Home Distiller

sparging gets all the fermentables out. in all-grain beer brewing my 35l brewzilla has about 15l of water and 6kg grain at typically 67c for 1 hour with the pump running the whole time. then the grain basket is raised out and locked in the top, then the grain is sparged(or rinsed) with about 15l of...

Now I think I will buy a 220/240 10,000 watt regulator and wire it to 115 volt. If I am correct they are European single phase 220/240 volt. Not US split phase 240V. Unless I am totally wrong and they are set up for 2 hot wires. From a regulator point of view there is no difference if 240V is made ...

Does it means your "right and shiny, 5000L kettle, 40 plate Kothe" haven't been used so far?

There is no magic number for it. Required power depends on many factors, like heat up time, heat loss, column design, packing, condensers efficiency etc. I'd say something around 5000 - 10000 Watts should be OK. You can play with calculator to get a better idea - https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index...

Yes, sorry, 110VAC So, I should expect it to have a limited life span. Will using it harm the boiler at all? The boiler is 1800W if I'm not mistaken. No it won't harm a boiler. It can go south ny itself but boiler will be OK anyway. you should use factor 2 to select a Chinese controllers. I.e if yo...

HDNB wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:00 pm they are 450w at 120v, so using the math above it looks like I can run just under 4 Amos at 240 for a total of 900 w and not blow anything up

3.75 Amp to be precise. Although they will probably withstand 4 amps as well.

Try PTFE tape first. It usually helps even if threads types are different. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Harvey-1-2- ... /202280370

I have 6 connection points. The 2 heating elements in the boiler, the column to boiler, and 3 on my column. Should I be using those same gaskets for each one? Also, MileHi has 2" PTFE gaskets for a buck a piece. Any reason I shouldn't buy those? Yes, replace all of them. PTFE gaskets are much ...

Anybody smart enough to do the math? i'm looking to use 2 120VAC elements .. 2 x1500 watt elements. they measure 35 ohms. i As it was said already 35 Ohms for 120V/1500Watt element is incorrect. However 35 Ohm is a valid cold resistance for 240V/1500Watt element. Could you double check element's sp...

HDNB wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:33 pm

any idea of how much gain i can put into them before the factory smoke comes out? i'm thinking about 7.5A at 240vac?

If you connect them in series - up to 12.5 Amp will be completely OK

seabass wrote: ↑Mon Oct 19, 2020 12:36 pm I'm using that type of meter. As long as you put the current transformer before the scr, you'll have good results.

It doesn't matter where to put current transformer. But the voltage supply lines for meter (contacts 3.4 for that case) should be connected before SCR.

Andrew_90 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2020 6:35 am How would I baffle it? Could you please point me to a post / article.

This?

https://homedistiller.org/forum/downloa ... &mode=view

Yes, exactly. Though I'd place vapor tubes slightly apart from each other.

Something like this? (sizes in mm)


Or this?

I suspect your choice of the 3/4" (22mm) inner tube may result in a channel of vapour up the middle that doesn't get cooled adequately. It's not possible with adequate cooling unless your vapor moving with supersonic speed. Vapor occupies aprox 2000 more volume than a liquid. Therefore, when s...

"An internal spiral" -- if you mean in vapour tube and not water path is very easy to do. Just wrap some 1,5 ~ 2,0 mm copper wire round a 5mm dowel to form a "spring". Stretch it to form a lazy spiral. Works very well It is not a good idea to restrict the flow of liquid in the i...

boiler and riser are hot. vapor tube where it enters condenser is kinda warm. in the meanwhile, i've shut it down - it was depressing watching all that good booze fly away. Most likely it's not a booze but just a less condensable part of your vapor. It often happened especially at the beginning of ...

Has the angle of the liebig changed ? If, by chance, it has moved into a more vertical orientation you may have vapor simply not coming in contact with an internal cool surface. I had a similar issue with my shotgun condenser ... a small change from full vertical to a slight angle eliminated the es...

It doesn't do anything to my fountain style pump and the huffing is probably due to too quick of a cooling at the vapor inlet causing the vapor to collapse quickly and making a vacuum thus drawing air up into the condenser. I also added a little bit of slightly coiled copper wire and copper mesh at...

Proven air cooling solution: Use regular liebig and a water barrel. Just install car radiator (with a fan, of course) between a liebig and a barrel. Plus you need a pump to recirculate. We build such a setup at my friend's garage and it work pretty well. Summer time fan blows all air out of a garage...

It's OK if water coming from condenser has temperature up to 150F. Distillate temperature should be below 100 F. If it's higher you either need to re-do your condenser or decrease a heating power.

Modern CPU has up to 250Watt TDP and a space is limited inside a computer case. That's why liquid cooling is useful there. If you control 5500Watt heater. SSR's TDP is less than 30Watt. So you can use a water cooling but i's just a waist of money. Small heatsink with a fan or bigger one without fan ...

I'm wanting 1-2 220v 5000W elements to heat between 20 and 40 gallons of wash or water. Like I said, building electrical stuff is something I really don't want to deal with, and $34 bucks isn't a big deal. If those don't work is there an affordable controller that you would suggest instead? I'm not...

Do you guys think that this controller would work? I don't know a thing about electricity, hoping to just buy instead of build. https://www.ebay.com/itm/AC-220V-10000W-SCR-Electronic-Voltage-Regulator-Temperature-Speed-Adjust-Co-P8E5/254425588191?epid=8035121340&hash=item3b3cf261df:g:fBMAAOSwE4...

Because I'm a cheap bastard I've always run 1.5" with a hammered flange for my pot still on a 15.5 gallon keg boiler and 5500W element with no problems. For pot still size is not so important. It should only be big enough to not restrict a vapor flow. For 5500Watt element even 3/4" is OK.

For 3000-4000 Watt 240v heating element medium sized vents are enough. You can just do some temperature measurement during a run. Don't let heatsink be hotter than 70-80C (160-175F) Wow, that's definitely the far upper limit for temp, shockingly hot I would say. The MTTF for parts running near that...

So my only question about the still dragon kit is whether that's enough heat sink for the job or should I plan on upgrading that to a pc processor cooler? It depends. For 240V 5500Watt heater you need to provide an unrestricted air flow for passive cooling - place a heatsink outside of box, or make...

SSVR it's exactly your controller where heatsink and pot should be connected external. SSVR just is more reliable and more suitable for industrial use.

That's not shown in the picture tho' is it ? What's not shown in the picture? Capacitor? It's inside an SSVR. And you don't need any external one. [Edit - note also the VR values shown from 470R to 500,000 Ohms - lots of scope for experimentation there - dependingof course on teh values of the ther...

I'd say that if it heats with minimum resistance - but drops out as soon as he turns the resistance up - either the pot is too high value - OR the capacitor has gone leaky ! {Electrolytics are renowned for this } Regular SSVR as on the picture above doesn't have an electrolytic capacitor. Usually i...

tucker0104 wrote:

Pikey wrote:

Thanks for the valuable input. If you wanted specific information then feel free to ask specific questions.

Could you post a few pictures of your wiring?