Ageing vessel concept

Treatment and handling of your distillate.

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Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Cheers Bushman

I'm trying to upload a video file, can you advise which file extensions are good to use, i've tried .MOV and .AVI and they are not allowed.

Thank you

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by still_stirrin »

I’m not sure you can upload a video to the site. Typically videos are hosted on an external site, like Youtube or Vimeo, and then linked with a URL tag.

But certainly either .mov or .avi video files would not be allowed because both of those file specs are uncompressed. I would think you would need to compress them to a .mp4 at the very least.
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by WVdownunder »

God I do love this build thread. I only hope some cowboy doesn't try to copy it and torch themselves.
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Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Cheers WV
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Hello

So final, and it never is, final finishes touches to the ageing vessel, I soldered on a section of CSST to the air input, I was getting some slight drain in to the air line from the tank, and instead of fitting a one way valve, think that would be useless plus, did not want to introduce any rubber in the line as most of the valves have a rubber seal.
IMG_4124.jpg
I also added a weight relief air line holder to reduce any joint tension on the air output and air input.
IMG_4125.jpg
There is a quick release connector on the vessel side I fitted originally to allow easy cleaning and moving around, and fitted a quick release on the controoler side air line as well this allows me to remove the air line totally without stressing the output or input connections.
IMG_4126.jpg
A couple of better views of the airline connections fitted so you get the full picture.
IMG_4127.jpg
IMG_4128.jpg
A view of the air flow in the tank, its just water in the take for testing.
IMG_4130.jpg
I finished the spirit run on the rum Sunday, ran 2 sets of rum in the ultrasonic tank before adding to the ageing vessel, before adding the rum to the ageing vessel with oak.

I ran the vessel in manual mode for half an hour late Sunday night as I will be thinking more on the heating cycles and oxygenation cycles, you would have thought I would have that sorted, but, its not that simple, the heating cooling cycles are more straight forward, but, I've never been able to find any qualitative information on how much oxygenation to give ageing, they is a reasonable amount of head space in the tank , I originally had the thought of every other day to have the air line activate but, I'm thinking half hour per week would be more like the normal, the pump delivers a lot of air even when backed off to half power, and one of the things I have to consider is evaporation, there is a really nice amount of natural reflux that condenses on the tank lid. So, its going to be a learning curve for sure, I've got a reasonable amount of ageing experience in glass carboys and have tried the nuclear method.

We shall see how far the rabbit hole goes.

I'll try and feedback on this build on the development of the rum in the vessel, but, this is only the second rum I've actually done, most of my work is Gin, Vodka and Brandy, but, my brother in law has come back from the Caribbean with an appropriate amount of rums for me to reference to.

Hope you've enjoyed the build as much as I have in building it, if anyone out there want to do something similar, and needs any advise then please ask, please please, do not cut out any of the safety aspects of the build, and as normal advise, you are working with electricity, if in doubt don't do it.

I've mentioned before, I'm looking to incorporate, eventually some of the safety aspect from this in to the main controller.

Cheers

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

On oak.
IMG_4134.jpg
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by richard1 »

looks good
Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Cheers Richard, hows your build going?
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by richard1 »

Build is complete but am redoing all my instrumentation for Ex (Atex) compliant.

I am wetting my pants as to what money is required, e.g. the Ex rated level switch is 7 times pricier than my standard EH probe. Other instrumentation items also have massive Ex costs. I have 7 temperature transmitters, 1 pressure transmitter and 1 level switch on the still. Now to add insult to injury for every instrument you need to additionally have an isolation barrier for each and this individual cost is similarly huge. For digital outputs e.g. valves, I have swapped electronic for pneumatic so as to avoid stupid costs.

So am battling all above.
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Richard

I’m interested, when you say transmitters, this to me suggests they are, well, transmitting as in RF radio frequency, rather than hard wired, send a picture of them if you could,

Cheers

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Hello

4 days in and just 2 heat cycles and 3 oxygenation's, I'm getting my head around the process, it takes 3 hours to get from 15 degrees to 60 degrees C, I'm setting the programmer on a daily basis as the week goes by, I'm only oxygenating for 2 minutes per day and only when the temperature is below 20 degrees C, this should minimise the evaporation as oxygenating the rum when hot is just going to push out the high proof vapour out of the vessel.

