Home Distiller

I think you're both right. I just found a cheap 200 litre (55 gallon) drum online, and I'll go with that. What sold me was idea of no cleanup... just bin the liner when it's all over. A bit wasteful, but so is using bucketloads of hot water to clean your fermenter.

Has anyone ever heard of using a chest freezer as a fermenter? A lot of brewers will use them as a fermenting chamber (ie put carboys inside for temperature control). I mean using the freezer itself as a vessel to hold your wash. I'm looking at a free one online, about 120 litres or so. Pros: -Airti...

I wouldn't personally waste the time and money on a sacrificial spirit run. Clean it with citric acid and water for a while, then the foreshots and heads should finish the job. Toss them away, and you're good to go. I don't understand this obsession with cleaning. My still is all stainless, with no ...

Great tip! Never thought of coconut sugar. I usually add a sprinkle of desiccated coconut to my spiced rum, because I'm an all round coconut fan.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My two cents is we don't need a parent site at all, just a wiki and a forum. Whatever is on the parent site is presumably just going to duplicate what's on the wiki and the forum, but it's not editable by the community. A wiki is a proven way of crowdsourcing good content and sharing the labor. I pl...

MichiganCornhusker wrote:

DavidR wrote:Having a coherent 'consensus' document linked to the forum would fantastic for other noobs.

...would be fantastic...

I set myself up for that. Hoisted with my own petard.

Hi Jesse, I'm a relative noob here, but I am a professional writer and editor so I could probably bring some value. I think the wiki idea is excellent, because my problem with learning from scratch via the the forum was the somewhat disorganized nature of it. Having a coherent 'consensus' document l...

Hi all,

I made a 2 litre batch of limoncello, but I must have left too much pith on the skin and it's bitter.

I don't want to just dump it. Would it be crazy to run it? Anyone tried it before? Would my column taste like lemon forever?

DR

EDIT I have not had any problems with overpowering flavor with cloves but that may be due to my recipe not adding too much. Great advice Windy City, and I totally agree it's about balance, which takes time to achieve. Love your idea about hanging ingredients on strings! Also I might be mistaking to...

What is your base for this and how do you age yours? . My best result has been with dark rum from a pot still that was way overspiced (too much clove and orange) then run back through my column at a fairly low reflux to preserve some flavour. I then spiced it again more conservatively, with some oa...

I'm just a nooby upstart around here, but I would wager you could save yourself a whole lot of work and hassle by scrapping the old forum and rolling all the content into a wiki that can be edited by members.

In two litres, I use half a cinnamon stick, a pinch of ginger powder, a vanilla bean, a small sprinkle of orange zest, 7-8 raisins, a sprinkle of desiccated coconut and some five spice. I would advise against adding cloves, because the flavour can be too strong too quick. Also orange zest needs to b...

This is one way you could make it work - add a second condenser in line with the column and a weir to capture the distillate before the takeoff valve.

What you have depicted here still seems like a LM setup. To make it a VM still you need to split the vapour stream in two at some point. From what I can tell, all your gate valve does in this diagram is constrict the flow rate of vapour to your condenser. It's also a potential bomb, if you were to a...

Aussie here, and I had the same problem. If you have access to a metal lathe, here's a solution I came up with - copper nuggets. It's virtually free, and makes an excellent packing material.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 17&t=66993

Just to be clear, are you saying you literally just have one take off hole? Correct Looking at that 90 degree angle, I'd imagine the liquid returning to the column isn't as central as if it flowed through a damn pipe. I was worried about this, and I was going to try and fix it, but I'm pulling 96% ...

This might old news to some, but an interesting discovery I made after adding a sight glass to my condenser is that it only starts to fog up when the tails are starting. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemsf-aGiB0 I also just wanted to show off my new build. I can watch that dripping coi...

If anyone has built one of these I'm wondering how big the damn should be? Willy, I recently built a LM reflux that's a bit l like this, and I did away with a dam/weir completely. I have a 10mm take off pipe coming off the bottom of a 50mm elbow. The liquid flowing past goes down the tube and throu...

For that kind of money you could pick up one of these. I can't attest to their quality, but they m look very impressive and are cheap as cheap for what you're getting. https://www.reddit.com/r/firewater/comments/6ekxyq/new_quartz_crystal_column_from_ali_express_4/" onclick="window.open(thi...

The problem for me was that all the cheap, pure copper mesh seemed to be in the USA. The postage to Australia doubles the cost of the item at least. I would recommend this as an option for anyone with access to a lathe. These little mcnuggets (or Cu-nuggets) are surprisingly heavy, but they let plen...

The final product. Pulls 96% ABV. Very happy with the setup.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Pulling 96% ABV with these little babies in my column today. Very pleased with the results.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A single copper scrubber costs $10 at my local home brew place. Looking to save money I made up a bunch of these little copper packing nuggets using a lathe to turn some scrap 1/2 inch pipe into swarf. I then pounded the loose swarf into nuggets inside a 50mm pipe. Nice and dense, but seem to let pl...

I have about 20 metres of speaker cable that I've pulled out of my house - I'm now running bluetooth. It's thick, expensive, good quality stuff. Has anyone ever tried removing the copper core and using it for packing a column?? Is it always pure copper, or can it sometimes contain other nasties?

Removing the dough - just wet it and come back in 10 mins. I like the rag idea too.

Pikey, the inside diameter of the outlet tube will be 8mm. The OD is 10mm. Still_stirrin, the plan is to put a cap on the tee with a hole drilled in it and a thermometer in the hole sealed by a compression fitting or teflon tape. It's probably the more expensive option pikey, but half the fun is the...

Yummyrum, I'll probably put a little slanted plate the lower copper gasket to direct some/most of the liquid to the centre. Der wo, thanks that's something I didn't think of. It should be solved by the copper gasket I think. The liquid should hit the top side of the gasket and run down. I might bend...

Hi all, I'm making rum using an all stainless pot still. I don't have any copper packing (have ordered some but could be weeks away) so I'm thinking about just suspending a bunch of old copper scrap (mostly pipe bits) in the boiler during distillation. Any thoughts? Does it HAVE to be in the vapour ...

Here are the components I'm planning to order:

2" stainless sanitary spool (2 @ 610mm)

2" stainless sanitary tee

2" stainless elbow

10mm needle valve

Hi all, Any thoughts on this design? I want to build an offset head with stainless steel bits of eBay. I couldn't see the need for welding a special tube to take the reflux back to the column, so my solution is to just use a copper gasket with a slightly narrow aperture to create a dam. The takeoff ...