Technical Opinions Wanted about Airstill ops

by **Ronbo** » Mon May 02, 2011 4:29 pm

Hi Aidanmac,
1) From a 4 Ltr still you only need to discard 10 - 20 mL each time.
2) Epsom salts for baths may have perfumes or other additives. Sainsbury or Tesco will sell you 500G for about Â£2.60. It is more likely to be marked Ph Eur than BP nowadays.
3) The only grain I have bought is \'Jordans\' wheat germ -- plenty of recipes on the forum -- and that goes like a bomb!
Ciao, Ronbo.

by **Ronbo** » Tue May 03, 2011 2:48 am

This is the recipe I used for Wheat germ\' Just make sure you have plenty of space in your fermenter!
http://www.stillsmart.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=364
Ronbo.

by **Ronbo** » Tue May 03, 2011 9:05 pm

I only tried it the once: being a \'Flat\' dweller with limited room, I wasn\'t able to cope with it. My fermenter is actually 32 Litres, but it easily foamed over the top and made a right mess on the kitchen floor. I split it into another 15 Litre fermenter but it still kept on going like something out of a \'Sixties\' science fiction film.

I had to flush it down the drain.

I think I used about 40 - 50G of the yeast and three of my biggest stock pans on the hob for boiling (yes you need plenty of room in the pans)

Don\'t be put off; just be very carefull!
Regards, Ronbo.

by **Ronbo** » Wed May 04, 2011 12:44 pm

I,m sure the 50L bin would be fine for a 25L ferment. Someone suggested keep paddling the foam back into the wash, which is fine -- but you have to sleep sometime!

There are others on the forum who have done DW and I,m sure they will chip in with their experiences.

Regards, Ronbo.

by **Frank** » Sat May 07, 2011 5:30 pm

[quote]) From a 4 Ltr still you only need to discard 10 - 20 mL each time.[quote] Hey Ronbo I\'m confused (yep, again)is this to do with stripping runs, final runs, both or neither re air still?

by **Ronbo** » Sat May 07, 2011 8:23 pm

Hi Frank, no you only do it on the first run of the air-still, once the nasties have gone thats it! You can then double or triple distill and collect everything (make sure the still is cleaned between distillations)

Regards, Ronbo.

by **guymark** » Mon May 09, 2011 2:04 am

For Aidenmac:
If the foreshots are passing your \"taste test\" and smell test, then although methanol IS something to be wary of, acetone in small amounts is not overly harmful and in face under certain conditions, the human body generates acetone itself without any issue. the MSDS for acetone gies advice for ingestion as \"get medical advice is symptoms present\". sure if you drank 500ml of acetone you would probably be as sick as a grim thing - but the odd ml here or there is is a non-event. If you refer to the MSDS (google) all the \"harmful effects\" basically relate to being drunk / drowsy / sleepy / nauseous. Only is long term / chronic ingestion a possible concern if large volumes are consumed.
For that matter, a similar comment can be made for Isopropyl alcohol which is generally regarded as being about \"twice as toxic to the human as ethanol\". In other words, although it doesn\'t taste very pleasant, small amounts can be regarded as totally harmless.
As for methanol - the nasty one, I remember it can be detected by adding some acidified potassium manganate (vii) aka potassium permangante and then loosely capping the container. If a strong embalmingy type odour develops (formaldehyde), then you have mthanol present. If you cannot get this chemical you can also try potassium dichromate - Ebay will probably help with either of them.
Other than that, no easy test that I can think of for this one - but unless you are using some very questionable feedstock in a large still, there shouldn\'t be much methanol ABLE to be present - even if you neglect to dump the heads.

by **Frank** » Mon May 09, 2011 5:58 am

Thanks for that Ronbo...Ok, over on the \'Smell from the Airstill\' thread Aidanmac provided a fabulously-detailed procedure for getting fine neutral that, in part, stated
....if you are going to do a Stripping Run and then a Final Run you should consider collecting everything on the Stripping Run down to about 50-55% (I go to 52% myself) and I mean collect everything heads and all. On the Final Run you will discard the first 100ml of each batch as heads then collect a very, very clean spirit....
Question is, what do you (et al) reckon would happen comparatively if I followed said Aidanmac procedure except I discarded first 20ml per stripping run then colected all of final run to desired volume??

by **Ronbo** » Mon May 09, 2011 2:14 pm

Yes that would be fine. Aidanmac is just collecting everything and deferring the heads discard to the second distillation.

The forum has discussed heads collection from an Air-Still many times in the past. The concensus is that the heads from the 4 Litre still are going to be pretty insignificant. Throwing the first 10-20mL is just a peace-of mind practise.

Mark points out that the actual levels of methanol are going to be very small indeed.

The procedure for a column still is different. The column uses a much bigger charge -- 25L and concentrates the heads far more, hence discarding 100 - 200mL.

Also the guys using columns tend to experiment more with different grain ferments which MAY produce more of the unwanted products.

Regards, Ronbo.