Wood fired

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SmokyMtn
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Re: Wood fired

Post by SmokyMtn »

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To me this would be a good setup. I live in some very secluded woods and cool the worm by a mountain spring. And have lifetimes of free wood. But I still choose propane. No smoke and temperature control are just to convenient.
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shadylane
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Re: Wood fired

Post by shadylane »

That sure looks easier to build than a masonry or rock and mud fire box
And a lot easier to hide or pick up and run with :lol:

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Re: Wood fired

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Thanks shady
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Re: Wood fired

Post by Bryan1 »

When I get my new boiler finished the vinegar and sac runs are going be done with a fire under the boiler and if it works out then the bolier is getting a new home in a stone shed and be builtin.

so on a cold winters night it will be a nice warm jobbie of making moonshine

Cheers Bryan
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Re: Wood fired

Post by AdamS »

I remember my Grandfather firing a massive copper still with wood when I was a kid on the farm.
It was a huge thing! Must have been in the region of 1000L easy.
They used to use fruit and ferment and pot still it into what we called Mampoer and Witblits - basically fruit Brandy.
It helped that they had an export table grape farm and various orchards planted for making preserves, jams and so forth.
This would have been early 80's.

Huge pot with a combined onion/Lyne arm all in one into a worm that was in a wine vat.
Feints were given to the farm labourers who assisted in the stoking of the fire, chopping the wood and cleanup.
It was quite the festive occasion as the neighbouring farmers would pop in and check on how things were progressing.
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Re: Wood fired

Post by contrahead »

living in the hollar wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 6:21 am Rocket stove minimal effort minimal wood requirements
I'm not sure everyone followed your reference to the “rocket stove”. The little rocket stoves that poor people in 3rd world countries might use to cook their meals on, need only small twigs - for use as fuel. The draft in a rocket stove makes the fuel burn fast and efficiently. However there is little way to regulate heat using the basic design. Perhaps with out knowing it, many backwoods moonshiners have been using a modified rocket stove principle for centuries. The way they (use to) form a furnace around the kettle has great influence over heat distribution and restriction of airflow over the fire.
Chauncey wrote: Sat Jan 11, 2020 6:25 am You ever see the way popcorn built a furnace round his setup in the woods in that documentary bout him? That's a starting point for a setup design id say
Well that setup and design did not belong to Popcorn Sutton. Moonshiners in the Appalachian mountains have been using the same setup since before the “Whiskey Rebellion”.

Made some 10 years ago these following drawings are my doing but unfortunately not my original ideas. Not giving my intellectual property away here. The first four sketches were drawn and embellished from pictures already published in one of the famous “Foxfire books”. I've never shown them before, but they are freehand drawings and therefore copyright free from the book.
moon1.jpg
moon3.jpg
moon4.jpg
moon2.jpg
This last illustration had nothing to do with the Firefox book. It was merely an idea called a mini-thumper, employed by some simple little stills advertised in the past. Employing a pint mason jar filled with copper coated BBs, the idea appealed to me at the time, as a cheap and simple way to fabricate a sight glass along the vapor path.
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Re: Wood fired

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From the beginning of my off grid lifestyle research I wanted to build a wood fired hot tub. Then after I got into distilling I wanted to make that wood fired hot tub look like a big ol pot still. And the hot tub is the flake stand. You could have a big ol pot still out in the open for everyone to see. But yet everyone would think it’s just a decorative hot tub. My thoughts was to use local rock and concrete to build up the fire box around the boiler. Probably color the concrete more like red clay. I would probably build a roof over the whole thing. Open on the sides. Chimney going up through the roof. The bottom half of the boiler that was in the fire box would be stainless. And the top copper. The flake stand would be a wooden tub built like a flat sided barrel. With rings and wood floor. Many wooden hot tub designs out there. But it would probably be easier to just use a big ol stock tank and clad it with wood. And in a no budget I want it cool thinking. The worm would be a huge 2” copper pipe coil around the outside of the flake stand hot tub. I would put a ring of wood around the inside to keep people from touching the worm. Those wood slats would have spacing so the water could flow around. That ring would also be the back for the wooden benches in the tub. I would run gutters off the roof into the hot tub to collect the Rain water.

