My First!

[Runamuckr]

As the title says, first post, intro, a little background, and my current goals as of now, I have no doubt I'll be expanding on them as I gain experience.

This will likely be a bit long, but we should all be good at reading by now

So I've been playing with a small pot still on my stove top consisting of an old pressure cooker, some 1/4 inch copper pipe and a small bucket to cool my worm. Needles to say, I mostly ran cheap box wine, some old booze, basically anything I thought I could pull something out of. Bottom line, it worked. Likely being overly cautious with charges and cuts. Taste good? Not really. And using a 6 qt pot.....well....I didn't feel so bad about using what dripped from the worm in the garage rather then dumping it in my gut. However, The education my nose and tongue received truly is priceless. Small sugar washes (TPW) were fun once working out the right recipe, and UJSM worked pretty good in small batches as well, but ya just don't get much out of a 1 gallon wash. To clarify, not much to drink anyway.

So.....On to a bigger still.

Not wanting to go huge, I decided on using the 7.75 pony keg, the short fat one. A 5 gallon wash would leave me plenty of head space, and room to dump in some fients should I want to experiment with that. I also want to play with a thumper, the thread about dumping "flavoring" into the thumper via a valve AFTER pulling fores and some heads all but keeps me awake at night. Which brings me to the first set of goals. I'm after a neutral, and I'd like to try to flavor my spirits while keeping them clear. I'd also like to make a nice corn likker as well. Oh, and I want to do it with a pot still aand a thumper.

I've sourced, 2 pony kegs from a scrap yard. They had about 50 kegs on my first trip, most pretty banged up, some even had holes torn in them. Well, after weekly visits for three months, I found one in good shape, and 3 weeks later found a second one. Hows that for patience? I asked for a receipt each time and they gave one with out question. In the event I get questioned. I chose to use the single hole in/out on the thumper, running 2 inch from boiler and reducing to 1 inch to feed the thumper. Its a nice clean look, and demands that "how in the hell" from a few folks who have had the privilage of seeing it. My exit is 1 inch then stepped down to half inch, my worm is 3/8 ID 1/2 OD. I'll be using a bayou burner as my heat source. And I'll have a 1 inch threaded pipe welded into the thumper for my valved "injection" after I've done some runs to get a feel for things.

That being said, this forum is priceless, I've had some interesting ideas, and this great place has confirmed, or undoubtedly saved my life time and time again. I hope this isn't to long. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you guys, and continuing to learn form yours.

I should have this all finished up next weekend and hope to be doing my cleaning and sac run by then.
Thanks for reading!

[cranky]

Welcome to HD Runamuckr, glad to see you have been doing the research It's nice to see someone with patience, As GaFlatwoods says, patience is the hardest thing to put in a bottle. I guess the next step it to post some pictures or start a build thread

[Runamuckr]

Thanks cranky.

I'll try to get pictures up in the next couple of days. I wont have any progress pics, but I can post some of the end result.

[MoonBreath]

Welcome to HD!
+1 on some pics.
Seems like you are enthused, off to the races, and having fun.
You seem to know the drill.
Good luck, be safe, keep postn.

[Runamuckr]

I figured I'd do some updating in my original thread rather then start a whole new one, so here goes....

First, my apologies for not getting pictures up. I'll work on that.

I never did get a port welded into my thumper, and in fact, have taken the thumper out of the mix for now. I've done this for a couple reasons, 1- my soldering skills are far from perfect, and soldering 2inch thick wall copper pipe just made that more evident. I had a hard time getting rid of pin hole leaks, and it just looked like chit.
2- I also seemed to have trouble driving the still, to hot, to cold, steam out the worm, drip to slow, bla bla bla.
Accepting that maybe this was too much too soon, I've resorted to a simple pot still keeping the pony keg for the boiler, 2 inch column 12 inches long. I also ditched the worm and switched to a liebig 3/4 over 1/2 with slight crimps in the 1/2 to create a bit of turbulance in the flow of cooling water. 38 inch long with 30 inch water jacket.

And well, youd of thought I been makin likker for years. Ran my vinegar, did a straight water run, some cheap wine, then slow dripped bridwatchers TPW. Amazing! A bit conservative on when I swapped jars, used pints and basically swapped at half full. Damn fine likker!

That being said, I'm on my 14th batch bubbling away now. Running it through a second time practically gives me high proof water. The TPW is so easy, I can count on it fermenting out in 5-7 days, and gives a good(enough)neutral. I typically cut to 80 proof and keep a jar or two of high proof for those that feel they need more hair on their chests. 80 proof seems to be just right, lets ya know its likker, but wont chase ya away. Great as an alternative to vodka in mixed drinks. Absolutely amazing in blody marrys, though I might be biased due to the tomato paste.

Have played around with some flavoring, mostly fruit, but hard to keep it clear. Which was the initial goal. I'm about to start playing around with some "extracts" of a few things since the extracts are clear themselves. I'll report back on this likely with a different thread about extracts.

As I said, just an update. Thanks for reading, and I welcome any input.

[fizzix]

Welcome Runamuckr!