaver of making cuts and all that, that you'd expect to have to do if you're making grain washes etc.

Plus it was (apparently) made in China by some rip off artist who might advertise on the satelite "selling" channels like QVC or the like, and because they also do yeasts, carbon, flavourings etc, it must be rubbish, just to sell more of those.

Apparently, the only way to make "the good stuff" is to use the tried and tested methods like they suggest over at Homedistiller.org !

Dunno about the rest of you lot, but I'm pretty bloody pleased with my T500 and the slightly different way I obtain my "finished" spirit, allows me to make a neutral that is clean, smooth and works well with any of the commercial flavourings I've tried.....

Perhaps the critic was a republican with 1000's of acres of mountain land, where they can hide a commercial sized still from the "revenuers"........ and probably has an unnatural liking for his sister >:D

I've never used the T500 but those who use it seem to be well pleased with them and the results. But there are disadvantages when using stainless steel as a "pot" for one, the chromium in stainless steel has the tendency of reacting with sulphides in the wash and creating unpleasant tasting and sometimes dangerous compounds. Copper stills however actually remove sulphides and compounds from the wash creating a much better flavour and cleaner spirit leading to less hangovers and possible poisonings. It is as I am sure you are aware illegal for commercial spirit distilleries to use stainless steel pots. Not because of any sort of tradition or ancient distillers creed but because they e not deemed safe by the industry and science! You probably wont get poisoned or even sick but if you are selling or even giving the stuff away do you believe you have the right to make that decision for your customers? As an experiment boil up two lots of cabbage, one in a s/steel pot and one in a copper pot, boil it to a mush; take it of the heat and cover with the lids. Come back in a couple of hours and take a sniff, the copper pot will have virtually no odour as they have chemically bonded to the copper. The s/steel pot however will reek to high hell.

I've never used a T500, in truth I've never even seen one in person, but I've read plenty of posts from members who are quite satisfied with the equipment and I would defend their right to continue the use of that equipment for as long as they are satisfied with it.

I think comments such as those referred to by 'P' are indicative of a very different social mindset and attitude than we are accustomed to in these parts (UK & Ire).

It's easy, and sometimes tempting, to dismiss other forums like HD, MD and AD because of their agressive attitudes and different way of doing things.

Our counterparts in the US, Aus and NZ tend to be more abrasive, blunt speaking, loud and "in your face" in their mannerisms and behaviour. This is often mis-interpreted, by people in our part of the civilised world, as being rude, bad mannered and/or bad tempered because we tend to be more subtle and nuanced in our use of the English language and less confrontational in our interaction with others....unless we're threatened.

Interaction with, or observation of, other forums in far off lands like US, AUS and NZ, should be fun and useful but we must remember that their use of the English language is quite different to ours especially in nuance and expression.

They're not intentionally insulting, it's more a case of - "forgive them... for they know not what they do..." At the end of the day, if we go to their house we can't expect them to change what they are and do things our way, so don't be too hard on them 'P', it's not really their fault

Rickey: +1 on the copper. I don't have the luxury of an all copper still but I use a copper pot head and this is packed with copper mesh, not for the purpose of reflux but to remove the Sulphides.

I ran my boiler a few times with cleaning batches of low ABV wash for testing and cleaning purposes without the copper mesh and the smell of the distillate was vile, to say the least, but after chucking it all back in and with the copper mesh in place the distillate was very clean smelling.

After each run the copper, which starts off like the roll on the right below, end up looking like the one on the left ...



...my wash is always crystal clear when I charge my boiler and if I double distill the copper is unaffected on the second run.

I would dearly love to have an Alembic Still but money doesn't allow at the moment

AM

RickyRasper wrote:.....It is as I am sure you are aware illegal for commercial spirit distilleries to use stainless steel pots. Not because of any sort of tradition or ancient distillers creed but because they e not deemed safe by the industry and science!

Sorry Ricky, I am going to call bullshit on that statement.
I've been round a continuous distillation site in Given, and up near Inverness. Both are like industrial chemical processing plants. the pots and columns were stainless steel, although there was copper catalysts to remove the sulphites you spoke of, I believe this is for flavour and not because stainless causes poising as you suggest.