How cool would it be to be able to jump in the hot tub after a long day of distilling? And relax with a nice homemade drink in your hand.

Sorry is that off topic? :lol:

Edited to add: You could have a couple actual barrels placed around it. And hide actual filtration system for the hot tub in them. To keep the water from getting nasty. :lol:
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Re: Wood fired

Post by Prairiepiss »

I am liking this drawing and I am steeling it. I think I can modify that and use it for the wood fired steam boiler. Thanks contrahead.
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Re: Wood fired

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I can see that the designs offered here would be more efficient, but how about just using a small wood cook stove? I can't see that it would be much different than using a gas burner. Especially if you were using some sort of a diffuser on the burner to minimize scorching. Assuming you have plenty of fuel so efficiency is not really an issue it seems easy to set up an old 4 or 2 plate wood stove to provide a heat source. Anyone who had cooked on one has the knowledge to control the draft to maintain a fairly constant heat. Anyone tried this and found it wanting?
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Re: Wood fired

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subbrew wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:12 pm I can see that the designs offered here would be more efficient, but how about just using a small wood cook stove? I can't see that it would be much different than using a gas burner. Especially if you were using some sort of a diffuser on the burner to minimize scorching. Assuming you have plenty of fuel so efficiency is not really an issue it seems easy to set up an old 4 or 2 plate wood stove to provide a heat source. Anyone who had cooked on one has the knowledge to control the draft to maintain a fairly constant heat. Anyone tried this and found it wanting?
I've done that several times. It works well for me. Scorching can only happen if you have something in the pot that can scorch.
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Re: Wood fired

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Rocket Stoves may well do the trick.
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Re: Wood fired

Post by icrazy »

So just to revive this a little ive been experimenting with a chiminea under my still with a pot still with even sized pieces of wood with a set time between each piece being added (3x2 untreated wood from work for free) and the heat is resonably consistent with the pot still. I was wondering if a liquid management column would be more consistant for neutrals as the temp doesnt effect the flow quite as much. Then use a lava rock packed column with a bubble plate ball at the bottom to hopefully help with reducing smearing in the tails due to the small heat fluctuations.

Basicly trying to use other new and old technology to run the still smoother on a fire

It has a nice feel of old school meets next gen

Any thaughts
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Re: Wood fired

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icrazy wrote: Sat Oct 22, 2022 3:38 am So just to revive this a little ive been experimenting with a chiminea under my still with a pot still with even sized pieces of wood with a set time between each piece being added (3x2 untreated wood from work for free) and the heat is resonably consistent with the pot still. I was wondering if a liquid management column would be more consistant for neutrals as the temp doesnt effect the flow quite as much. Then use a lava rock packed column with a bubble plate ball at the bottom to hopefully help with reducing smearing in the tails due to the small heat fluctuations.
I personally don't ever and wouldn't ever run an open-topped VM or LM system on a woodfire. CM only, for safety's sake, with separate coolant lines for reflux condenser and an overbuilt product condenser to ensure you re-condense all the vapor coming out the takeoff end of the lyne arm... no matter how high the vapor speed or volume it may accidentally become in a worst-case scenario.

Running on woodfire can create some big temperature swings in your heat input, especially if you run a system with a chimney pipe to draft the flue path around the boiler twice and then up away from the still. If the wind picks up, it causes greater suction on the chimney pipe, pulls more air into the firebox, and the fire flares up with the increased draw. Same thing if you run a firebox with no door and the wind shifts to blow directly into the firebox. Big flare up and an increase in heat.

In stove design terms, they call that "over-fueling" because the wood in a woodfire technically isn't the fuel that actually burns... the woodgasses produced from wood pyrolysis are the fuel that burns... and so a big increase in primary air causes a spike in the amount of pyrolyzed woodgas. A spike in air + woodgas fuel means a spike in combustion rate, and a spike in heat.

There will also be smaller peaks and valleys in heat output as fresh wood is laid on. First stage of burn is the more volatile woodgas component that flares up brightly with long yellow flames, then smaller, more steady blueish flame as the wood turns to char, basically only burning the residual carbon at a slower, more-even rate...until you lay more wood on, and the burn cycle repeats.

