Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post here whats not safe to do or use.

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patrick10ghost
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by patrick10ghost »

I find this to be a really good thread. Both parties of for and against are providing good wholesome contend to enrich our understandings.

Al in my line of work has been a pain. I have to warn people to wash off the citric acid we use to clean our Al products because of not it will causing pitting. Pitting in our hobby is extremely harmful because nasty bugs can set up homes in the rough texture.

Personally I view Al as a viable stilling metal "but" it's lifetime would be the largest factor. If you allow a small amount of backset to remain it could damage it and lead to more waste.

Pros: low cost and easy to source.

Con: acid will cause pitting. Pitting leads to bacteria. Pitting also leads to more surface area for acid to work at leading to shorter lifespan of the still.



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Kareltje
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by Kareltje »

@rad14701: Sorry to hear about your father. Damned military contractors!
As I several times said: I do not like Al. It has adverse effects on soil chemistry and is suspected to promote several braindiseases. I do not trust it!
So that is a strong incentive to find out how we are exposed to it. They say about asbestos that it is great stuff, as long as it stays in its place. If there is hardly any transport of Al from boiler to drink, there is no reason to avoid it, is there? If your fathers employer had taken better care of his health (or your father had better argued with his employer!), there would have been no harm in using this tools.

@Truckinbush: I do not know. Does a possum tell fairytales as the truth? Or retweet myths? If so, I indeed would keep telling and searching for some facts. But I must admit: sometimes it feels like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faF0wOsVucw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
"For the thruh remains that no one wants to know"

@corene1: Now you give some useful information about the problems in constructions with aluminium. So everybody can decide on its own about costs and benefits.
Speaking for myself: I used an iron still for some years to my satisfaction. Now I have a copper and ss still and am glad with it.
About living to the rules: rules are made with some purpose, in this case safety. They are not made to support ignorance, I hope.

@patrick10ghost: That is what I intended.
I agree with your abstract, apart from the bacteria: I am not afraid of bacteria in my kettle!
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Swedish Pride
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by Swedish Pride »

here is quite an extensive paper on the subject
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di ... TEXT01.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I only skimmed through it, some mentions on Alzimers but no hard evidense, some pitting occurs with high proof etho.

personally I wouldn't bother with AL, a ss pot is the same price as a AL one, so go with the option that is known to be safe.
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der wo
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by der wo »

Kareltje wrote: Entrainment and distillation gave some hits, but as I do not have a column with plates and sieves, I can not judge the relevance of this articles. Somebody with some experience might pick that up.
Plated column or packed column or potstill, it's the same in general. You can distill peated malts with all of them. Perhaps the amount of entrainment differs. Probably the more reflux the less entrainment. So a potstill forces entrainment.
Kareltje wrote: Specific Release Limits are in mg/kg food:
Al 5
Cu 4
Fe 40
Ni 0,14
Ag 0,08
Sn 100
Zn 5
Pb 0,01
It does not look so very bad at all, when you see this list and listen to people with their own experience. Only thing is: to me it is still not clear how much Al is released from the boiler and/or column and/or condenser AND is flowing towards the exit.
Yes, it looks like Al is less poisonous than Cu...
But such limits always are compromises. Why a fruit brandy is allowed to have 135 times more methanol than a wodka in the EU? Because it is impossible to produce a fruit brandy with as little methanol as the wodka. Or why is 3mg/kg cadmium in seaweed allowed in the EU, but only 1mg/kg in all other foods? Because we had to forbid to import seaweed.
In this way, imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure. - Rosa Luxemburg
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by thecroweater »

Neat Ballad Kar mum had the record, I wonder which side of that ballad you see ya self on. Some of ya arguments have some perhaps dubious merit but one undisparagable fact remains and that related to the durability of aluminium as a boiler. It will pit and fail in a short time and any electrolysis which would be close to unavoidable would speed up that decomposition expedentually , its why aluminium alloys make excellent sacrificial anodes. Bottom line it its not a suitable material and there are much better options and this is why no one is going to recommend it. No point getting offended about it when you are defending the undeffenable even after stating it is a material you would never consider using. Here we would say " he would start a blue in a church" it means arguing for the sake of it. You are willing to concede the more obvious drawbacks of the product but defend it for lack of 100% proof on other health issues. The forum only remains a premium source of information while it contains the best up to date methods and facts as known by the members. The combined knowledge of some 30,000 members takes some refuting but if someone has evidence to do that speak up or don't :thumbup:
Last edited by thecroweater on Tue Sep 20, 2016 3:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Posted same time as above
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by cranky »