So, the air pump is set to come on at 2 mins to 7 at night say on the Tuesday, at 7 the air pump turns off and the timer for the heater turns on for 3 hours and 5 mins, and hits 60 degrees after around 2 hours 50 mins, and is maintained at 60 degrees by one of the STC-1000 and turns off at 10:05 PM.

The rum is still at some 27 degrees C at 7:30 the next morning with an ambient of 14 degrees C, so a nice gradual drop of of temps, it takes till 1 ish in the afternoon for the temperature in the vessel to below 20 degrees.

I plan to have this happen ever other day, with 2 mins of oxygenation at a preset time every day at say the same 2 mins to 7 in the evening and again shuts itself down after the pre-set 2 mins.

So, what do we look like after the 4 days, if you compare the colour to that of the one above from 3 days ago.
IMG_4137.jpg
Colour looks good, taste is very pleasant indeed.

I have also started a rum essence, with 375ml of 60% ABV rum and 375ml of the 4th backset from the previous rum distillations, I will be letting the essence settle out, then rack off to another bottle a couple of times, then add this to the some of the final rum for a dark rum, the flavour is really really good.
IMG_4138.jpg
ABV check of the rum in the vessel is currently 60% as of this morning. Will monitor this every other day.

All in all going to expectations so far.

Cheers

Tony
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Chauncey
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Chauncey »

Great thread and build Tony. Keep us updated on how the rum turns out.
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Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Will do pal
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by richard1 »

Hi Tony

Presently all hard wired and transmitters are 4-20mA. I have in the past two weeks also been looking at wireless transmitters.
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shadylane
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by shadylane »

As drawn, If the SSR fails with the output shorted.
None of the safety devises would work to shut down the heat.
I'd recommend an E-Stop circuit with a latched relay.
That way if anything fails, the power is turned off.
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Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Shadeylane

You are correct, if the output shorted the primary safety detection would not shut the SSR down, you are looking at the concept diagram, a more detailed one was listed later, it is possible for an SSR to fail in a closed condition, not the most likely but possible.

This would not mean that the heater was on permanently, as in the later version you see the program timer is after the ssr that controls how long the heater can be on for, in addition. There is a visual green led that is lit up if safety is ok that I would have to deliberately ignore.

In addition to that, a separate stc-1000 controls the power to the power supply that shuts down the heater when it gets to a pre set temperature.

I will look at your suggestion and weigh up any benefits, one of the benefits I need to have in any change is no relay spark gap possibility, as at the min, if in the highly unlikely event of a ssr failing in a closed condition and me ignoring a safety light off condition, and what would have to be a simultaneous failure of the program controller, and a failure of the temperature controller, listen, this is mark 1. And all this could happen and I’m giving thought to how I could over come the event you describe, for sure this will be keeping the safety of an ssr.

Thank you for your comments I will look at your suggestion,

Cheers

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Shady lane

Can you PM me a copy of an e-stop circuit with a latched relay please, I’m sure this is lost in translation of terminology, but, ive looked at a few diagrams and they are similar to emergency power out circuits in the U.K., which the SSR side replicates, the benefit of an old school relay of cause is the fault condition is less likely to occur as a spring pulls the contacts back, I offset this against no spark gap. Now I am venting any possibility of vapour away from the controller to another vessel, which would help when using a physical relay.

What I could look at, if you look at the more detailed diagram later in the post, all the ssr does really is to power up after the program controller a 12v power supply for the heater, I could incorporate an “and gate” to detect the 12v from each control power supply, but, have a look at the more detailed version diagram.

Cheers again

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Shadylane

I’m not pushing a point here at all, you bring a valid point, but, worth a mention, should there be a simultaneous failure of the ssr in closed and a failure in the program controller, and a fault condition, I would not only have to ignore the bright green safety on led not being lit, but, in the detailed diagram I would have to have ignored the two bright red leds telling me that power is applied to the heater and the power meter telling me I’m consuming over 200 watts.

Also, this is a 40 amp ssr fitted to a thermal heatsink pulling a max of circa 1.6 ish Amps at 240v, over spec for any terminal failure due to stress.

