Tell us about your mistakes.

[Durhommer]

Tole the ol lady she's not very motherly...

[NZChris]

I looked up the nutritional values of okra and noticed that it is better than kale in almost all categories. So I used okra for nutrients in a sugar wash. I never thought about what might be the effect of the okra's slime factor although I certainly enjoy eating slimy boiled okra. Five okra pods were enough to slime up the whole 5 gal batch. I eventually got some alcohol out of it. Don't know if it tasted any good because it was run in a cleaning run. But it took forever to ferment, was impossible (for me at least) to check SG and pH. Experimentation tells me the slime seems to come from the pod not the seeds, so I might experiment again someday using just the seeds, just out of curiosity, but it will be a very small batch. Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me.

Try Aloe Vera next time, It's supposed to be loaded with lots of good stuff and should make for a very entertaining video when you try to run it

[rockcanyon]

Try Aloe Vera next time, It's supposed to be loaded with lots of good stuff and should make for a very entertaining video when you try to run it

The okra and everything else that was floating in the wort eventually clumped on the surface. I easily skimmed it off and it left a very clear wash. It ran very well. I did however add a few drops of fermcap tho. In future I'll stick to eating okra.

[CoogeeBoy]

Well, I made a batch of lemoncello using limes and it was really quite good but a bit strong at 40% and I couldnt get the balance right when I tried to dilute it down towards 30% so....
I put the Limecello into a Wineo's sugar wash that had been running for a few days. I think the acid from the lime caused the ferment to crash.

got it back going with a bit of bicarb of soda to get an instant recovery of ph plus some oyster shells and a little bit of fresh yeast.

Going like a train now.

[jonnys_spirit]

Huh. High ABV will stress yeasties as well as pH crash. That’s two strikes against the yeasties lol. I’d either mix it with low wines or a finished ferment ready to still.

Cheers!
-jonny

[ROD01]

The old saying is with age comes wisdom...
WRONG at least in my case!
In The last 2 weeks of this hobby.
Tried to clean a copper fitting in citric acid by boiling on the stove except used a Pyrex measuring cup.....
Pyrex explodes on a gas stove !
Old man brain forgets old man body is not as strong as it once was and trying to carry a 60 litre BOP of nearly boiling sour mash wort down the stairs can result in sloshing.
Sloshing on your leg and foot is bad...

I now use my wort chiller in the garage and siphon cooled wort into smaller pots to carry.
Be safe,

[Toxxyc]

Built a pressure cooker still. OOOOOLD pressure cooker, but it was still in good shape. Stingy bastard so I don't get a new seal. First run goes actually OK, the old seal seals. Second one, oof.

I'm busy working (still running to my left) and I just feel some more heat than usual coming off the still. When I looked up the whole thing was engulfed in flames. Turns out it leaked some alcohol out of the seal, dripped onto the gas burner and the whole thing caught on fire. The damp towel I keep on hand worked well to put it out, and a new seal was bought the same day.

That still is now gone, though, and I'm now running electric. Fire and alcohol is a scary combo.

[Not sure]

20210405_181537.jpgThe old saying is with age comes wisdom...
WRONG at least in my case!
In The last 2 weeks of this hobby.
Tried to clean a copper fitting in citric acid by boiling on the stove except used a Pyrex measuring cup.....
Pyrex explodes on a gas stove !
Old man brain forgets old man body is not as strong as it once was and trying to carry a 60 litre BOP of nearly boiling sour mash wort down the stairs can result in sloshing.
Sloshing on your leg and foot is bad...20210413_185801.jpg
I now use my wort chiller in the garage and siphon cooled wort into smaller pots to carry.
Be safe,

So glad I made a wort chiller hope you heal well man that looks painful

[Sethral]

While planning my still I took every bucket in the house and filled it with sugarwash, left for 2weeks and by that time the build was finished so after clean run started stripping about 100 liters of wash and all was well till last run, the bucket had at some time contained washing powder, a few years ago and the flavor contaminated everything. Ran it twice, then tossed it. Will never use used stuff again nor collect in one container and was about 4 liters of low wines as no alcohol meter yet. I read all the stories and pissed myself a few times at the stupid mistakes but I think this is right up there

[Kindafrench]

Smelled the 1 liter jar with warm, fresh out of the still, alcohol in it. Inhaled the heads right through my nose, very close to the jar. Took a day to get my smelling back and have the pain gone. Felt like a fruity fire eating up my sinuses.
Since then I only smell on small glasses.

