External Stove element still heater

[Fiddleford]

Hello all i have a keg still with a round bottom and no way to heat the thing. I live in a building that doesn't allow me to have fires and its to expensive to take the thing out to camp and make a few runs, so i was thinking of taking a stove element off a stove in the junk yard and putting that on the still or unwinding the element and coiling it around the thing. I'm able to deal with the electronics and what not, and I'm confident it will work but I would like to hear the opinion of someone else, if it wont work or be unsafe I would appreciate to hear why not so anyone who gets the same ideal may find this and decide not to because it is unsafe.

Thank you for your 50 cents

[shadylane]

Here's a external electric pot I made awhile back.
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=50456

[Fiddleford]

I got the same keg i made a stand from rebar, I think its my avatar.


Addition: i like the design, right when i say the fins on your heating units i thought of the sand then i read the comment on how you can heat it quick but ita a slug to cool.. then i thought from your condenser line you could run the water through the sand in a coil to cool it down, use a t joint with a valve to turn the water on or off to the sand so you can control the heat of the system a little better

[NZChris]

I use a solid plate stove top element from a junk yard for my gin still. It only works for me because I want low Watts, like 250W max.

Solid plate elements have a built in thermostat cunningly designed to ensure that a newbie distiller who tries to use one will go insane and give up distilling without managing to make a decent drop. E.g. I have an 1800W plate that drops to 900W once it has warmed up. Avoid them unless you are happy to use the low output.

If you attempt to heat the still above the level of the charge, the chance of burn on is high, so I would never recommend heating the sides of a still.

[Fiddleford]

I'm thinking either a coil stove element bent a little so the coil fits on the bottom or some kind of side element.
I could cut open a old cylinder i have and fill it with sand and put the still on top of that with the element in the sand. I mean I'm not one to gun a heating IF it means I damage hardware or myself.i could also fill my brewing pot with sand and use that on the stove to run the still. that way I don't need to buy anything
and make a simple task more difficult then it needs to be.

what do you guys say, brew pot full of sand on the stove? I could probably do multiple runs with a shorter heating time potentially saving energy and my sanity.

[NZChris]

The coil elements we have in NZ are fine for using with a still as they don't have hidden cut outs.

Sand is probably a bad idea. Sit the pot on the element and control the Watts.

For multiple runs, use valves/whatever for fast dumping and refilling.

For energy efficiency, build a Charentais style preheater beside, or on top of, the main boiler. Don't ask me for help designing that for your stove top

[Fiddleford]

in the picture it shows how the bottom of my boiler is rounded so i have no option of using just the stove element. why do you think sand is a bad ideal, to me it seems like a safe option, my uncle uses the stuff for heating glass wear to higher temps then distillation temperatures. I mean I could see if I complacently buried my boiler in sand it may cause some issues like the thing collapsing under the pressure form the sand if it were empty for extended period of time. I do welcome constructive criticism, it helps me understand things and why wont work.

[NZChris]

I reckon both thermal mass and heat transfer efficiency would be problems with sand, but if your pot hasn't got a flat bottom and you can't use an internal element, it might be the lesser evil. If you try it, I suspect you should keep the layer as thin as practicable. It is a novel idea and I am interested in how well it works if you try it.

[Fiddleford]

I'll need to finish my condenser design before I try anything I should have results in a week. I should probably run water through the system to get rid of the flux. i think i need to rethink my condenser to something more simple then what i got i get another thread on that but i think I'm going to make a external coil for a 1 inch condenser.

[NZChris]

Water doesn't get rid of flux. Do a vinegar run followed by a sacrificial alcohol run. A day on the crapper barfing into a bucket ain't a fun way to start your distilling career

[Distillernz]

Hey NZC a vinegar run- Is that usually done with white vinegar or malt vinegar? Or does it matter?

[Fiddleford]

oh yea I got that planned out I got a 10 gallon mash worked off but flies got into it so I figure I'll run that whole thing through there, don't much like the taste of the liquor it produces I used a mixture of barley rye and wheat but no corn. I need my corn liquor, I miss the butterscotch flavors. The waters just to test how good the condenser is, the woman of the house would have my neck if the condenser didn't do its job properly.

[Fiddleford]

Distillernz

as long as it has no salts and is vinegar it should work just fine, I would think white vinegar would be less cost effective then malt vinegar because you would need less of it

[NZChris]

I doubt the quality and type of vinegar and alcohol matters much for cleaning. I use whatever I've got.

You might be better off to knock up a quick sugar wash for cleaning, rather than using the grain wash you think you might not like. The grain is likely to make something nicer than you expect.

[Fiddleford]

this is a 5th-6th gen wash I've been making spirits for a few years now, I got a half gallon of this white liquor made form the grain mixture, its not bad but i enjoy corn whiskey a little better and fruit flies have gotten into the batch a few weeks ago and I've added a few cups of yeast to see what happens but nothing good came of it. so I'll be making a flux cleaning run and trying a knack at rum, I tried it in 2016 and 2017 but it didn't work and I found out I wasn't doing it right after Still it posted the buccaneer bobs method

Edit: I just looked at some of my old threads and the mash is 3 months old so yea that's about a run every 2 weeks i just remembered the stuff tasting like grain on the first and second run then it mellowed out after that

[Fiddleford]

That is good advice for anyone just getting into the trade/craft