Again send the diagram and have a look at the later one my friend

Cheers

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Been on holiday for a week came back today.

The thermal meter arrived, so, fitted it today.
57FC5F4E-9ED6-430C-836E-BF5E7DD0B5A3.jpeg
Its a dual thermal meter, it’s the red and green meter below the blue power meter, the temperature in the red digits is the temperature of the power supply regulator, the probe is attached directly on the heatsink, in the image it’s showing 46.8 degrees c, on the test it peaked at some 50 degrees c.

The second temperature monitoring is in green and shows 20.6 degrees c, the probe is directly attached to the pump transformer.

Both of the above are the devices that generate any heat, and I feel as part of the safety aspect of this type of device, monitoring critical temperatures are part of the learning process. The power supply has built in over temperature shut down anyway, and I fitted, as previously mentioned, additional fan assist.

This picture is the thermal probe attached to the aluminium casing of the power supply right behind where the main power regulator is, you can see if you zoom in what looks like a stainless tube just behind the red and blue heat shrink.
DE28D137-51F9-4D9B-885F-81175897EDEC.jpeg
The second picture is the second probe on the transformer casing difficult to see but, you can see it clipped on.
83DCF237-B347-4F68-A6C3-8D499E470CDC.jpeg
To the point, I’ve been busy programming the timers only allowing 2 mins of oxygenation every other day and 3 hours of heating on alternate days.

To the point, how does the rum taste after what is 15 or so days, from the reference samples I have from the trip my brother in law went on I would say easily as good if not better by some way, but, I have to avoid personal bias, so, I’m going to do some blind testing on him, he knows a lot about the taste of rum having been in the Riyal Navy for 20 years, and has pretty much drunk it all on the rum side, so, I’ll get his view Wednesday.

What I like about the initial concept was the choice of low power heating element, the gradual heating in my view, granted I have no point of reference, but, the gradual heating to 60 degrees c, then that gradual cool down, just feels right to me.

The colour, I will pull a sample Wednesday and shoot a picture.

You can hear in the tank the dripping back in to the main rum as the tank lid is concave, it allows for a good condensation return.

ABV is 59% and have to say tastes really nice at that % as well.

Anyway there we have it.

I will try and keep this post updated with images of the rum Wednesday.

Cheers

Tony
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Kindafrench
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Kindafrench »

Tony1964 wrote:Diodes are located for blocking the independent DC power supplies interfering with each other. And reverse current protection on the heater element for any back EMF.

Again, if there is interest, I can go in to more detail, it goes without saying, do not do this if in doubt with working with electricity.
Hi Tony. Very nice and interesting project. You put lots of brain juice in there :D I got the idea of diodes to keep the power supplies apart, if they haven‘t got reverse voltage protection on their own. But back EMF protection diode for the heating element? What am I missing?
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

note to self, resistive load
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Kindafrench »

Thanks for explaining and uploading a new drawing. I‘ve got no degree in electrics or electronics, so it‘s nothing you can count on in any way.
About the diode across the heating element: there might be no magnetic flux in the heating coils, as they usually have no core or magnetic moving parts where EMF would build up. The diode will not harm, but may be useless - the heating element shouldn't care about polarity though.

Edit: Removed paragraph with diode overheating concerns.
Last edited by Kindafrench on Tue Apr 30, 2019 5:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

again note to self resistive load
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Kindafrench
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Kindafrench »

Yep, sorry. Edited my last post.
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Kindafrench

You know, I answered the part about the overheating of the diode and hit submit and thought I was going blind, i was sure you mentioned it, so, I edited my post to reflect, lol.

Cheers

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Kindafrench »

Not sure what is the correct behavior in forums. Leave things as posted, delete partially bullshit :lol: or do something like this?
Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Kindafrench

How do you put a line through the words my friend. you caught me out with the same line through stuff on the over heating diode, I take your point, I thought I was going blind, personally I would prefer to remove, saves confusion to be fare.

Cheers

Tony
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Kindafrench »

If you use the full editor it‘s the little „s“ to the right of „readmore“.
Tony1964
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Cheers
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Re: Ageing vessel concept

Post by Tony1964 »

Kinda French

Off topic, but, just had a look at your scr controller box, that voltmeter is cool old school mate.

Cheers

Tony
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