Compared to propane, that would be like having someone constantly turning the regulator valve up and down throughout the run.

Those peaks and valleys in heat will increase / decrease the boiling rate, which translates to increase / decrease of the vapor speed... which is likely to blow alcohol vapor out of the top of a VM or LM stillhead with its port that's open to the atmosphere. At best, that's a lot of lost/wasted product. But being directly over a woodfire, that's a huge flash-fire risk at worst.

Old timers built big rock-and-clay furnaces for their boilers and fired them indirectly... with the still mostly only heated by the post-combustion flue gasses (downstream of the firebox.) And the rock and clay acted as thermal storage mass around the boiler, too, helping to even-out the swings in temperature... much like a masonry heater or rocket mass heater that captures and emits radiant heat more slowly/steadily than a naked flame does.

Rocketstoves can work to ensure you're always burning wood at a thorough and steady pace... but the traditional J-tube designs require you to constantly feed them with small-diameter sticks, which gets to be a PITA real quick.

Some newer designs of rocket stove are called "batchboxes" because they can take a given load of wood logs and burn them thoroughly at a steady rate for approx. 45 minutes to 1 hour between re-loads. That makes using a rocketstove for cooking or distilling a lot more practical.

There are a couple really good new designs of batchbox rocket stoves for cooking out there, which take a rockestove's riser and more-or-less turn it sideways to facilitate a convenient cooktop height. One is designed by a guy named Matt Walker, which he calls the "Walker Riserless Core" and another by a guy that goes by the handle "Vortex" or "Trev" with his "Vortex Cookstove." Most of the design aspects you can find for free online with some google searching.

There's also the "Institutional Cookstove" designed by Aprovecho Research Institute, (somebody linked to one of those a while back,) but that design is poor for brewing & distilling, I've found. It heats the sides of the boiler pot as much as the bottom, and will tend to scorch the residues on the sidewalls inside the pot as the liquid level drops. Sealing the flue pathway around the pot skirt of an institutional stove is also a big PITA if you use a straight-walled pot. And it really abuses the bottom of the boiler pot with naked rocketstove flame blasting directly onto it, which damages the corrosion resistance of the stainless steel after a while. Potentially also promotes bottom scorching if you run anything with solids or grain residues. Copper scrap "boiling chips" in the bottom of the pot can help with that to some degree, though, I've found.

Basicly trying to use other new and old technology to run the still smoother on a fire. It has a nice feel of old school meets next gen
There's that, for sure. But for me, personally, there's also mallard reactions, esterification, and reconversion of some fermentation byproducts from aldehydes / fusel oils, etc. back to ethanol and desirable fatty acids which happens most efficiently when the pot is held over direct heat for an extended low-and-slow run over a fire. Steam and/or electric elements just don't make the same type of deeply complex whiskey or rum (to my subjective palette) as the spirit made slowly over a fire... and wood is free and abundant where I am... while propane is the exact opposite.

For me, distilling is like slow-smoking a BBQ brisket. Steaming or electric grilling just doesn't work to make the flavorful magic happen.

Cheers, brother
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Re: Wood fired

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J Allen Kaiser wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 6:16 am "There are a couple really good new designs of batchbox rocket stoves"
That's an informative post J. Allen. Yer not a very talkative dude seeings how that was only your 2nd comment in 10 years.


Some ideas haven't changed that much. I wanted to post an image of a 500 year old woodcutting, and thought of this thread to post it into. However this old thread was very hard to find for some reason. A wood fired pot still appeals to me for simple aesthetic reasons. But also, it would be the only type of still left working – if or when the sh1# hits the fan; when the electrical grid gets melted by EMP or solar mass ejection, or LP deliveries cease because all supply chain transportation breaks down.

Using a 'Google Image Search' I've discovered a source for this old illustration.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/343854
Print of PHARMACY, c1500. A medieval herb garden and distillery. Woodcut, German, c1500 / by Johann Gruninger
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Re: Wood fired

Post by drmiller100 »

thecroweater wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2020 5:26 am Popcorn Sutton's thumper setup

Cool video. Thank you.

