New coil

Professor Duck · Post by **Professor Duck** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:23 pm

Since my still is small I'm making a new one, and I'm using a coil in a bucket for my condensor. I've seen some people saying they have 20 foot coils. Is 20 feet really necessary? It sounds expensive. I'm using 1/2 inch copper tubing.

Also I don't know where to get a big enough bucket. I want it to be the size of my boiler which is 50L. Any suggestions?

Rickle · Post by **Rickle** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 9:29 pm

Build a wooden box and line it with a plastic garbage bag. Use hinges on the corners so you can fold it up when done, it won't even need a bottom. Use a tight fitting gromet for the pipe making sure it seals the bag.

Post by **Grayson_Stewart** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:53 am

Maybe it's still a little early in the morning for me and I'm not putting 2 and 2 together yet, but what would you do with a wooden box with no bottom to it?

PD, nobody can give you an exact length for a condensor in a container. When the water is initially cool, you may only need 4 feet...later in the run when the cooling water has absorbed quite a bit of energy, you will need a much longer run of tubing to give the vapor a greater chance to disipate heat.

Most folks use a 20' length because tubing comes packaged in a 20 foot length. If your gonna make it from copper tubing, it will likely last longer than the container in which you place it. Skip lunch a couple of days and spring for the 20 feet of 1/2" tubing to be sure.

outlawokie · Post by **outlawokie** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:02 am

The condencer that i built has 15ft 3/8 od i cut it in half and made a double coil and the keg is duplicate to my boiler in size what is great is that it is so effichent that it will cool my 55 gallon water barrel 1/2in should be better or equal to this in the same length

swpeddle · Post by **swpeddle** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:18 am

I have a pair of boilers feeding my condensor (~36qts total volume) and I am using 10 ft of 3/8" copper tubing jacketed with some vinyl tubing like the counter flow wort chiller used by beer makers. The wort chiller link is basically the design I used as inspiration. I find it's a fairly elegant sol'n that is easy to store and still let's me knock down ALOT of vapour without much waterflow.

Wort Chiller:
[url]http://www.morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=19532[/url]

My condensor is here:
[url]http://img196.exs.cx/img196/3278/generalboilers6jo.jpg[/url]

Rickle · Post by **Rickle** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 5:22 am

Grayson_Stewart wrote:Maybe it's still a little early in the morning for me and I'm not putting 2 and 2 together yet, but what would you do with a wooden box with no bottom to it?

Yeah,
I think your right. It's obviously still to early for ya

There's no way I could have made it any simpler.

Think wine in a bag in a box.
The table or floor or what ever will provide the bottom, when it comes time to drain just pull your condensor pipe out.

Rickle · Post by **Rickle** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:59 pm

Thats just the basic principle no one said it can't be up graded. You could use the membrane they sell at garden centers to make fish ponds with. You could use heavy duty plastic sheet. you COULD put a bottom in it. Well by golly you could even line it with stainless steel if you wanted to

I was thinking quick and easy and cheap, ain't nothin writ in stone.

or you could use a thirty gallon trash can LOL

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 7:10 pm

I have about 20' of 3/4" in a 15.5 gallon stainless beer keg for my condenser. The copper exits the keg about 2" from the bottom and is silver soldered to the keg. The water is circulated from a 20 gallon reservoir once the whole system is filled. It's pumped into the cooling keg and an overflow hose gravity feeds back to the reservoir.

Professor Duck · Post by **Professor Duck** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:04 am

Thanks for the replies everyone. I guess I'll probably go with a big plastic rubbish bin, I never thought of that but it's a good idea. I'll get the standard 20 feet of tubing too I guess, I just hope it doesn't make my wallet too much lighter.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 4:06 am

I used a 5 gallon bucket with 15-20ft copper coiled up inside. The coil exits through a carboy stopper. The copper fits perfectly through the drilled stopper. I drilled a hole about 1" from the bottom of the bucket...I made the hole a little smaller than the stopper, and JAMMED the stopper in there. That way I was sure it wouldn't leak. I did my runs in my kitchen, so instead of filling the bucket, I put a rubber band around my vegetable sprayer(to keep it on) and turned the water on so that it dripped about 2-3 drips per second. Then I hung it over the edge of the bucket so that the water drips would hit the top of the coil.
By the time the run was done, the bucket was almost filled.

Professor Duck · Post by **Professor Duck** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 9:24 pm

Well, I got my pipe today. I didn't know how much it was and I was hoping the $50 I had would be enough. Well as it turned out, I happened to mention to a friend that I was buying some pipe and he has a friend who works at the plumbing shop, and he hooked me up with some mates rates. The guy sold me about 14 metres of 1/2 inch copper tubing for A$17.50!

Now I have plenty of cash to load up on essences, because the local hardware store is selling all their homebrew stuff at 80% off.

What splendid luck.

Home Distiller

New coil

New coil

Holy crap! SCORE