New to HD, Hi all !

[matjans]

Hi all,

Relatively new to HD, been reading and lurking in the shadows for quite a while. Wanted to respond to a thread, turns out I never introduced myself, so here go.

Based in netherlands and italy, been making my own on and off for about 20 years. When I was a student 20 years ago our kitchen boiler went titsup so I decided to convert it to a potstill. Brewed some nice jenevers with it. When I 'grew up' my time was sucked up by work, later still by the kids and onlyrecently I dug up the old pot from the garden where it stood silently being ornamental, gave it a bit of a shine and restarted distilling. I forgot how much fun it was .

Now mainly interested in making rum, still using the potstill although I did convert it from gas to electric, and replaced the liebig with a shotgun type condensor.

Apparently I can't post any pics (yet?), I would have if I could have

[rubelstrudel]

Welcome. When you have participated with a few posts you will be allowed to post pics. I'm looking forward to hearing from your exploits.

[HDNB]

Hi Welcome in! you should be able to post pics as an attachment. have to use the full editor not just the quick reply.

[fizzix]

matjans, make sure your photo is no larger than 500 kilobytes.
The easiest way to post a photo is to hit the "Full Editor And Preview" button and simply copy the picture,
then paste it right here in the dialog field. Forget those "Place Inline" tools and such --not needed.
To view the picture, press the "Preview" button.

For your rum fix, head over to Tried & True Recipes and check out the few rum recipes over there.
All good. All proven to work.

I'm glad you've re-discovered distilling, and wish you the best.
Welcome!

[matjans]

Thanks guys, i can attach stuff now.

As promised...

As it was after a couple of years outside just doing nothing.

After some elbow grease, vinegar run to clean it out. I scrubbed the inside of the liebig with a stainless sponge, quite som green copper oxide came out.
Cleaned everything really good, and a second vinegar run.

Decided to go electric. Much safer and a wider window of opportunity to run it. The burner I have is way overkill for this small 10L boiler, so I have to turn it down as far as it goes without the wind blowing the flames out. Annoying. Added a bottom valve aswell, easier to dump the backset.

Converted to electric, with a small control box. Decided to go for a cheap DIN rail box, normally used for fuses etc.

Added an ESP8266 from the partsbin, with some DS18B20s. Can go from here to anywhere with this setup, just the box getting too small.

Current state of affairs. Got some Ali stuff in last week, for me the most important was the condenser as the liebig, simple and effective as it is, tends to huff/puff (make your pick) towards the end of the runs when ABV drops below 30ish. % that is, not proof (long live the metric system)

Still to receive from Ali: 2" sight glass for the front, will put that somewhere above the aluminum heat shield and a couple of 2" end caps. Still have a few ferrules in the parts bin, will use one as a filler cap and the other -- or at least that's the plan -- for a diy agitator.

Again, thanks for the replies,
Regards,

Matt

A neighbour promised me an empty keg, so I'll get to build another boiler somewhere this year. No rush, time to brush up on my tig welding skills

[Corsaire]

Wow, you don't muck about do you?

Welkom. Have fun in your rediscovered hobby!

[matjans]

https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... b0ef5740c2