StillSmart

I couldn't decide if the guy was genuine to be honest, but different folk etc....

Don’t know the fool store but I noted two of the items that have been removed, from what I can see most of us have been round the block a few times and wouldn’t be caught out when it came to the crunch.

Rescued a 25Lt run yesterday, it didn’t start, so I bunged in new turbo yeast, job done, bubbling away fine.

To-day is going to be a bitch, heading for the market in the hope that I can find something to infuse. I have to knock up a gallon of Irish for the wife, should do her for just over a week.

Then it will be time to look out my gear for to-nights Samhain/Halloween do in the pub.

Happy Halloween, this is what happens if you drink to much commercial stuff.

Today I did something I've been meaning to do for ages, an electrical overhaul on the still power supply, the normal 13amp twin socket I use to power the still has seen better days, only one socket works and both switches are unusable, probably melted inside from running nearly 3KW for hours on end!!

I also rewirded the power controller and element to my still with orange caravan mains cable, it's 2.5 mm and rated at 16amps, good job I checked and rewired the element, one of the connections was starting to look a bit burnt and worse for ware, anyway I now have this




After replacing the broken double socket im going to take a 6mm cable off the ring main to the 16amp caravan wall socket via an isolator switch, I've also butchered my plug in power meter so it's now permanently connected to show the power used from that socket, I've also mounted my AVR 25 controller on the board next to the socket, save me kicking it around the floor anymore!

After that I've set up the Still for a neutral run, 25 litres at 30% in the boiler, 3x4" plates and a packed section full of SPP.

Nice work Anavrin. All I did was to put 3litres of neutral on about 8lb of pears from the garden (shame to waste them).

Gonna sweeten it later on......

I Worked really hard to do less than that.. Filled the little fella with ullage and set the timer.........

@ Anavrin looking good & tidy there mate. You can't pop down and do my brewhouse also can you. ?

Good looking set up there Anavrin, Wish I had the space and the skills.

Nearing the end of my filtering run, probably another 48Hrs to go.

Should I run the Essencia dry and fill it with water till the next run in 2 or 3 months time, or do something else.

Hi Pyro, I often leave my Essencia dry, you can purge air out of the filters by soaking them upside down in clean neutral for an few hours before you next use it.

This is most important for the Ceramic one, it controls the flow, if it drys up and blocks or get too much air trapped in it it will slow things down.

Thanks I will go for dry.

I can't imagine leaving the filter inactive for more than a few weeks.
But we are all different.
How shall we fuck off, O Lord?
Sorry, MP sneaking back, my bad

Robert.

So here is something that I did today, other than randomly reply to other peoples posts!
I ran a second strip wash of my lentil neutral, meaning the very silly still makes another appearance tomorrow night.
Well, that will be tonight now.


Robert.

In went to a Halloween party dressed as a zombie, had to stay sober for 2 hours, as I had to attend a practice for my "secret squirrel club" at 19:30, it dragged on for over two hours!!!


After which I soon caught up to the rest of the drunken bunch by cracking a bottle of Jim Beam Black Cherry, by midnight I was more than sizzled and fell trough my front door, the little ones pushed it open as I was still attached to the key!!!

Spent the earlier part of last night terrorising the Trick or Treaters with my wolf mask, revenge. Q Why did the skeleton go to the Chinese? A to get some spare ribs. Send in the wolf.

Then had a night on the bramble vodka.

I had a play with my power controller, I've never been able to turn it up full since I bought a 3kw heating element off Amazon, mainly because it reads 3kw when the dial is set at 70% and I didn't want to damage the power cables, 13amp plug or wall socket.

Now I've rewired it with a 6mm cable coming off the back of the socket on a ring main, 6mm twin and earth cable is good for upto 47 amps depending how it's wired I'm only using about 1 meter of it so no worries there.

Also the ring main it comes off uses standard 2.5mm twin and earth, this is rated at 21amps and so long as the ring isn't interrupted it can handle double that, it's on a standard 32amp breaker in the electric box so im happy with how I've wired it and that my still will be safely within the limits of the power supply.

Anyway I can now turn my power controller up to full, who would have thought the 3kw element I bought would actually be 3.6kw, now I can make the most of it :-)

3.6kw is 15amps at 240v and the socket and cable to my element is rated at 16amp.

By the way I'm not a qualified electrician and I don't profess to be, I'm a criminal lol

On a more serious note, how many of us are possibly not giving too much though to the power supply we run our equipment on, a T500 or Grainfather should operate without any issues but for those of us who have cobbled together our own contraptions using higher power elements it's worth having a think about your power supply and if it's up to the job.