my homemade carbon filter

[PJB]

I'm liking the look of this...

Firstly does it have to be glass bottle...will plastic work?
Secondly do you still have to run water through the carbon before the alcho?
Thirdly...well done on finding cheaper ways....i'm up for that.

[Anavrin]

Yes, glass if you can as some plastics do not go well with high strength alcohol, I splashed out and bought an Essencia, which is plastic and it's a hard white plastic, the lid is a transparent blue and the instructions state that if you fill it with high strength alcohol, (above 55% if I remember) it suggests using a ceramic plate on top instead as even the vapour can damage plastic and you don't want any plastic nasties mixing with your spirit.

I think you do need to soak and flush new carbon in water, just like a britta filter, it's removes any small particles but it does waist some spirit as the first alcohol you pour through mixes with the water and comes out diluted.

[PJB]

Cheers Anavrin...

Ive got the essencia filter aswell, and find it very good, a few friends are just starting out and i would pass info on to them to make starting out cheaper.

I'm also gonna set up a homemade filter to get more on the go at the same time.

still learning...but with you guys to help me along i know i'll be fine

[Boozoid]

I ran some product thru a winebottle/carbon filter the other week. Even tho the drip rate was 1 drip a second I found it too ineffective for my needs.

In the end I just dumped some carbon straight from the bag onto 5L of 45% (diluted from 95%) in a demijohn. Gave it a shake every day for a few days, and used the wine bottle with some cottonwool as a filter to seperate the product off the carbon.

The product is totally tasteless and no smell.

[Easydrinker]

My own cheapy filtering method before the essencia was to pour a couple of teaspoons of carbon into each litre of "neutral".and leave bottles in a place where I would shake several times a day,for several days.At the sides of your TV watching chair would be good....
Then put bottles in freezer for 24 hours,before decanting,(trick learnt from HD forum).
Similar result to the Essencia,more work,more excercise.
Robert.

[makum101]

I followed this youtube vid to cut my wine glass (I did it over the bath rather then the sink just in case I needed to drop the bottle quickly). It worked just like in the video - Easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHWYjMlYH50

[Aethelstan]

Hi, new here and this filter looks like a good bit of home engineering. I was looking into creating some kind of carbon for using within the wash and again for filtering. Is it possible to charge the filter with ground charcoal? I have some lime wood that I can make charcoal with as it was going to be incinerated anyway and as I understand it, charcoal is the same as activated carbon.

Thank you

[YHB]

Hi,

Generally

Charcoal is used to add a specific flavour, Think JD.
Activated Carbon is used to remove unwanted flavours.

Why would you want to put Carbon in the wash?

Brian

[Aethelstan]

The triple distilled kit has a sachet of activated carbon that goes in the wash, it says so on the instructions.

[YHB]

I think I understand.
You need to put the carbon in the wash to take out the bad tastes that the yeast that came in the same packet put in?
But if you didn't put the bad tastes in, you would not have to use the carbon to take them out?
I may be missing something but I think I will stick to my bakers yeast and not have to worry about the carbon and it is a lot cheaper.

Sorry Athelstone, I could not resist it and welcome to the forum I hope you stay a while.

Brian

[Aethelstan]

I have used bakers yeast with tomato puree up until now, this is just an experiment to get a cleaner product. One mistake I now realise I made was not using finings and hence getting yeasty off flavours in my output. I will do some more perusal of the forums to ascertain the best was recipe for neutral.

[makum101]

Ive just made myself a wine bottle filter. put in 300gms of Alcotec 0.4 - 1.4mm Activated Carbon.

First I ran 700mls of warm water through it - took 15 mins before it stopped dripping. Then ran 700 mils of twice stilled spirit watered down to 40%

Results were dissapointing... It smelt very strange like a chemical smell. It came out grey - obviously has carried some of the carbon with it. And the strength has dropped to 30% which means that there was still quite a bit of the water in the carbon.

What am I doing wrong?

[chill]

It sounds like (a) not accounting for the remaining water and (b) not using enough tightly packed cotton wool so that you are getting too fast of a flow rate. The grey colour also suggested that you did not properly prepare (boil and rinse several times) the carbon.

Chuck

[makum101]

Thanks Chill

I didnt realise I had to boil it before first use, thought you just did this if you wanted to reuse it for a second wash etc.

Ill boil it and try again.

By the way... I fashioned a filter stand from just a roll of toilet paper (full/ with the paper still on the cardboard roll) popped over the neck of a spirit bottle, then rest the cut carbon filter bottle in the top half of the roll. Filters straight into the bottle.

[chill]

Full details on carbon and prepping it here: http://homedistiller.org/activated_book1.pdf

Ingenious stand!