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thanks for all the advice! I don't use an internal element. I have a big induction hot plate for heating. I still don't feel super comfortable doing a spirit run in my ~10gal boiler with 2gal low wines. Although it should be fine... I think I will try the 1.5x solution first and read up on the theor...

Hi everyone, I have built a new-ish still. I can run it in pot still mode or as a CCVM still. Obviously the standard way to go for fruit brandy is to pot still twice. However my plantations are not that vast and I am going to struggle to harvest enough fruit per kind to fill the boiler 2-3x in order...

Update: It works! I managed to wrangle two copper scrubbies on the coil and into the pipe. It's a really tight fit now. Started a sacrifice run and it works great. Even with the hot plate at full power of 3500W it knocks everything down and the product comes out at around 90% abv. Thanks so much eve...

Thanks everyone, you have given me great pointers. It seems my view was oversimplified. I assumed basically that since water/vinegar has a higher boiling point than water/ethanol, it would take less cooling "power" by the coil to condense it back to liquid form. Sorry, difficult to express...

Hi everyone, I recently built my first still. It works great in pot mode but I'm having trouble in CCVM mode. I use a 2" Triclamp system and therefore a 3/8" Corrugated Stainless Steel coil (IIRC 5' long) as a bigger one won't fit. My boiler is a stock pot on an induction hot plate that ca...

yes of course, I'm going to discard everything. I should have made that more clear I suppose.

I just wanted to make sure cleaning the still with the sacrificial run didn't require a clean homemade wash with nothing in it.

But it looks like I'm good to go. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm about to do my first sacrificial run and I had the idea of using all the assorted booze that has been accumulating in the basement over the years. Gifted bottles of wine, mead, bottles of brandy that still have 20% of their content that I'll never drink, etc. Can I do that? Do I hav...

I would advise to test the pot first before drilling it. Boil a certain volume of water, count the seconds untill boiling and aply the formula: 4200 x Volume of water x (Final temperature - Initial temperature) / Seconds = Watts used. Thanks. But I'm not too concerned about not having enough power....

Hi everyone, I'm in the process of building my first still and I'm wondering what I can use as a boiler (~35l or 10gal). I've done quite a bit of reading but I'm not sure what exactly to do. I mainly want to distill my own fermented fruits. So I'll be dealing with almost 100% mashes with gunk, pits,...

Around that, maybe a little less. It varies quite a bit, depending on how ripe the fruit is and so far I get it ready to drink at 40% from the distiller. He makes a really good product so unfortunately the bar is set pretty high for my own experiments.

about 30-40 gallons a year. It's a lot of work but I like the idea of all that fruit not going to waste. Besides a bottle of almost home made brandy is always a great gift.

I have made mash from my own fruits the past couple of years and given them to a semi commercial distiller nearby. Now I'm looking into trying it out on my own. Already found a lot of great info in this forum, so I'm looking forward to being part of the community.