Anybody get any good deals lately?

[Shine0n]

I scored a 5'lg 4" k copper tube for 69 bucks.
200 gallon ss pot with 2" bottom drain (no lid) 350$

I can make a shit ton of mash there, probably won't ever make that much but I couldn't pass that up.

[The Baker]

Sadly battered beer barrel; but I think that is the outside protective metal covering that has some rust too...

The fitting is the same as the barrels we commonly use for a still, but this is MASSIVE, probably 36 Imperial gallons?? Twice the size...

Not certain if it is aluminium or stainless but the fitting looks like stainless and I can have it for nothing. Which will not count at all with my beloved.

Also got a (free) heavy stainless container, maybe (oh heck, I will go and look...) ten inches outside diameter and fourteen inches high. Very thick wall, and the top is enclosed except for a three and a half inch ring which I could get a tri-clamp ferrule welded to; it is just the right time because I am getting fittings welded to my fifty litre boiler to change it to electric and that involves tri-clamp fittings.
This little fellow holds fifteen litres or a bit more.
It would be good for a gas-fired boiler; or a thumper, it is small enough to empty by tipping it up so don't need any pipes welded on.
It used to be the outside casing for storing sperm for artificial insemination of cattle. There WAS a very thin metal inside repository, the outside would have held dry ice or something to keep it cold. My friend only had one, from his work, but I wonder if they are routinely disposed of; will have to be diplomatic with THAT question....

Geoff

[Pikey]

........Not certain if it is aluminium or stainless but the fitting looks like stainless and I can have it for nothing. Which will not count at all with my beloved.....

Geoff

Nice score Geoff - take a sharp knife to it mate ... Ali will score, stainless hardly scratch.

[Shine0n]

Went to a distillery in Richmond yesterday and got a 5 gal once used wheat bourbon barrel for 50 bucks.

They have quite a few too, different spirits were in them but the most are rye, wheat and all corn.

I may grab 4 more

[The Baker]

The Baker (yes that's me, didn't want to repeat the long message....) said,
......
'Also got a (free) heavy stainless container, maybe (oh heck, I will go and look...) ten inches outside diameter and fourteen inches high. Very thick wall, and the top is enclosed except for a three and a half inch ring which I could get a tri-clamp ferrule welded to; it is just the right time because I am getting fittings welded to my fifty litre boiler to change it to electric and that involves tri-clamp fittings.
This little fellow holds fifteen litres or a bit more.
......

I have always loved the oak barrel heads invented by badmotivator (hi, bad) that fit in a stainless steel canister....

And I hope I can get more of these cylinder thingies. Would have to be lucky but sperm straws cost maybe hundreds of dollars EACH (lots, anyway) from a top stud bull, so these, obviously expensive, cylinders COULD well actually be disposable! Custom made with that almost paper-thin internal stainless cylinder for the straws.

Anyway I thought they could be used like Bad's barrels.
Make an oak disc to fit into the opening. Now I know only three and a half inches is a bit small for a fifteen litre container but I could put some dominoes in as well. Or. get a few oak dowels (ideal) or square sticks and round the end like a dowel; and poke them into same sized holes (of course) in the disc 'lid'.

Geoff

[Swedish Pride]

Went to a distillery in Richmond yesterday and got a 5 gal once used wheat bourbon barrel for 50 bucks.

They have quite a few too, different spirits were in them but the most are rye, wheat and all corn.

I may grab 4 more

<--- me green with envy

[Copperhead road]

Went to a distillery in Richmond yesterday and got a 5 gal once used wheat bourbon barrel for 50 bucks.

They have quite a few too, different spirits were in them but the most are rye, wheat and all corn.

I may grab 4 more

Wow, great price....you would not see that in Australia

[Hoosier Shine9]

Went to a distillery in Richmond yesterday and got a 5 gal once used wheat bourbon barrel for 50 bucks.

They have quite a few too, different spirits were in them but the most are rye, wheat and all corn.

I may grab 4 more

Great score ShineOn. wish I lived a little closer to you.
All the distilleries close to me are small Artisan distilleries, only open 4 years or less.

[Twisted Brick]

Dropped by the local scrappie yesterday, bringing my customary home-stilled whiskey offering to the manager. Walked out with a 12.67gal (by my calculations) SS conical fermenter for $35. Not one dent, no rust, minimal scratches. Should polish up right nice. On the way out a stainless lid that looked like it might fit caught my eye. Had a pre-drilled hole too, that looked like it might accommodate a #7 stopper (it did, perfectly) $5.

Still need to get a couple 2-piece 3/4" sanitary valves, SS legs and wheels. Seein' as how distiller-dresden just styled me with some M-1 yeast, its time to get goin' on that single malt...

