Home Distiller

I guess I never mentioned that, did I? Yes, the roast was great. Other than adding the neutrals, I was just cooking the pot roast the same way I would have anyway.

I wonder what the results would be if you mixed the degreased and strained pot roast/stew dripping and liquid with some neutral low wine and run it. Don't know if the favor would as intense, but I suspect the boiler cleanup would be easier. In my case, probably not - the boiler is the only pot I ha...

And now, I have one last dish to wash from the party - a 20 L still boiler with bits of beef and veggies stuck to it

You know how when you make a stew or pot roast that simmers a long time, the steam makes your whole house smell delicious? Well, I figured, why not gather that delicious smelling steam and drink it instead? I'd been thinking for a while about making this, and now finally did it for my wife's birthda...

I'd leave out the pectic enzyme - pectin can make your cider cloudy, but you don't care because you're not drinking it as cider. It also releases methanol when it breaks down under enzymatic activity. Better to just leave it behind as pectin in the backset. Another thing to consider - why not just m...

I know you said disregard, but I'm not very good at disregarding :) Rum can be dividd into "industrial" rum made from molasses (a product of the sugar refining industry) and "agricultural" rum made from unrefined cane juice (a product of agriculture). Unless you're buying special...

I do my mashes in the oven overnight - I've got a 20L pot that just fits in the oven. Fill that with crushed grain, cover with water, and turn the oven up to the very lowest point where the power will cycle on (well below the lowest marked temperature on the dial). In my case, that results in the ma...

What I've read about malting grain - and this was mostly about barley and wheat, with corn mentioned only in passing - was that the grain should alternate soaking and airing out. The usual suggestion I've seen is no more than 8 hours soaking, then air for 8 hours or so before soaking again. The seed...

I did the cleaning run a while ago now. As a pot still, it works nicely, but the continuous operation thing is a bit of a wash-out as it is now. The problem I has was getting accurate enough control over the flow rate, when I don't have any sort of sight glass or flow detector along the feed line. I...

Lord no! I have about 50 L of sugar wash fermented and cleared for a sacrificial stripping run. No way would I drink the first thing coming off that still. I hadn't been thinking of doing a vinegar run in addition to the sacrificial alcohol run, but I guess I can easily enough preload the boiler wit...

Wouldn't adding another element or a larger one been cheaper? It just seams like a lot of work just to do a stripping run? Trick is, that would also require running another electrical circuit out to my garage - there's only a single 15 amp connection out there now, so I want to make the most effici...

Well, didn't get in the run I had hoped - I started a beer, so my boiler was called into duty as a brew kettle. Also, drinking a lot of whiskey on Saturday night doesn't lead to a very productive Sunday. Funny that. I did get in a brief test run of water, just to check for leaks. There was one small...

how about 10 barrels on a staircase, with each barrel pouring into the one below, where the bottom barrel is the boiler, which has a sump pump drawing off the dregs, and a magic monkey drinking all the foreshots... Now you're talking my language! Much in the same vein: http://www.youtube.com/watch?...

What is the point. If you can only feed it till the boiler is full. Why not start out with a full boiler and just do a normal batch run? How much will you really gain by doing this?] Well, I can only answer this for myself. Go to http://homedistiller.org/calcs/husker_pot_calc_v2.php" onclick=&...

Rad - you're describing something much more ambitious than I'm shooting for. I'm not after a continous distillation column that will output azeotropic ethanol at one end, and completely spent wash at the other. If this works with what I'm considering 100% efficiency, what I'll get will be a steady o...

This isn't really my first still - it's actually my third - but it's the first one I'm really proud of. I haven't gotten a chance to run it yet, hopefully I can get in a cleaning run over the weekend. It's designed to operate as a standard CM column still, or as what I'm calling a 'semi-continuous' ...

I suspect the wash-preheater coil isn't going to give you enough cooling power for near-azeotropic ethanol. You'd need greater than 90% reflux, I'd think, which means you'd need over ten times the cooling power as is required to condense at your take-off rate. And your cooling power is restricted to...

I'm thinking along similar lines as I get ready to build a new still myself. I think the way to go would be a quite long liebig, that you run the water through slowly - the reasoning being that with a liebig you can get near complete heat exchange, so the cooling water could come out very close to t...

(see http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=21563)

How do you plan on connecting the column? I got a guinness keg, and a 2" tri clamp, only to discover that the U system flange is about 2 7/8" diameter, and the 2" tri clamp is grooved for flange just over 2 1/2" - so I can't use the clamp as I had hoped. I'm still trying to work ...

myles, I had a look at that PDF you posted, thanks. It looks like I've got some sort of euro keg or something - the flange is a good bit bigger than a 2" tri clamp...

Thanks for your help, folks. The measurements I got are Keg fitting: OD 2 7/8" ID 1 7/8" Clamp" OD approx 3 1/8" or 3 3/16" max (hard to tell exactly as it's adjustable) ID approx 2 3/4" or 2 13/16" (the sides are 3/16 thick, so OD minus 3/8) No maheel, the spear w...

Hello all I recently got a sanke keg (at least I think it's a sanke - it looks right), some 2" copper pipe, and a 2" tri-clamp. Now I'm perplexed to find that the clamp is way too small to fit over the flange on the keg. It fits around the 2" pipe with plenty of wiggle room, and the 2...

Here we go. I only show the one turn on the dephlegmator, really I'd put in a couple of turns.

I'm getting set to build a new still - I've got a few more bits to acquire, and then of course I have to get the time to build it. Between now and then, if I can get some feedback or suggestions on my design, I'd appreciate it. My plan is to build a still that can work in three ways 1) as a plain ol...

I'm trying this now in a couple of combinations - I toasted a few pecans, added 2 to a liter or so of corn spirit around 68%, 2 to another liter that had sat on charred oak for four days, and I'm going to take a third liter off oak soon so it will have had a week or a bit longer on charred oak befor...

Ah, I suppose I should clarify that. I've got a 20L pot with a 4' high, 2" column on it, and a bok head (more or less - it's a ball valve so my reflux control is rough). In this case though I was running it without packing and wide open, so basically a pot still with a high swan's neck. My heat...

...coming off the still, and then so day the next day? I ran a batch of DWWG the other day, having read much of that thread - someone there was describing how they set aside a mere 1/2 cup of heads, keeps a good hearts cut, and then sets aside everthing under 50% or so as tails to run another time. ...

The received wisdom around here seems to be that continuous distillation is only good for wash stripping, since the output ends up with all the heads and tails left in, unless you have an extremely high-end still with the means to continously separate fractions. To a certain extent, I guess you coul...

Finally did a spirit run! In all, I brewed and stripped seven batches of beer - four all-grain batches, and on the last three of those I refermented the trubs with 2.2 kg of corn sugar. The low wines came out to about 18-20 litres at 40%. On my puny little 1 kW burner, it took me about 8 hours to co...