You can do wood fired with a doubler. Seems pretty hard to run a reflux still on wood.
I tried to run my continuous on etoh. I haven't gotten it to work yet
Now I know how you claim azeo so easy, it's based on a meat thermometer. :lol:
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Re: Wood fired

Post by shadylane »

I figure the boiler design for moonshine is based on a sugar wash.
A different set of requirements work better when distilling a mash or must.
Not only in heated surface area vs volume but also in ease of draining, cleaning and refilling the pot.
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Re: Wood fired

Post by thecroweater »

drmiller100 wrote: Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:00 pm You can do wood fired with a doubler. Seems pretty hard to run a reflux still on wood.
I tried to run my continuous on etoh. I haven't gotten it to work yet
Friend up the track here runs a thumper no problems on wood, or did. Believe he plans to switch to gas as its easier and cleaner :thumbup:
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Re: Wood fired

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there is a rum distillery in Lunenburg Nova Scotia Canada that uses a wood fired still. It's all pro-made by one of the fancy manufacturers like Klothe or that ilk...it was fairly compact and they admittedly had to do a lot of attention management, to throw the right size of stick in there at the right time.

i cut a link to it. didn't see a lot of great photos of the equipment, but interesting none the less. https://ironworksdistillery.com/collections/tours-1
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Re: Wood fired

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HDNB wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:54 am there is a rum distillery in Lunenburg Nova Scotia Canada that uses a wood fired still. It's all pro-made by one of the fancy manufacturers like Klothe or that ilk...it was fairly compact and they admittedly had to do a lot of attention management, to throw the right size of stick in there at the right time.

i cut a link to it. didn't see a lot of great photos of the equipment, but interesting none the less. https://ironworksdistillery.com/collections/tours-1
That is super interesting. Me and the Mrs. Have been discussing a trip to the east coast. I would definitely check that out when I'm there
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Re: Wood fired

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Bradster68 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 2:12 pm
HDNB wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:54 am there is a rum distillery in Lunenburg Nova Scotia Canada that uses a wood fired still. It's all pro-made by one of the fancy manufacturers like Klothe or that ilk...it was fairly compact and they admittedly had to do a lot of attention management, to throw the right size of stick in there at the right time.

i cut a link to it. didn't see a lot of great photos of the equipment, but interesting none the less. https://ironworksdistillery.com/collections/tours-1
That is super interesting. Me and the Mrs. Have been discussing a trip to the east coast. I would definitely check that out when I'm there
the distillery itself is small, i never did the "tour" but you could pretty much stand in the middle of the room and do 360* and see it all. Would highly recommend the visit to Lunenburg though, it is an awesome little town and the Bluenose II docks there, so try and make it coincide when you're there....that is a very nice sailboat to go for a float on, a high lite of the trip in fact. i was only there for 2 days, could have done 3...would definitely go back for another short stay. it's a short drive from Halifax, which is also definitely worth visiting. we stayed at "lord nelson" hotel, which was very nice and central to a ton of activities and sights, and the waterfront
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Re: Wood fired

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HDNB wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 3:30 pm
Bradster68 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 2:12 pm
HDNB wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 11:54 am there is a rum distillery in Lunenburg Nova Scotia Canada that uses a wood fired still. It's all pro-made by one of the fancy manufacturers like Klothe or that ilk...it was fairly compact and they admittedly had to do a lot of attention management, to throw the right size of stick in there at the right time.

i cut a link to it. didn't see a lot of great photos of the equipment, but interesting none the less. https://ironworksdistillery.com/collections/tours-1
That is super interesting. Me and the Mrs. Have been discussing a trip to the east coast. I would definitely check that out when I'm there
the distillery itself is small, i never did the "tour" but you could pretty much stand in the middle of the room and do 360* and see it all. Would highly recommend the visit to Lunenburg though, it is an awesome little town and the Bluenose II docks there, so try and make it coincide when you're there....that is a very nice sailboat to go for a float on, a high lite of the trip in fact. i was only there for 2 days, could have done 3...would definitely go back for another short stay. it's a short drive from Halifax, which is also definitely worth visiting. we stayed at "lord nelson" hotel, which was very nice and central to a ton of activities and sights, and the waterfront
Nice.. good to know. 🍻
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