[squigglefunk]

was running a batch of my corn shine on tues, started out strong, but the flow seemed to be dropping off faster than usual. I always have to slightly adjust the heat as it runs down but this was getting weird. I was cranking it and the flow was still slowing down, almost dribbling at one point. The flame did look strangely yellow... I wasn't sure what was going on. I thought maybe it had somewhat puked and was blocking up the flow through the column or something but the booze was still coming off strong and tasting fine. Then suddenly jar 8 is an absolute funky mess, never smelled tails like this on good corn and not this early in the run? Have I finally scorched my mash as everyone warned me about running on the grains??! Oh well... I press on, blasting the heat higher and getting a little bit better of a flow... but its now hours longer than it should have taken!? I am into the tails at this point, I call her quits at 35%... and all these tails smell weird, bad.

I go to inspect things the next day. I take the column off, no... no signs of puking, no chunks or any residue... take the top off the boiler...hmm, the mash looks OK, doesn't seem burnt in any way or smell bad? No black chunks of corn or anything at all. I drained the liquid off and dumped all the corn mush.

As I lifted the boiler off the burner I saw at least an inch thick black layer of soot on the bottom of the pot! WHOA!

I proceed to tear the burner apart and in the tube is a big dead spider and egg sac... and a bunch of rust flakes ... the propane/air mix was FUBAR'd!

I was progressively building up the soot worse and worse as I ran ... the soot made the heat transfer worse and worse... the still ran slower and slower ... the tails must have all started smearing into the run way too early... an endless loop of fail.

The happy ending is, after cleaning everything off, the burner was giving off clean blue flames, I dumped another fresh batch of mash into the still and threw in all the really bad funky tails and the good heads from the previous run and fired it up.

The run worked great, no soot build up, the shine tasted great and ran all the way to 20% with only a tiny touch of funk on that last bottle.

my mistake is I have too many spiders ... or I have too much rust on my burner... or I'm a newb and didn't realize that funky soot smell and yellow flame sign... or many other things that I'm sure I did wrong lol

[TheoreticalJoe]

I thought I could build a "cheap" still...

[Hambone]

I thought my first all grain rye would be easy to mash…

[Deplorable]

I thought I could build a "cheap" still...

I thought I could buy a good still on line.

[NZChris]

I thought I could build a "cheap" still...

I've built several stills. All were cheap and only one has been superseded and retired. Where did you go wrong?

[NormandieStill]

I've built several stills. All were cheap and only one has been superseded and retired. Where did you go wrong?

I suspect that "cheap" has many values depending on context. I originally budgeted 200EUR for my still. This compared to the larger of the chinese 2 or 3 pot stills from aliexpress, but was based on a 30L keg so larger. This did use some copper that I already had to hand. In the end I went a little over budget.

When I had first started looking, I was looking at a spend of 100EUR. Clearly my "cheap" still could have been cheaper but not when comparing apples to apples. When you've seen stills on eBay for 60EUR, 200 seems like a lot. Once you understand the hobby a little better, you realise that the 60EUR would probably never have got you what you needed.

And not a mistake, but a misunderstanding. When I first started getting interested in distilling I didn't realise that cuts needed to be made. I thought that the total alcohol of the wash could be recovered in the final drink given improbably high yields. Binge watching the Still It videos dealt with that misconception and I now find blending to be one of the more interesting aspects of this hobby.

[jonnys_spirit]

Re: Tell us about your mistakes.

Got time to pull up a chair and set for a while?

[Stonecutter]

Re: Tell us about your mistakes.

Got time to pull up a chair and set for a while?

[jonnys_spirit]

Lol! “And I never felt so bad in my entire life..”

[Corn Cracker]

Dumping 15g of hot stillage on the driveway, didn't imaging it would flow back towards me and my flip flops, it rolled up on the top of my feet, they were a lil red on top. Last 2 times I've had my work boots on and still stood on a 2x4.

[Deplorable]

Today I miscalculated the total volume of 50 pounds of corn in 25 gallons of water and came up short on head space in my 30 gallon barrel. Not the worst thing I've ever done.
In a total noob move, I grounded the 3rd pin on a potentiometer, and cooked the pot and a SSVR. Live and learn...

