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I believe I know more about small scale ethanol FUEL production than anyone else in the world. I believe I know more about small scale continuous stills than anyone else in the world. If someone is better please prove me wrong!!! I know VERY little about making good booze to drink. The site name is...

I built a jet cooker recently out of copper fittings. Steam was supplied by a bathroom/spa steam generator. Grist was malt from CMG that I hammer milled fine, stirred up with enzymes and citric in cool water. I had a valve to control slurry flow, the 11,000 watts of clean steam was full blast. The i...

I went down to Costa rica with a still and did this very thing. Got the coffee cherry skins (arabica) from the mill, fermented them in bags and barrels with water and a bit of sugar. Didn't kill any natural yeast. Used Distilamax TQ (killer strain) and LS seperately. Fermented out in under 36hrs. St...

I am finding that using oat bran is just as useful for mouth feel and suppressing esters. Bran is cheaper and easier to work with. I just give it a long strong simmer with hi temp amylase to thin it out. I rinse it out because I prefer not to ferment on solids.

I lived in Ottawa years ago, made a lot of shine there 2009-2014. Then went legit collaborating with North of 7 on St Laurent.

I'm surprised to hear there is a cooper. What's his name?

IMALOSERSCUMBAG wrote: ↑Tue Mar 16, 2021 10:10 am

I'm forever tainted since I started this hobby a year ago. Can't walk through a grocery store the same.

Tell me about it. Or a hardware store.

This right here, buddy.

Well All producers claim many things but in reality that could differ I have a crystal head vodka which claims 7 times distilled, this could be a marketing stunt, or they use many plates and count each plate 1 distillation :) But when I smell it nothing whatsoever probably they also use carbon filt...

Damn his setup looks nice and simple though. Here's my 3" continuous setup. Left column is stripping, middle is reflux column (still testing) , right is all heat exchangers. I got my 6" stripper running at work and decided i need a unit i could run at home on 120v. i honestly built this ou...

I wish there was more speculation here about what the wheat germ is actually doing for us in the ferment. I was reading about how the high lipid content of oats suppresses ester formation. http://scottjanish.com/case-brewing-oats/ Wheat germ has less lipids than oat germ, but it is still considerabl...

Sweet. You mean 0.2g not 2g right?

Thanks Stibnut, that's really neat. Anything to avoid larger columns at this point, my basement is already full.

How long do you wait after adding the sodium carbonate? What ph do you try and take it to?

My drawing skills are limited but I'll give it a go.

Can I ask how much for 8L of packing? All I've seen for sale are the spiral spring packing, which are not prismatic though they use the term.

Hi guys, thanks for the replies. Yinzer I was thinking of putting a dish in the top of the column and dripping H2SO4 into it on a timer maybe. The still's design has the incoming wash injected as vapour in an upwards direction 6 inches below the lyne arm, and there is a plate about 8 inches below th...

Yes taking advantage of height is a a great power saver. Ferment on the bottom floor. The power of the boil raises the low wines to the second floor. Drain them into the finish still by gravity, boil them up into the finish tanks/barrels. Drain them back down into the blending tanks. No pumps. Regar...

Hey RC, shoot me a pic of what you're looking at. A partition might be indicating the difference between being cooled by wash or by water. You want a diagram? I still have blisters on my fingers from the soldering! Its working really good with the PID controlling the flow rate. Waiting on a few cust...

I've been looking around to see how flavour companies generate these esters for food use if not through resin. Nothing yet. I wonder about instead adding a pool of H2SO4 in the reflux area instead of resin. The boiling temp is above 300c. I'm coming at the continuous operation in a non traditional w...

I have integrated into my continuous still a port for putting mesh cartridges of Amberlyst in the vapor path. I've also obtained lab samples of the ten major carboxylic acids and the ten higher alcohols. This will let me dope the vapour path on the fly for custom esterification. I haven't bought the...

But I saw it in the links on the wiki page already?

I suppose the big question is "Does the Rhizopus (oryzae? oligosporus?) produce GSH enzymes?" Granular Starch Hydrolysis enzymes seem to be the hidden champion here permitting low temperature gelatinization. Rhizo. can be sourced from Tempeh Starter culture. I'd like to use it with various...

Would this design handle solids well from a feed point above the plate? If I made the downcomer bottom cap extra wide? I think I'll build a single cap plate for a 6" column.

I just used calipers and I'd say 1 cm plus or minus 2mm. It nests real well and lifting a 6" spool 18" long full of it is no problem.

As it gets used over the years and friction rubs at it, it actually exposes the hollow bubbles inside giving you more surface area!

edited for redundancy

Oh absolutely Yinzer, I'd feel famous. I was reading you on an old Rum Carboxylic thread by Der Wo - we have some common interests. I just ordered all the carbox acids and all the higher alcohols from a chemical supply house. Going to do some in depth esterification trials here. Nothing better for c...

This is nice work Getsmokin. I was looking up dish and donut baffle trays for my continuous stripper, so I could swap in a different apparatus to handle solids - found this thread. It occurs to me that you might get some tray (baffle) loading and avoid some of the leveling issues if you dished the b...

You can also get brass perforated sheets from Macmaster Carr or the like and solder closed some holes to get the open space you like and use washers for the rest. Washers are a great idea. Fender washers I assume. Stealing that idea for sure. I might just try copper discs cut from a sheet though.

For stills I've sold, probably 400, with the help of employees. For myself, somewhere around 50 starting in 2004. First one was LM, haven't built one since. Lately its been iterations of continuous stills.

You guys are welcome. I missed amylol but will update it soon.

Yeah Weegie, this thread deserves to stay alive. I would toss in a suggestion of using kombucha mothers (scobys) to make the vinegar as they are a symbiosis of yeast and acetobactor, and are now easily obtained in stores. Years ago to get started on kombucha you had to email some guy and he'd drop a...

In the spirit of James Kennedy Monash, who made some lovely infographics relating to taste molecules, I spent several hours building a chart with the flavours of each ester written out and a link to thegoodscentscompany.com website. I found the original chart a bit lacking as it only had a single pi...

I guess debittered yeast from the bulk food store would be equivalent.

I heard yeast release chems when they die that can inhibit future yeast from trying to ferment but likely you can rinse these out.