[Hoosier Shine9]

I went to one of the Flea Market stores not too far from home today.
& I found a brand new Fermentasauris 35L/9.25Gal Conical Fermenter.
Also a box of 30 Woozy 5oz Glass Bottles (1 is missing so 29)
$25 for both.

[bilgriss]

HS, that looks like a fine fermenter!

[Skipper1953]

I discovered a local source for organic grains recently. I don't necessarily need organic but I'm happy to have it. Just a few miles from my home. A 48 lb bag of rye cost $14.50 and 50 lbs of barley is just $13.25. They have several varieties of several different grains.

I found this source one day while surfing the net looking for grain dealers. I came across the website of an organization called Agrilicious. There I found a listing for several sources in my region. Some of you may be able to use their website to help locate a "local" source for grains.

[The Baker]

Sadly battered beer barrel; but I think that is the outside protective metal covering that has some rust too...

The fitting is the same as the barrels we commonly use for a still, but this is MASSIVE, probably 36 Imperial gallons?? Twice the size...

Not certain if it is aluminium or stainless but the fitting looks like stainless and I can have it for nothing.....

UPDATE:

18 Imperial gallons, 82 litres, stainless, the sort people got for a BIG party when I was young. Not my family, we didn't drink....
And I was talking about my plans for it to a friend and he said, 'I think I have one of those at home, I'll drop it round". His will probably look nicer, not battered but in any case I have decided to make a jacket for it and for my oldish standard keg so it doesn't actually matter what it looks like.

All this will go at my son's house, he has a big yard and a big shed and good power, I think 20 amp at 240 volts.

If we set up all the kegs upside down with a tri-clover fitting to a drain-with-a-tap, and a fitting for an element, and a four inch ferrule on the top-that-used-to-be-the-bottom, we will have a very flexible set-up.
Could use one of the 82 litre kegs for storage, or a fermenter; use the other as a pot still; use the smaller one as a thumper to the big one
( MAYBE take out the element and stick the bubbly inlet from the main still into the same tri-clover fitting??? )
or use the smaller one as a boiler (pot still) in its own right, with or without a thumper of its own....
Use copper tubing throughout, to get some copper into the system.

And later get a (probably copper) flute with (probably) six plates to use on either of the boilers.

Geoff

[Bushman]

The person I hired to build my pier is going to give me a lot of free copper and lead in exchange for allowing g him to store his piledriver at my dock this winter.

I use the lead for making fish weights.

[The Baker]

Went to a garage sale Saturday, bought an old beaten up copper fire extinguisher. Five dollars.

It is riveted up the side (copper rivet heads).
Would it have been soldered too with lead solder?

Maybe the top quarter has been savagely chopped in a diagonal 'slash', maybe with a tomahawk or fireman's axe so that I guess will have to be simply cut off and a flat copper plate welded or soldered on, with say a copper ferrule in it.

Might be simplest to completely cut off the rounded bottom and do the same there.

That would allow me to cut out completely the riveted (and soldered?) join in the side and re-join it appropriately...

The actual part of it that would be left is not in bad condition, just pushed in a bit in one place, so if I cut off top and bottom and cut out the vertical join it would be simple to panel-beat it there.

Might not be worth the trouble but it would be a good "helmet'. And if you look at the price of helmets!!
I've got another copper fire extinguisher in better conditioner that I am making a helmet of.

Geoff

[cranky]

I think it's been a while since I've gotten to post anything here.

Today I got this nice carboy at Goodwill for $13

It was next to a 5 gallon carboy they want $20 for but my limit for used carboys is $15 at the moment. It's not like I really need another one but I can't pass up a bargain carboy

It's considerably larger than 5 gallons, I'm guessing 7, now the problem is I feel compelled to fill it up... now lets see...where can I come up with 120#s of apples

[Oldvine Zin]

Still a few apples left on trees around here

OVZ

[cranky]

Still a few apples left on trees around here

OVZ

I know, I have 30-35#s in the back of my truck right now, so guess I only need 90#s, that's only 3.5-4 more buckets full. If I can get permission to pick the 2 trees I've been driving past every day I can easily get that many in a few minutes. Then the hard part is processing them without Mrs Cranky finding out

I couldn't help myself, this morning when I was getting ready for work I had to find out how big the new carboy is. As I suspected it is 7 gallons

[Boozewaves]

