New member- looking forward to swapping info and continuing to learn!

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Biff_McNielly
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Posts: 12
Joined: Wed May 25, 2022 8:09 am

New member- looking forward to swapping info and continuing to learn!

Post by Biff_McNielly »

Greetings from the Great Pacific Northwest! I’ve been at this hobby for the better part of 12 years now. I have been a on and off home brewer for almost 25 years and when that stupid moonshiners show came out a few friends bugged me about making shine until I caved. I read and read until I felt confident enough to give it a try and I was so surprised at the results of my first run!

My first setup was a basic 5 gallon stainless soup pot with a ever so basic 1” column I made with a few fittings from Home Depot. I thought myself how to solder while making this as well. It was about 12” tall then over to a 1/2” arm and then just your basic 1/2” worm style condenser in a bucket of ice. I made a batch of turbo wash and ran it super slow. My first batch produced 180 proof right out of the gate!

I quickly got bored with that first still and it was a pain to seal and I was learning about different still types so I got myself a keg. Had a friend tig weld the nuts needed for hot water heater elements on it as I did not know much about all the different tri clover fittings back then. Got a 2” X1” copper reducer which I soldered some heavy copper wire around the bottom edge of and was able to use a tri clamp and gasket that way. At this point I still had no knowledge that ferrules existed lol. That column was still 1” copper pipe but was 5 feet tall and I built a 36” condenser for it. The rig worked well but took hours and hours to heat up! Knowing what I know now, I was way under powering the heating elements!

After that I wanted to step up to a all copper rig but stumbled upon a stainless milk can pot still. This was way back before china flooded the market with them. It looked cool but was like learning all over. I have never been happy with that set up and have never been able to get it 100% dialed in. It works but I know it should be more efficient.

Currently I’ve decided to keep the 13 gallon kettle portion of my still and seriously upgrade the column. I’m still just not 100% on what yet. I’m thinking a plate type would be best for me but I don’t want to make any impulsive decisions. I’m currently out of work on medical leave and bored as hell. I had a ton of copper scraps and a few ideas so I built a new column just to play with for now to see how different ideas work. I will make a separate post on that later today when I can get some pics.

Anyway that is all about me…
Jstroke
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Joined: Thu Mar 26, 2020 10:51 am
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Re: New member- looking forward to swapping info and continuing to learn!

Post by Jstroke »

Biff,

Welcome aboard. Sounds like you are having fun and are well down the rabbit hole.

If it were me, I would focus on that keg boiler, put a 5500 watt ULD element on an SCR controller and then a 2” copper pot still head. This will get you making everything except neutral. Learn how to make cuts and I promise you life will get easier, better, or busier.
If in doubt leave it out.
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