Home Distiller

In 2018 I was lucky enough to help a friend of a friend in NW France run a bath of gin thru his grandfather's wood fired still. When I asked what his base alcohol was, the old gent shrugged and simply said, "Mirabelle" which is a type of small and sweet green plum. Later I asked what else ...

Maceration, Boiler or Vapour? Why not any or all? Make a run with your bot profile and see what pulls out of each method. Tweek your process to match the results you want. Somewhere I read that adding the more delicate bots(orris rood, angelica, GoP, etc) to vapour path will lend toward a lighter an...

Mine works fine for distilling water and extracting oils in my 5 gallon rig running a 1500w heating element. It does heat up a tad when really running it full power but I habitually slap a small computer cooling fan on everything so it has never been an issue. One thing to note, an electrical contac...

Thanks all, I really appreciate the input. All makes sense. For our uses, hot doesn't matter much since we aren't messing with anything flammable except for giving me a metric of how my rig is running. After I get done with my distilling school and fed/state paperwork I will feel better about firing...

Well, yes and no. I understand the condenser issue for my still if I open the throttles all the way. I have what is essentially a Leibeg condenser with a 1/2" thruput and a 1" water jacket and I am looking at upgrading my rig to a 3" shotgun condenser to match my column size for those...

Heya Bill, I have a controller that is used every time we make a run. Especially the oil runs, they can get crazy bad fast without one... The only time I have had really hot offtake hit the bucket is when I got impatient and cranked things up to 100% power to blast thru a water run. No, really, I ac...

Let me clarify,

We dont get water vapor pushing out, we get offtake that is steaming hot in the catch vessel, or offtake that is really, really warm to the touch.

Thanks,

M

Hello all, I have a rig that is used for distilling water and for the most part runs just fine. If I try to push a large volume thru it I can get offtake from the condenser that is steaming hot, even though the condenser jacket is still cool to the touch. This tells me that it is outrunning my knock...

I have to say I am SHOCKED to see all you peoples exploring the exciting world of distilling.(hypothetically)

We never do that sort of thing in the Midwest, certainly not after years of brewing and vine making.

Shocked I say!

RR