Polish Stills on Ebay, any good?

[Spirits4BB]

Just wondering if you experts can av a look at these and say if they're good or bad?
>>>STILL CLICKY<<<

[optic]

To be honest if you want to buy a ready made still IMO it would be far better to spend another £100 and get a T500, that is a proven still and you aren't going to have the PITA of dealing with some Pole if something goes wrong .

[Mash]

Can someone explain the vapour path on these please?

[Icefever]

To be honest if you want to buy a ready made still IMO it would be far better to spend another £100 and get a T500, that is a proven still and you aren't going to have the PITA of dealing with some Pole if something goes wrong .

+ 1 J.....T500 no hassle just pick one up in the UK.

[Anavrin]

Can someone explain the vapour path on these please?

Looks to me it's a packed column with two small thumpers in line before the condensor, each thumper will be filled with liquid, could be water, wash, low wines etc

The inlet to each will be a tube to the bottom of the liquid, allowing vapour to pass up through the liquid to the outlet, which will be a short tube or a hole in the top, they will work similar to plates in that they will increase ABV, only there's no reflux return, they are one way only and won't start producing vapour until the liquid inside reach's the boiling temp of the vapour.

[Anavrin]

There's also a couple of cooling tubes through the top of the column, these will be to create reflux for the packed column to work

[Spirits4BB]

Thx lads, think I'll give this one a miss.

[Almanac]

If Anavrin's assumptions are correct then I would be very sceptical about this equipment's value. The vessels 'A' thinks are thumpers are tiny, in relation to the boiler size, and would only be of novelty value.

Convention says a thumper should be around 25% capacity of the boiler feeding it and while you can go smaller there is a limit. I used to run a 6lt thumper off a 50lt boiler but I had to be very careful how much liquid I put in it and it had to be pre-heated or the thumper would be overpowered unless I kept the power down below 750w. I also can't see any way to fill those small vessels

The drain tap is in the side wall which will make cleaning and complete draining a little difficult but not impossible, you'd just have to jiggle the boiler around over a sink or drain. Also, there doesn't appear to be any way to strip down the parts for thorough cleaning.

Too many unanswered questions about this kit for me to consider it worth even a closer look.

AidanMac

[Mash]

Thanks chaps I was struggling to understand this one.

[Phantom]

Well, I don't know about that particular model, but it would seem that some of the stills coming out of Poland are very, very good pieces of kit.

The one that thingummyjig has got is a fully automated boiler, it is quite tall at the column, but has a shotgun condenser atop.

He reckons it consistently runs out 95.6% spirit.

And despite their websites generally being in Polish (no surprise there) so having to play with the hit and miss of Google translate, most of them speak good english so. are only a phone call away........

As far as I can tell, you get a lot of "bang" for your buck.....

[Hillbillypop]

Hi
Having purchased a polish still 35litres for £320 I gave it its first run at the weekend with 25 litres of chardonney it returned a healthy 2.5 litres of 56%abv
98%proof old money I purchased the one with the inbuilt 3.5K element as a still its perfect easy to clean
Bad points or more of an inconvience-
I had to buy a euro socket and lay in a 30amp supply.
regards
W

[Curmudgeon]

I've seen these discussed on the forum where I don't look grumpy. I really haven't figured what the not exactly thumpers and not exactly fractional distiller thingummies do.

I'm neither in favour or against, just requiring more information.

[Easydrinker]

I too await further information from Hilbillypop or another.
Welcome dude.
Please, share your experiences with this gizzmo.

Robert.