StillSmart

Quite common for guys to upgrade, but keep the AS for small runs/experiments/gin etc

I was lucky enough to get a second hand airstill from ebay at a time when cash was tight and it was a fantastic introduction to our hobby.

I only upgraded because of the size and need for repeated strip runs to get to one small spirit run and in no way because of the quality of spirit produced.

Avoid turbo 48, do double distill and the airstill is a fantastic wee tool, especially for those like me with limited space.

And use a freezer of you can...

Just checked back. Thanks for all the replies and good advice! (No I wasn't in Chesterfield, I live, ah, in a place that need not be mentioned.)

The first wash is finishing up clearing this week. Checked the recipe section and customized a wheat grain based vodka recipe for the base. My local brew supply fortunately supports the odd "side project" so yeasts and other necessaries were easy to come by. A round of Chitosan and 20 minutes with a wine whip takes care of clearing and degassing. Everything looks very good, used a Vodka yeast by FermFast that works very nicely - and very aggressively. Wow, good thing I figured I would need a blow off for the carboy.

Hunted around for rapeseed oil etc and no luck there although I can come up with your basic vegetable based cooking oil for a boil over preventative - is that still acceptable?

Will clean up a few pennies for the pot - looks like that will help with sulfides, good idea.

Here in a week I will start my first strip run. My plan is to pull off a pot full and work it through the entire process so I take the mystery out of it, make my mistakes on it and fine tune the process. Then I can work on the rest of the batch once I have some confidence.

Again, thanks for the comments!

Virtually any veg.oil or butter will do you as a "conditioner".
Good luck with it.

Robert.

Hi Ferdberfel

I'm glad it wasn't you, I was worried after my post that I'd freaked you out a scared you off lol.

Going to do a cleaning run (water only), then do a strip run on the batch today. Really dumb question but I don't recall seeing it anywhere....how do you turn the bloody thing off? I see that to start it up, you plug it in and punch reset. I am guessing that the reset would also turn it off (like when you are down to tails). I'm also assuming that you would not want to boil it dry, right? (run completely out of liquid).

Thanks

I have never had to use the reset. It is a safety feature. Turn it on and off at the mains.

A smiths pin timer is useful.


Look at this on eBay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/400824475532


4 hours is a rough guide for stripping. For spirit runs, better to stop when the output is at 25%-30%. A glass parrot and a web cam is state of the art running IMO.


This is a specific timer I selected because you can set ONLY 'off' times. So you can plug in and forget. Safe in the knowledge it won't come 'on' 24 hours later. Ideal for stripping or ullage runs.

I can't improve on this post.
It's +1 from me.
Nice one Mash.

Robert.

Well some success. I did a water only run just to test it out. As reported by others, it was nearly 90 minutes to drip and I shut it off after it ran about 1 3/4 liters. That took (turn on to turn off) nearly 4 1/2 hours. Real slow. Maybe there is a little break in or its just that slow. No worries, not in a hurry. With that in mind, I will kick the strip run off early AM tomorrow and let it go.

If you have room, Freeze first. Once it had been in the freezer a few days, drain and then still.

Tree-men-dose

No room to freeze. This first runnings is just getting process down. My strip run was a little less efficient than the "unofficial guide." I think I got about 1.1 L when diluted to 30%. Doing a spirit run on that, which if I guess right should leave me at about 500ml of usable. Measuring 100ml at a time must take a real skinny proofing container. Don't think that will float my alcometer. If this works out, I'll take the rest of the batch and just crank out strip runs.

Ran better than the water test, just short of 3 hours.

Smells "wine like", very clear.

I guess you can't really use the guide on a short batch ( 1.1 L). I tossed the first 50 ml, then collected 250 ml heads (70%) pulled 250 ml more and it came out at 50%. Then we are definitely into tails..phew. So I'm guessing I have some hearts in my heads (probably a fair amount).

I'll keep what I got and do stripping, adding the "heads" back in and waiting until I have a full 4L to run spirit.

Learning...

Save an hour per run!

Heat the wash up in a stainless steel kettle to reduce the time to the first drip.

Fill the kettle a couple of times and when it is hot and begins to "sing" pour it into the Airstill.

You definitely have smearing (hearts in heads and heads in hearts). It's the limitation of the airstill. That said, having got a T500, it's not really much better or worse, just on a bigger scale.

You can accept the hangover, make cuts in smaller jars or re-distill while constantly losing heads. Discarding fores/heads on stripping run and then re-distilling and discarding again isn't very popular as it's wasteful but it's a quality v quantity thing.

I use fores and heads in a decorative fireplace which keeps wifey happy at a fraction of what B&Q charge for bio-ethanol, so my cuts give me a load of fuel alcohol, very smooth booze and a large amount of "stuff" that gets triple distilled, most of which probably isn't close to being tails.