StillSmart

Gentleman,
I am new to home distillation, but a reasonably experienced beer and wine brewer, and now the proud owner of a Smartstill. Firstly I would like to thank everybody that has contributed to this forum, which I have spent many hours reading and learning from. Also particularly useful has been the Airstill Brief, which will be my guide moving forward - Aidanmac and Mozr, thank you.
First of all summary of where I am.
My objective is to produce high-quality/purity gin for personal use so that Her Indoors can have a gin and tonic before dinner in the evening. For me cost of production is not a problem but obtaining the materials because of my unique location provides a challenge. As you may guess there are neither pubs nor homebrew shops in this neck of the woods.
Making washes has been relatively easy and while I used Turbo yeasts I have not been comfortable with these because of the difficulty of maintaining <25°C temperature in a 25 L batch. I have just run a Tomato Paste Wash in two 22 L PET water carboys to give a final wash volume of 34 L. This was done with locally purchased materials and dried Baker's yeast. It fermented out in 5 days, 12%, cleared well and the temperature stayed below 25° C. This will be my basic wash moving forward.
I am currently stripping this with no problems whatsoever. I use a timer that produces 1,350 ml consistently in 4 hours and 45 minutes. I can do two runs a day and within a week I will have a batch ready for the second distillation.
Now here come the questions:
1. I plan to construct and use an activated carbon filter as described by Gert Strands. I will be using carbon from a home water purification/filter canister. Do I filter after the stripping run or after the final run?
2. Large glass containers are difficult to obtain here. However, PET water bottles are readily available. Are there any quality issues or other problems with storing the final spirit in these?
3. It appears that contact with copper metal at some point during the process is beneficial. I will certainly replace the crappy plastic nozzle with a copper spout (thanks John51), however I was wondering whether to use pieces of copper sawn from a water pipe as an anti-bumping agent. Will this be effective as an anti-bumping agent and will it be beneficial in improving quality?
4. Finally I am using sunflower oil as a conditioner. So far this has worked, I would be interested to hear your comments on this and other alternatives?
For those of you that made it this far through my post, thank you for your patience. As I become more experienced I hope to be a contributor as well as a seeker of advice.

Welcome to the forum, it's nice to read a thread from someone who has done his homework.

Trying to assist you with your questions.

1)Run it through the carbon filter after the final spirit run.

2) There are so many varieties of plastics and methods of manufacture this is difficult to answer. Even PET has different methods of manufacture and coatings for individual applications. Consequently it is impossible to tell which is which.

Keep looking for glass, or perhaps something in stainless steel may be easier to locate.

3) The copper rings will do no harm and will help with the issues you describe.

4) I have never used sunflower oil, but if it works for you then why not stick with it? I use butter because it was the first one I tried, it worked and I have never had cause to change it.


If these are the only issues that you have, then I am sure with your methodical methods then they will cease to be an issue very quickly.

Keep in touch and let us know how things turn out.

Welcome, and enjoy.

I am in a similar position / location.

I went to the local town found a hardware store and it stocked Kilner style preserve jars from 2 litre and 5 litre along with various stainless steel buckers (made in CHINA, but beggars can't be choosers.)

Welcome! I don't have anything more to add to the answers that you have gotten. The one thing that surprised me was "I use a timer that produces 1,350 ml consistently in 4 hours and 45 minutes.". I get that amount in four hours (using 5Kg of sugar in 24L of water). I will guess that you are using less sugar and that the last hour of your run is mostly putting out water. I would check on that. If so, you may get a better tasting product by ending an hour earlier. Or, perhaps, my still is a higher wattage.

Chuck

Hello, I generally get (wash 12%) 1.2l down to 20% in 3hours 15minutes, 340watt SS Airstill.

V4mpy & chill

Thanks for the info. I can't confirm the ABV at this time because I don't have an alcometer, but I am working on it. Should have one by next month.
You may be interested in the new anti bump that I plan to use. See photo if it gets attached.

Gentlemen,
I have been thinking about how I do the carbon filtering. My objective is quality and simplicity. Cost and losses while undesirable are not big issues. If I put activated carbon into a carboy of my final spirit. Leave it there for about a week shaking occasionally. Then leaving until clear and decanting off the supernatant for use.
Pros:
- Simplicity, I don't have to make a filtering column.
- Much longer contact time, greater impurity removal.
Cons:
- Losses of spirit with lees, maybe up to 10%.
- Takes time.
I would be pleased to hear comments, particularly how many g/L of GAC would be needed and how long to leave it.

V4mpy & chill
Thanks to you both I have found a way to roughly estimate the ABV and you were right, too much water at the end (batch ABV about 35%) so that I have reduced the time to 3:45h. This should give me a stronger cut and make the spirit run better.