plastics and ethanol

junkyard dawg · Post by **junkyard dawg** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 9:24 pm

Forget any worries and ferment in a beer keg.

Use kegs for everything. They cost about the same as plastic, you just have to focus on picking up a few. You can get someone to cut them and weld basic stuff for a few bucks. Kegs are by far the best material of any common stuff and they are so cheap... use them for everything. They are everywhere...at least in the US.

I regularly pay the same for a stainless steel AAA sanitary industry standard container as I would for a plastic bucket with a lid and airlock. The cheap bucket is just that. The recycled keg will last a lifetime, never break, never get brittle and crack, never leach anything into your wine beer or spirit. get copper if you can afford it, but for the rest of us, get some kegs...a buck a pound around here. just cut out the top so a cheap lid will fit... doubles as the coolest turkey fryer...

screw plastic. You dont need it.

Post by **HookLine** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 10:49 pm

Yup, stainless beer kegs are the best all round fermenter. If you can get them.

AllanD · Post by **AllanD** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:48 pm

Though I will say about the guy with the plastic bodied thermal probe, just how much leeching do you think a piece of plastic the size of a cigarette
can leech out? If you were only using it ONCE and using a fresh one each time there'd be somethign to worry about, but if it leeches the first time
(say on a stripping run) how much of anything do you think will be there to leach out on subsequent runs? particularly the tenth, one hundred and fifteenth. etc...

I'm reminded of an old campers trick for getting rid of the plastic taste from a new plastic canteen or water container.
buy a fifth of cheap whiskey pour it in and leave it there for a week shaking the container every time you can think about it.

After that pour the whiskey down the sink, rinse the container and it'll never taste like "plastic" again.
(a waste you say? I drink GOOD whiskey, there is no more noble
purpose for CHEAP whiskey)

Do you think the alcohol leeches things out of the plastic?
you betcha! But on the other side of that just how much
do you think is there to leech?

If you leave the probe in the vapor path for half a dozen stripping runs
it's not likely would be anything left for the final spirit runs...

AD

defcon4 · Post by **defcon4** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:13 pm

I've thought about that too but I try to err on the safe side. Anyways I've already distilled stuff 4 times with my temp controller and temp probe setup and I have to say, it was a waste of $80 USD. The temperature overshoot is ridiculous. The temp will overshoot by 30 deg F then undershoot by 30 deg F (a dog could control temperature better than that)

Now I'm trying to figure out the heating element control thread to control my still.

But, back to this thread's topic. Plastics are bad. If pre-leaching plastics was to be tried, us homedistillers have an advantage. We can get some 95% alcohol to leach the plastic and leach it a few times.

I wouldn't do this though, because I don't feel like getting cancer