A lot of beer and spirit and food stuffs are stored and shipped via stainless tanks exactly because of its non reactive properties, so when exactly does it become dangerous?

Well, I know I posted the thread a while ago, but Aidans pretty much hit the nail on the head, but I don't recall where the criticism of the T500 came from, but it was one of the places where there's sometimes more, erm, robust terminology used

And given that my T500 wasn't my first reflux still off the shelf, but so far, I've been pleased as punch with it. A very good piece of kit, worth every penny.

Plus I also suspect that while Ricky is factually wrong, his principle is correct. Hell, the T500 is solid stainless, but gets round the lack of copper in the construction by using copper saddles in the top of the column in the vapour path. As for the smell, I'd guess it's more about the base wash and what it's made from as to whether it would smell when heated i.e. grain or spuds are likely stronger smelling, both at the heating stage and the smell of the distillate.

Lets face it, while most of the whiskey distilleries use traditional copper pots with a copper goose neck, that's down to keeping the tradition as well as the flavour attributes that can come from different shape and style of goose neck, but they're commercial distilleries with a market share to defend.

The continuous distilleries are in existence because when it comes to industrial levels of production, it's just not cost effective not to keep the plant running as much as possible. You only need to remember that it seems it was Diageo that reduced the standard strength of their products to 37.5% ABV too squeeze more profit out of their production. They save about £100 per hundred litres produced, which might not be a lot, but it mounts up quickly when you're the biggest distiller out there - even if the saving only applies to the UK market, it's mega bucks across the year.

The slagging of T500's from whichever forums it was, was rather ill-considered. Yet it's easy to remember that different places have different attitudes, both as nations and regions when it comes to "making your own". And those who aren't based here, don't always appreciate that relatively speaking, we do tend to "live on top of each other" so nice, easily used off the shelf kit allows us to have some discretion.....

Most of us don't have the luxury of being able to build a still and produce "a la Moonshiners". You'd get your collar felt in no time at all.

Oh yes, and while I'm thinking about it, I recall reading someone mentioning the lack of friendliness at other distilling forums.

Well to that, yes and no. I don't go to home distiller very often, as there do seem to be "too many experts" who're only too quick to chime in and criticise, without understanding or appreciating the difference that we have to work under.

Yet I've always found Artisan distiller a nice, friendly posting and questioning environment.

The other day I found Modern Distiller rather by accident. Registered etc and they all seem like a good bunch there too. There's a couple of the usernames I'm familiar with at AD, whether they're the same people I don't know...... I certainly have a different username there.....

MD seems to be based in Australia, and as I say, seem to be a good bunch.........

This is an old post I accept that but thought as it trailed off, to add some comments on the T500 reflux still should someone else (like me) stumble on it.

I have this still with the copper condenser and stainless saddles. It's my first still and I love it. Although I was really holding off for a rotary evaporator, $4000 just seemed a bit steep for a hobby without a V8 engine.

My last wash was 23 litres and I managed 3.361 litres of ethanol at 92.5% ABV which I was very pleased with considering this was a 6kg wash. My next will be an 8kg and I suspect 4-4.2 litres of spirit (achieved several times by maintaining 62 degrees celcius or 143.6 F).



I also make very traditional recipies (hence the nickname) and have made whiskey from beer brews and rum from very old school recipies. Being a bit of a hobby chemist I realy don't see a lot of science in a pot still as this is basically a retort with some degree of cooling on it. Raising the temperature of the T500 to 74 degrees C I was able to get a distilate around 80% ABV without removing the saddles and retaining a lot of the flavour, very much like the second or third distillation from a pot still.

Removing the saddles really gives you a pot still and you can make 60-80% distilate very easily though I do not recall the temperatures I was using. I highly recommend this still to anyone looking. It's also a really handy boiler when you make another beer brew and want a good 10 litres of warm water to dissolve everything.

I never use tap water.... Happy brewing.

Welcome here.
Sometimes old posts being brought to the front is really good.
This is one of those times.
Enjoy your stilling and this site, and I hope you find more stuff to share or learn from.

Robert.