All grain mash/ferment

[Spirits4BB]

That looks great, expensive??
Wouldn't mind one of those to play with.......

[Myles]

It is a bit more expensive than a stock pot thumper, but it is a pressure vessel and you can mount a lot of weight on top of it if you need to.

30 litre keg
Essex flange in the top for the vapour inlet
1 compression bulkhead in the base for a drain
Another for an overflow if you need one
4 brackets and 200 mm coach bolts for adjustable legs
1 or two gate valves.

If it is just a basic thumper going to a product condenser though you can make one from a cheap ebay stock pot.

There are always different ways to do things just please don't use a glass thumper without a lot of carefull thought. I have never consideded it a good idea.

You can even do copper thumpers but they tend to be expensive options. Even more than the keg. I do have one that will get remodeled for my own personal stil. I am going to remove the water seal and fit a 4" triclamp instead.

I was never really happy with the column on it, so it is going back to the pot still as a flavour thumper just before the product condenser.

[Spirits4BB]

Wow, you've done some cracking builds, your a talented guy....

[Myles]

I am fairly sure that this idea will be taking a U turn from the original intentions.

I will still be building the 205 litre stainless drum based boiler, but it is looking more likely that I will be ordering a stainless 150 litre drum to go inside it.

I can have a new stainless open top 150 litre drum built to order for less than it would cost me to buy the copper sheet to make my own.

And get this - to have two of my 100 litre kegs welded together professionally will cost even more.

So it looks like I will be doing two batches of 20 kg in 100 litre mashes, fermenting those and then doing two strip runs, to generate the low wine charge for the 100 litre keg boiler.

Probably just a few times a year.

[Easydrinker]

It's probably a good job that you have cut down on the drinking then !

Robert.

[Myles]

This all started when I was working on rotation. 1 month on / 1 month off.

I want to be able to ferment and distill a bigger batch but just occasionally. Was getting too much grief from SHMBO if I dissapeared into my still room each time I came home.

Cant imagine why after all these years

[Benoit]

The bubbler inside that thumper is pure genius, what was it originally? I've been trying to think of something that will hug the bottom of the pot & disperse the vapour better than my pipe full of holes for a while. I was close to buying one of those sanitary spray balls but they will take quite a bit of liquid to cover them

[Myles]

Did you mean the stockpot build?
It was not a success but that was because of the materials (really thin stock pot), wrong solder, and not very good technique. The plan was ok though.

Two identical stainless bowls. Cut one down to make a rim that was soldered to the pot.

Really cheap eBay pots were a bad idea and caused all sorts of problems later. The bottom of the first bowl created the diffuser.

The second bowl made the lid and the two bowl rims faccilitated a good seal.

However, there are more effective diffusers and i would not do this again. This is a low speed diffuser, in effect a big bubble under the plate that trickles through the holes.

You get better results with a higher speed diffuser. These days I just solder a plate on the end of the vapour tube to leave some thin horizontal slits. These force small bubbles so it fizzes instead of thumps. Much quieter.

[Benoit]

You surprise me there Myles, just goes to show not everything works like it looks like it will! I thought that diffuser would have been like an airstone on a fish tank in the bottom of your thumper, I'll save myself some work & go find the hacksaw if thin slits perform better.

You sir, are an absolute fountain of knowledge & I thank you for your continued sharing of experience here

Just a thought, in your opinion how would a mash tun strainer (torpedo) perform in this scenario? Too many holes?

[Myles]

Sure if would work but it is probably more than you need.

I have 2 thumpers in storage at the moment, 1 keg and 1 copper pot. The copper pot (same one as above ) vapour tube reduces down to a T that I drilled an extra hole in so it has 3 vapour outlets. These are 10 mm becaus this was intended for gin with hard botanicals in the boiler.

The keg has a simple cap on the vapour tube.

The legs are folded up and soldered inside the tube leaving 4 slots about 2 mm by 10 mm and a 6 mm hole. The vapour blasts out of these at high speed. On warm up those bubbles implode violently and surprizingly loudly. Once warmed up though it is virtually silent as it produces streams of fast small bubbles that fizz.

I would keep the strainer to use as a strainer, unless you already have a spare one looking for a home.