[NormandieStill]

In a total noob move, I grounded the 3rd pin on a potentiometer, and cooked the pot and a SSVR. Live and learn...

I was trying to fix a lighting fixture once with the chief technician at the university. The arc discharge lamp wasn't coming on on power up and in a brief moment of stupidity we decided to stick a multimeter across the terminals to check if there was a voltage. The arc discharge lamp sits after a transformer that ramps the voltage up to (IIRC for this model) around 8000V. Having discussed whether it was AC or DC we set the meter to 230V AC, held a probe to each terminal and fired up the fixture. The bulb still didn't light but the little multimeter lit up like a Xmas tree. The flash was visible through the casing and a small and pungent wift of smoke rose up from the meter as we jumped backwards in fright.

[cob]

I was trying to fix a lighting fixture once with the chief technician at the university. The arc discharge lamp wasn't coming on on power up and in a brief moment of stupidity we decided to stick a multimeter across the terminals to check if there was a voltage. The arc discharge lamp sits after a transformer that ramps the voltage up to (IIRC for this model) around 8000V. Having discussed whether it was AC or DC we set the meter to 230V AC, held a probe to each terminal and fired up the fixture. The bulb still didn't light but the little multimeter lit up like a Xmas tree. The flash was visible through the casing and a small and pungent wift of smoke rose up from the meter as we jumped backwards in fright.

I'll bet your glad you weren't at the top of a ladder

[TheoreticalJoe]

I've built several stills. All were cheap and only one has been superseded and retired. Where did you go wrong?

I suspect that "cheap" has many values depending on context.

Spot on. I went the keg conversion route and initially planned to spend a couple of hundred dollars. That design was no frills - filling through the existing port on top of the keg, heating on an LP burner, no weld drain, pre-made eBay condenser and riser. I ended up with a welded-on tri-clamp 4 inch filler port, an internal tri-clamp 5500w 240v heating element with controller, stainless steel tri-clamp riser/column (multiple configs possible), and a Liebig that I built myself.

I am currently at just under $600. I don't weld myself, so that was outsourced. I added a 30amp GFCI breaker to my breaker box with a dedicated circuit for the still. And, I built the controller box twice - once with a cheap Chinese SSR that made it through one run and then again with a good quality SSVR. Those three items added ~$300 to the cost of the build. Take those out and I am right on budget

[Desvio]

It finally happened... Was doing stripping runs in the garage, and decided to start sweeping and cleaning up while I kept an eye on things. The still operates in or under a vented hood so there is a little noise from that, but this time it was different and might have taken me a few minutes to realize it, but the dribble was replaced by a hissing. Shit and shinola my cooling pump in my reservoir gave out after five years of service.

It had to be one of the few times I was ten feet away, but not keeping a direct eye on things, failure does know when you are not looking.

[Saltbush Bill]

That is Murphys Law at work, and why we cant afford to turn our backs.

[Desvio]

That is Murphys Law at work, and why we cant afford to turn our backs.

I certainty know my place now, new pump installed and moving on a smarter man!

[NZChris]

An alarm, or latched relay, monitoring the condensate temperature or any point on the still that is critical, can often pick up a problem quicker that you can, even when you are sitting in front of the still.

[Barnstorm]

Today I miscalculated the total volume of 50 pounds of corn in 25 gallons of water and came up short on head space in my 30 gallon barrel. Not the worst thing I've ever done.
In a total noob move, I grounded the 3rd pin on a potentiometer, and cooked the pot and a SSVR. Live and learn...

Just got 50# cornmeal thinking I could do the same in my 30 gal barrel. Good thing I saw this!

[CoogeeBoy]

An alarm, or latched relay, monitoring the condensate temperature or any point on the still that is critical, can often pick up a problem quicker that you can, even when you are sitting in front of the still.

For what it is worth, I connect my still via a temp controller and have the thermometer taped to the side of the still. That is my backup plan in case I get distracted by the first wife or some chore in the room.

I then set the temp controller to turn power off when I get to a certain stage, for example, I pre-heat to 70 degrees, if I am distracted, it turns off.

Then go to about 80 degrees and finally, have the thermometer set to 95 degrees so I can't do anything more stupid than I typically am capable of doing!