I don't believe I ever mentioned this before but when I first started this hobby I did experiment with a heavy aluminum pressure cooker and a simple cereal wash. On the first time it was used it was noticeable that something was wrong and the wash had begun eating into the aluminum. Within a few hours the pot had a noticeable coating of white dusty corrosion even though it had been rinsed and dried after use. On a second use pitting was noticeable. This was enough for me to believe that aluminum was actually an unsatisfactory material for a boiler and I felt no need to continue. I can buy a SS pot as cheap as a pressure cooker or a SS keg rather than an aluminum one, by the way I do on occasion come across aluminum sanke kegs. They are not that uncommon but you will notice the beer companies only used them for a short time before going back to SS. As far as carry over of aluminum in the distillate from the boiler, I don't think it really matters because the fact that with each use an aluminum boiler is turning into more and more aluminum dust and will fail fairly quickly is the best reason not to consider using it.
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by Kareltje »

@Swedish Pride: Very good, that is the kind of information we need. I hope! What is going on, and how bad is it.

@der wo: The studies I stumbled upon were about entrainment in columns, but I do believe it also plays a role in a pot still. Question remains: how great is the effect? How much Al is transferred from kettle to product.
And indeed: a lot of these limits are partly inspired by political or economical motives. Or by stupid following the rules of calculation. (I have seen a limit for Co in soil that was lower than the necessary amount for some organisms!)


I wonder if we as collected members of HD can not solve this problem?
I came across some who have or have had an aluminium still. Let them make some runs and collect samples. Let them very good describe what they are doing.
Then there are some of us who have (friends with) access to scientific machines, like gaschromatographs. These machines undoubtedly have a lot of idle time, for example in weekends. Let them research the samples of the first group.
If we can do that for several continents, we should be able to get at least some idea of how great the risks are.
One might even get some publications about the subject! Become famous and all that! Win a Nobelprize! :crazy:
Sorry, I got a bit carried away! :oops:

Edit:
@thecroweater: Depends, sometimes both sides. And I am stubborn and like an argument, but not for its sake alone.
@cranky: Now you both have a sound argument, not inflicting unnecessary fear or giving simple orders. It is just not worth while!
Only argument that is left in this part: some cheap and simple alu pots and pans in an average kitchen last for years. Is that because people only cook (neutral) potatoes and rice in it?
Last edited by Kareltje on Tue Sep 20, 2016 4:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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der wo
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by der wo »

Kareltje wrote:Become famous and all that! Win a Nobelprize! :crazy:
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by cranky »

Kareltje wrote: @cranky: Now you both have a sound argument, not inflicting unnecessary fear or giving simple orders. It is just not worth while!
Only argument that is left in this part: some cheap and simple alu pots and pans in an average kitchen last for years. Is that because people only cook (neutral) potatoes and rice in it?
I own several of those old aluminum cooking pieces including some vintage Wagener Magnalite which I still use today. One thing important with these aluminum cookwares is not to cook things that are highly acidic such as tomatoes in them. Another thing is my big Magnalite roaster is pitted from the many years of use, most are. I can also tell you if you read about cooking quince they will always say to use a non reactive pot or pan, the reason for this is the aluminum will ruin the quince and the quince will ruin the aluminum. In addition to this the good modern aluminum cookware has been anodized to help make it resistant to corrosion but eventually that anodized coating wears off and it also begins to corrode. Lastly I have a 5 or 6 gallon aluminum pressure cooker that I use for canning every year. This, and most, pressure cookers tend to turn quite dark inside from impurities in the water used while canning. Inevitably every year I will have a jar of tomatoes break while canning making the water only slightly acidic. This will make my canner sparkle like it's brand new again. Alcohol wash is much more acidic by the end of a run which is why it eats away the aluminum at a rapid rate.
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by spisska »

shadylane wrote:But commercial distillers have multiple reasons for their actions.
And maybe it would be interesting to think about this reasons.
There are a lot of new, small-scale distilleries starting up these days. If any of them could gain a commercial advantage from using aluminium instead of stainless or copper in their stills, they would be doing it,

