turkey fryer

Putting older posts here. Going to try to keep the novice forum pruned about 90 days work. The 'good' old stuff is going to be put into appropriate forums.

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number18fan
Novice
Posts: 16
Joined: Mon Sep 22, 2008 4:38 am

turkey fryer

Post by number18fan »

anybody use one of those deep turkey fryers to distill in? They come with a burner and a thermostat for about $100. it will easily hold 5 gallons .
"If you plan to order a still from http://www.stilldrinkin.com or http://www.realmccoymoonshinestills.com do not expect much! Donate to your local Red Cross !!"
smokerscully1
Swill Maker
Posts: 211
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 7:35 pm
Location: Northwestern Ontario

Re: turkey fryer

Post by smokerscully1 »

If its an aluminum pot--stay away from it.
FeralPig
Swill Maker
Posts: 228
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 8:53 pm
Location: Dixie

Re: turkey fryer

Post by FeralPig »

Its aluminum. There are many posting as to why that is bad. Read the site. But the burner is great for distilling. I use one.
This is so much fun it ought to be illegal..wait..never mind.

51" LM and a 24" Pot still with 62" Liebig with turbulator and spiral coolant swirler thingy. Both running on an unmodified keg with Tri-clover clamp attachment.
lawdog
Novice
Posts: 30
Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 2:40 pm

Re: turkey fryer

Post by lawdog »

get a keg, and use the burner. dont use anything aluminum
Culpeper
Novice
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:43 pm

Re: turkey fryer

Post by Culpeper »

Howdy, I am recently retired and about to build my first still. I have seen plenty of styles and when I priced the items separately, such as Stainless steel pot, and gas burner from a restaurant supply store you can spend over $200.00 for the parts. Last week while having a beer with my friend (who has no knowledge of my plans) just in passing mentioned that he had bought a turkey deep fryer last year (for turkeys). I started checking out prices on Bass Pro Shops, Cabella's . As fate would have it a couple of days later I got an advertisement from Amazon.com that was offering free shipping and I thought I would search for one there just for the hell of it. Wowza.............You can get a 30 Qt. Stainless Steel pot there with everything except for the propane tank and including a thermometer for $69.00..........and with a little smarts can "still" (no punn intended), make a big batch of chicken soup when you are not distilling water.

Culpeper

BTW, This is my first post but I have been researching and daydreaming about this hobby for many years. I would like to thank the folks that created this site because it has by far the most collective knowledge of anyplace that I have seen in five years. If I hadn't found this place I would have been doomed to a very big headache because the folks on the History Channel show "Moonshiners" never mention "Heads". They just dumped fermented wash into the still and then showed the end result. :D
smokerscully1
Swill Maker
Posts: 211
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2007 7:35 pm
Location: Northwestern Ontario

Re: turkey fryer

Post by smokerscully1 »

Several years ago I was traveling thru the US and stopped at a Sportsman Warehouse, They had a hundred turkey fryers stacked up and they were clearing them out at $35 a piece. I bought a half dozen--I run a catering company for forest fire fighting. The pots were aluminum. They worked great for boiling potatoes and making french fries and deep frying fish as well as turkeys.

I bolted a SS salad bowl to one of the lids and put my column on that, pasted the whole thing up with flour and water and was good to go. Fermented off some birdwatchers sugar wash and ran it off. It's a 30l pot so a 25l charge worked well.

Big Problem after just 3 runs. Pin-holes developed in the bottom of the pot--wash leaked out and put out burner flame--now I got raw propane leaking out in the shop. I was right there--good reason to pay attention and its not for nothing the ole-timers around here tell you not to run your still unattended. I figured it must have been a bad pot--so I tried it again--I got lots of pots right. After 3 runs--same problem. I may not be smart but Iam persistant. There is something in a sugar wash that eats holes in the bottom of an aluminum pot when you boil it.

I'm still running the same system but instead of the turkey pot I found some stainless pipe the same diameter as the aluminum pot. I had a welder friend fix me up a pot otta that --cost a couple of jugs of rum. Its way overkill and very heavy but I couldn't find a stainless pot locally that was big enough.

If you can find a turkey fryer with a stainless pot for $69 you're in buisness.
Dnderhead
Angel's Share
Angel's Share
Posts: 13666
Joined: Sun Dec 23, 2007 8:07 pm
Location: up north

Re: turkey fryer

Post by Dnderhead »

""is something in a sugar wash that eats holes in the bottom of an aluminum pot when you boil it.""
wash is acidic a good thing in away it does eats aluminum but if it was alkaline it would "eat" copper and
then you git blue distillerent.
Culpeper
Novice
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:43 pm

Re: turkey fryer

Post by Culpeper »

Howdy, I don't know if this will help but I own a 2003 Yamaha 1100 V-Star. It has Aluminum Carbs. I bought the bike in 2004 before they went with the bogus Ethanol scam here with adding Ethanol to Gasoline. I never had a problem untill I found out this past February that Ethanol reacts with Aluminum and really screws up the innards of an Aluminum Carb. After $1,000.00 to fix the the problem which involved having the carbs removed and rebuilt I only run Ethanol free gas in the bike. I don't think sugar is the problem. Sugar is in Millions of soda cans.........I just had a Coke the other day and the expiration date on the can was two and a half years ago. Just my humble opinion.

Culpeper
Hawke
retired
Posts: 2471
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 1:39 am

Re: turkey fryer

Post by Hawke »

It's not the sugar that is the problem. Any fermented wash will end up with an acidic ph. Some as low as 4.0. This low ph and heat on the porous/ highly reactive aluminum equals short lived boilers.
BTW: Soda cans are lined to keep the contents from reacting with the aluminum.
It is the very things that we think we know, that keep us from learning what we should know.
Valved Reflux, 3"x54" Bok 'mini', 2 liebig based pots and the 'Blockhead' 60K btu propane heat
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