Building bigger air cooled still
Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:28 pmHi Guys,
I recently joined the \'smart still\' community after a few years of distilling-downtime. Back in the days internet did not exist, and it was more ore less a proces of trial and error before something decent could be distilled. Nowadays, with turbo-yeast and electric distillers everything is so much easyer
I love my smartstill, I love the aircooling, but i\'d like to see an aircooled still with a bigger capacity, which made me think: why not build my own using a radiator+fan config to do the electric cooling. I just hate having to rig up water hoses through my apartment.
When I started to think about it, an interesting question came to mind: if you look at the opening in the \'head\' of the smart still, all you see is a tiny hole in the stainless steel top. One way or another the alcohol vapour travels upwards, gets cooled and condenses again, resulting in the output on the outside.
Now, I wonder, is it just the pressure of the expanding liquids (gas) in the smart still which \'pushes\' the alcohol out, or is there some kind of sucking / pumping action going on in the head of the smart still?
If not, it should be fairly easy to build an high-volme electric still with radiator cooling. Two of these babies (http://www.xoxide.com/koolance-hx-cu1020v.html) will cool 2000w of energy away. Should be enough I reckon.
What\'s your opinion on this?
Regards,
Brewmeister.
I recently joined the \'smart still\' community after a few years of distilling-downtime. Back in the days internet did not exist, and it was more ore less a proces of trial and error before something decent could be distilled. Nowadays, with turbo-yeast and electric distillers everything is so much easyer
I love my smartstill, I love the aircooling, but i\'d like to see an aircooled still with a bigger capacity, which made me think: why not build my own using a radiator+fan config to do the electric cooling. I just hate having to rig up water hoses through my apartment.
When I started to think about it, an interesting question came to mind: if you look at the opening in the \'head\' of the smart still, all you see is a tiny hole in the stainless steel top. One way or another the alcohol vapour travels upwards, gets cooled and condenses again, resulting in the output on the outside.
Now, I wonder, is it just the pressure of the expanding liquids (gas) in the smart still which \'pushes\' the alcohol out, or is there some kind of sucking / pumping action going on in the head of the smart still?
If not, it should be fairly easy to build an high-volme electric still with radiator cooling. Two of these babies (http://www.xoxide.com/koolance-hx-cu1020v.html) will cool 2000w of energy away. Should be enough I reckon.
What\'s your opinion on this?
Regards,
Brewmeister.