Today has been a really good day .at the car boot sale / swap meet where I buy and sell things as one of my jobs I bought a water container for roughly 20 liters for £2 , got given another one for free that just needs a clean. bought a digital thermometer for £1 brand new in the packaging with a price sticker of £19.95 still on it , even had a battery for it included . I also bought some various hose connectors from the hardware store but they were pretty expensive . imagine paying £3.19 ($4.13) for a male to male connector when you can buy a hose connector with 2 way adapter for 99p in the same shop . luckily I managed to dig out my hosepipe I saved a while ago or I would have had to buy a new hosepie from there too

also recent wins have been , about 20 foot of 1 inch CSST for £1 (right after spending £35 for 2 lengths of 1/2 inch) and 2 big fermenters that used to contain vinegar 220liters £15 each , a bag of airlocks and corks for £1. and I was paid £8 an hour to take away some windfall apples and ones on the tree that needed picking for my gardening work which is the other job, even got given a home made apple pie for helping out . made about 30 liters of cider with it . would like to try run it to make brandy but my in-laws like it just as is and so do I . maybe next autumn I will do brandy as i'm pretty good friends with the keeper of the tree and hopefully I will find more tree keepers on freecycle and I want to make a press anyway. also my local homebrew place is selling gallon carboys/demijohns for £8 each , I managed to buy 16 for £12 second hand . must be my Scottish blood but do the legwork and you will get just about anything you want for cheap / free as one persons junk is anothers treasure .

[TDick]

Hardly worth mentioning but a new Ace Hardware opened not far from me so I had to go look around.

Naturally I wandered over by the copper section.
Nothing I needed but I did notice copper tubing.


I spotted a 10 ft section of 3/4 inch copper pipe for $1.99.


It wasn't well marked if that was the total price or cost per foot.
I asked how much and the guy said he didn't know. He'd just have to scan it.
And it actually rang up both ways.$1.99 per unit but "10 units"
The guy shrugged and said, "looks like two bucks"

So the glass for my alcoholmeter broke - again - so I'll be making a stand for that.
And I'm thinking of making a couple of bazookas for my ongrain fermenters.
Better suggestions?

[Hoosier Shine9]

The wife & I went to the local Wal-Mart today.
She wanted to check out the 50% off Christmas stuff.
I found some nice bottles for making "Bathtub Gin". They have premade infusion bags in the bottles......Just add Vodka.
They were $3.00 each....

[T-Pee]

Handmade, custom one-off .75 caliber fully functional BP cannon. Barrel of brass stock, carriage is hand picked close-grained Doug fir. Drove two hours to pick it up. The craftsman and I discovered we're peas in a pod and the more we talked, the lower the price dropped. He's in the process of making a matching storage chest at my request.
One of these days it will be an heirloom for our youngest daughter...a proven expert powder monkey.

tp

[cob]

I love the smell of black powder in the morning!

[Hoosier Shine9]

I love the smell of black powder in the morning!

+1

[Oldvine Zin]

A friend of a friend was cleaning out his basement and had 4 5 gal glass carboys that he had no use for anymore, I just inherited 20 more gals of fermenting space


OVZ

[cranky]

The other day I stopped at Goodwill and found that someone had apparently donated their entire decanter collection. There were at least 6 nice decanters with prices ranged from $6 to $15. Most of you know I have a decanter collection, only one of which is not lead crystal so I don't actually use them but I can't pass up a bargain. I was very restrained and only bought this little gem for $6

I really liked this one because it is hand blown and hand cut, probably American Brilliant Period and actually shows it's age with wear to the points from being actually used for more than 100 years. I would have liked it to have been marked but haven't found one yet but most ABP glass wasn't marked so I really didn't expect to find one.

[Kareltje]

A piece of heritage for only $ 6? Serious congratulations, cranky!

[cranky]

A piece of heritage for only $ 6? Serious congratulations, cranky!

Thank you The picture really doesn't do it justice. Most of my other decanters have little to no wear. I really like this one because of the wear. The American Brilliant Period was from around 1876 to 1914 and was considered the finest glass in the world at the time. I really love when I find one of these pieces. You really have to wonder who originally purchased it and used it, how many times was it filled and emptied to actually wear the sharpness off the points where people picked it up and poured from it. This decanter has seen 2 world wars, prohibition, the Great Depression and numerous not so great ones. It has seen somewhere between 19 and 28 presidents and outlasted most of them. To accomplish all of this it has to have been cherished for most of it's life and to wind up at Goodwill for only $6 was a real shame for such a fine piece of American glass history but it always makes me happy to find and save one of these fine decanters and perhaps it will get the chance to last another century or two.

[WIski]

University auction $50.....I don't know it looked FUN......

[Irishgnome]

I was looking for a backup pump a few days ago. I figured it would be a good idea to have on hand in case the one I have crapped out midway through a run.

I spotted one on clearance at the local Lowes and figured $17 was a good price for a near $60 pump.

After checking out, I realized that the pump rang up for $3.30!

I ran back through and purchased the other two that they had on hand. Now, I have two backups and I am sending a buddy one.
If you’re at Lowes, keep your eye out for the pump. It blows my $20.00 pump out of the water!

Cheers,
Irish