Similarly, if any gigantic distilleries could gain an advantage and/or cut costs by replacing their old stainless/copper stills with aluminium ones, they would be doing it.

But they're not.

Even in the former Warsaw Pact during the Soviet era, when the authorities came up with all kinds of shortcuts and creative use of materials (e.g. The East German-built [img="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... RA_001.JPG"] Trabant automobile [/img] had a body made out of plasticized cotton waste), stills were still made out of copper and stainless.

So if aluminium is not considered adequate by the giants pushing out rubbish like Popov and Sokol vodka, is not considered adequate for the hipsters making small-batch craft gin at $50 per bottle, and wasn't even considered adequate by communist governments who had an abundance of bauxite, but for whom steel and copper were much more needed for strategic and defense purposes, what do you think has been overlooked?

I'm willing to accept that certain types of plastic bottles are okay for storing alcohol at around 40 percent ABV or below, given that there are lots of cheap boozes sold in plastic bottles. But none of them use aluminium in the process, so I don't either.
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by googe »

Maybe we need a completely new aluminium section, the amount of threads about it are endless. Or maybe people think. Oh, 30000 members can't be right, I'll start a thread about it :roll:
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Kareltje
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by Kareltje »

Swedish Pride wrote:here is quite an extensive paper on the subject
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di ... TEXT01.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I only skimmed through it, some mentions on Alzimers but no hard evidense, some pitting occurs with high proof etho.

personally I wouldn't bother with AL, a ss pot is the same price as a AL one, so go with the option that is known to be safe.
I browsed it, but the main subject is the effect of 5 or 10 % ethanol in fuel, with at the very most 1 % water and the subsequent corrosion of aluminium. Interesting, but not really relevant for our distilling practice.
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by HDNB »

i mashed in aluminium precisely once. i could taste it in the distillate. ever bite foil with amalgum fillings in your teeth? same flavour...can't imagine distilling in it. :sick:
I finally quit drinking for good.

now i drink for evil.
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Re: Alumin(i)umboiler kegs

Post by Tater »

Kareltje wrote:@Swedish Pride: Very good, that is the kind of information we need. I hope! What is going on, and how bad is it.

@der wo: The studies I stumbled upon were about entrainment in columns, but I do believe it also plays a role in a pot still. Question remains: how great is the effect? How much Al is transferred from kettle to product.
And indeed: a lot of these limits are partly inspired by political or economical motives. Or by stupid following the rules of calculation. (I have seen a limit for Co in soil that was lower than the necessary amount for some organisms!)


I wonder if we as collected members of HD can not solve this problem?
I came across some who have or have had an aluminium still. Let them make some runs and collect samples. Let them very good describe what they are doing.
Then there are some of us who have (friends with) access to scientific machines, like gaschromatographs. These machines undoubtedly have a lot of idle time, for example in weekends. Let them research the samples of the first group.
If we can do that for several continents, we should be able to get at least some idea of how great the risks are.
One might even get some publications about the subject! Become famous and all that! Win a Nobelprize! :crazy:
Sorry, I got a bit carried away! :oops:

Edit:
@thecroweater: Depends, sometimes both sides. And I am stubborn and like an argument, but not for its sake alone.admin edit (bullshit )
@cranky: Now you both have a sound argument, not inflicting unnecessary fear or giving simple orders. It is just not worth while!
Only argument that is left in this part: some cheap and simple alu pots and pans in an average kitchen last for years. Is that because people only cook (neutral) potatoes and rice in it?
Googe maybe we should have a beat the dead horse topic :esurprised: :sarcasm:
I use a pot still.Sometimes with a thumper
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