StillSmart

This has been discussed previously but I have decided to mash and ferment separately and go back to the first plan which was a dedicated strip still.

Because this was always intended for grain and fruit, it is likely that I will be stripping fermented wash that contains some solids. For this reason the original plan was a pot still and thumper combination.

Plain water in the pot still and fermented wash in the thumper.



Fairly conventional plan. I have now got two stainless drums being made. One 115 litre and one 205 litre.

Then I heard what Swede was doing with his jacketed boiler. Using steam generated in the jacket to inject into the inner boiler. So I decided to borrow the idea and simply put the thumper inside the pot still.



Should be getting the drums in a few weeks.

The pot still, thumper combination is a very traditionl "steamer" configuration that is used to do strip runs on thick mashes and gluey fermentations that cannot be sparged. It can be scaled easily to any size and typically uses a pot still the same size as the thumper.

This was going to be a 100 litre keg with the 115 litre drum.

It could easily be a T500 full of water with a 30 to 50 litre thumper.

My build will be a bit more complicated to build, but has a smaller footprint.

The water in the jacket starts to boil..the steam then vents down the pipes into the mash/wash..which through heat transfer heats the mash/wash then out into the column..(I take it the cone is a symbol for the column?)

Won't you have to watch the level of the water in the jacket so has not to flood the mash/wash??.

I see you have a safty valve and pressure gauge on the boiler....what pressure would you expect?

On the conventional pot/thumper strip rig, the pot needs to contain enough water for the entire heating cycle of the thumper by steam injection.

On this rig though, part of the warm up of the thumper occurs (by water bath) at the same time as the warm up of the pot still. As a consequence the pot still does not need to contain as much water.

It only generates steam for part of the heating cycle of the thumper and not for the entire run.

The initial warm up might be extended but the overall run time should be reduced.