StillSmart

Same as what I did yesterday and the day before. Get up and charge the boiler. Beer stripping runs of 45L daily. Two more days and then a spirit run. Time for a break.

Stripping run again yesterday. 30l sugar wash + 7l Tails + 3l recycled spirit that wasn't up to scratch (don't ask )

This is the very first time my pot still and thumper have exceeded 90% on a stripping run

After the first five litres it dropped down to the 80s

Distillate was at 21oC

Must have been tHe higher than normal strength of the charge although this shouldn't have any effect on what the pot can produce only how much.

AM

I think that the higher ABV charge would result in a higher ABV initial output. Look at the azeotrope graph. The higher the initial % of alcohol, the higher the % distilled.

Chuck

I would expect this with a reflux column but not with a pot head. Just goes to show, you can learn something new every day!

AM

Suddenly had a brain melt-down, borrowed money off 'er indoors and went to the the local plumbing shop. Bought some assorted copper bits and settled down to try my hand at making a 2" x 500mm pot still head and a 700mm Liebig. This, for a total non-DIY-er was a very brave step :0) Just waiting for the blow torch to arrive so that I can braze all the cut copper bits into something useful - I hope. If it doesn't pan out, the missus will send out the funeral invitations :0) Pics to follow. Cheers, SW

Good luck with the build SW. lots of "How to..." posts around here on the subject. I think I posted a drawing for the construction of a Liebig Condenser...somewhere

AM

I made mongrel whiskey.

I ran tails that I'd saved from some UJSM, some barley and oat sugar head experiments and a little bit of left over rum tails that I had lying around. Got a liter and a half at about 130 proof that smells real good. Not sure yet if I'm going to oak it, or keep it as white dog to keep the canine theme going.

Ah! isn't recycling grand There's a great satisfaction in recovering good spirits from otherwise dumpable bi-products.

AM

Over the weekend I started converting a 30 litre keg into a thumper. Took off part of the upper skirt. I am retaining the lower skirt as I am going to add some height adjustable legs to it.



Need to fit a drain, overflow and vapour inlet. Inspired by the picture below (this thumper will have a column mounted on it) I am going to try and make all the keg connections in the lower dome, out of view.

That's quite a big thumper, what size boiler are you intending running it with?

I run my 50l keg with a thumper that holds just 6lt. I charge the thumper with a 3lt mix of heads and tails from previous runs and, as posted earlier here, the output from this modest setup is very high.

The thumper does extend the time from startup to first product out but, in my case, only by 10-12 minutes - one advantage of the small thumper size.

I believe conventional wisdom says a thumper should be around one quarter the volume of the boiler but the results I get from my one seventh volume thumper are huge.

I suspect that what would actually determine the size of thumper required on any still is the volume of distillate vapour generated by the boiler. In my case I usually run my pot with the 2Kw element so the vapour flow fits my thumper which I can just about hear gently fizzing away during the run. This was more by accident than design but I'll take it anyway.

I'll post a few pics of my thumper setup when I next get to my desktop as I don't keep those pics on my iPad.

AM

It is a 30 litre thumper on a 100 litre boiler. Normally in pot still mode I would not bother with an overflow, but in this case it is going under a reflux column.

The idea is that it will have sufficient capacity to collect all the column bottoms and prevent the majority of these from being returned to the boiler. As these column bottoms should be mostly water, returning them to the boiler is wasteful energy wise. It just further dilutes your boiler charge.

With your smaller thumper do you use an overflow back to the boiler, or are you managing the thumper volume with insulation?

I run 40l strips and spirit runs and I run the thumper on both. I start the thumper with the 3 litres as described and when the run is finished the volume in the thumper is usually 3.250 so the volume added is quite small while it's heating up so no need for an overflow

AM

A fella from Florida had a birthday party at a beach bar. I put a bottle of gold rum and one of cachaca on the bar, which got hammered. The bar next door put in an order for white rum. A good day all round.

I did 2 x 30l TPW strips and a 30l lowwines spirit run, back-to-back....with timeout in between for the boiler etc to cool down enough to drain.....all up it was over 12 hours in the shed.

that's ENOUGH distilling for a little while, IMHO
time for a drink!

started stripping a 30lt sugar wash added 3lts of a strawberry vodka that did not turn out right, should be finished and cleaned up by 11a clock
alan