Here is my still...need help

[BIGBADDAD]

Okay, I bought this 6 months ago before finding this site. Stilldrinkin got my money and after many calls it showed up. I've read the posts and know it was a bad choice but this is where I am. I need to be pushed towards how to use this thing. No directions came with it. Would like to start with something easy but don't know where these hoses even hook up to. PLEASE HELP!!!??

This site is great and I just want some help so I can contribute in the future!

still.jpg (40.2 KiB) Viewed 5787 times

[SuperDavid]

the hose on the left is water in and the hose on the right is water out.
so hook up some water to the one on the left and put a hose on the one on the right and have that going down a drain.
that vinyl foam tape looks suspect...if thats for a seal around the lid you would probably want to throw that stuff out or use it for something else and use a flour/water paste as a seal for the lid.
that column looks like a really small diameter...it's probably going to run slowly, but that might be just was well because that short liebig condenser would have a hard time knocking back vapour.

[BIGBADDAD]

I hooked those hoses up temporarily. They are NOT necessarily in the right spots. Also, would I trickle the water? If I'm putting water in there, where does the distllate come out? I'm assuming from the end of the downward angled column....anyone want to fly to Kentucky and help this former city boy out?????? Thanks for the help!

[Treeking55]

And they charged good money for this and take forever to deliver? I need to start making this stuff for sale.

[pro65]

Like stated before the hose on the left is for water inlet the hose on the right is water exit. Run the water fast enough just to knock down any steam coming out of the collection end , all you want coming out is liquid.

[SuperDavid]

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Reviewed!...but I might add.... You need to do a little reading about the basics atleast....figure out how things work.

[rad14701]

If that's a zinc plated pipe flange between the column and boiler lid it's gonna rust... Not too sure you'd want zinc leaching into the distillate either... And that foam strip can be set aside for household use because I don't see where it could be used efficiently or safely on the still itself... Might not be able to get those plastic dipped clips to hold on that small pot lip either... I could go on, but I won't... Man, you got quite the deal there...

Nice looking stock pot...

[FeralPig]

That is just a crying shame. The world is full of people with no scruples.

Anyway,

1 Ferment something.
2. Put fermented something in stock pot with about 5 marbles.
3. Line the top of stock pot with a wet dough of flour and water.
4. Use those sorry clamps to attach lid to stock pot.
5. Connect garden hose to the lower water in line as others have indicated.
6. Attach short garden hose from water out line to sink drain
7. Turn cooling water on to get a stream about the size of a nickle coming out of water out line. At no time should the output cooling water be too hot to touch. At no time should you see steam out of the copper drip tube (dangerous). If your output cooling water is too hot, you probably are not condensing all alcohol vapor...bad. On the other hand, too cold would be wasting water. My output cooling water is always warm.
8. Place the stock pot on stove burner and add heat.
9. When marbles start to ping the sides of pot you are making shine. I suspect you will want to run VERY slow. Very little heat. Probably you want the output to drip...no stream. This doesn't boil hard like water...nice and gentle and slow...
10. Discard first 4 ounces of output as acetone and methane. Dangerous and bad stuff. Do not save or drink it.
11. Collect output in half-pint jars but only half full.
12. Collect everything until the output smells like ass or wet cardboard then stop.
13. Cover each jar with coffee filter and rubber band and let air one week.
14. Taste and mix. You will not use every jar. If you do, it will really taste like donkey butt. I bet it will anyway from that still but who knows.
15. Now the big step...decide if it was a cool enough experience to do again. If so, build a real still from plans here after spending weeks reading about how this works and asking lots of questions of members. And junk that still...don't inflict it on someone else. But save the stock pot.

[Jetzon]

Hey BIGBADDAD,

First thing ya gonna need to do is throw that galvanized floor flange out the door. I used the same one and it will start rusting the second liquid hits it, Trust me.
Best to get a new lid and just attach a female copper cuppling to it, you could use the lid you have now but ya gonna have to figure out how to seal the bolt holes up.
Then just slide your column in it and use flour paste to seal it, makes cleaning and storage a Hole Hell of lot easier.
That'll make a good starter rig for ya, once ya get the hang of things you'll see how easy it is just to build your own setup.

Just my 2 cents
Jetzon

[alwaysannoyed]

Sorry dude, everything they said, but I don't think it's a total waste, get cork gasket material from your hardware store to replace the gasket material they sent you, and yeah you should replace that zink. After that you should be able to play around with it and learn. We don't all start with a Cadillac.

[LWTCS]

that short liebig condenser would have a hard time knocking back vapour

IMO, (with that small boiler) your condenser can knock down vapor pretty well if you use a 5 gallon water bucket and a re-circulation pump. Fill the bucket so that only the mechanized portion of the system is completely primed. Then top off the remainder of the bucket with ice and your distillate should come off dern near chilled for most of the entire run.

Would it be bad form to ask how much you paid for that,,,,,,,those parts?

[blanikdog]

Do what feral Pig suggested. It's not the best still in the world, but good enough for you to start now that you have it. Use flour paste to seal the lid though and use that roll of stuff for something else. That gal fitting will need replacing too. Neither are big problems to overcome.

Once you start you eill want a better still and will probably build it yourself , but in the meantime you are getting experience. I'd suggest a simple sugar was to begin with.

blanik

[BIGBADDAD]

First off, thanks for the replies. I'll change a few things and fire it up. Also, I paid $169 including shipping. Wish I had found this site first but at least now I live in the Kentucky Whiskey belt!!!

[olddog]

You could build a real still for that price, Keg $50 or cheaper, copper tubing $60-$80 propane torch $20. My "Frankenstill" cost around $150 including the sheet copper for the thumper

[Ugly]

no point ragging on past mistakes, what's done is done...

Honestly, get rid of that flange and use some flour paste to seal that pot up, check the parent site for setups that look pretty similar to your rig...

http://homedistiller.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[olddog]

Don't you hate seing guys ripped off. For a $15 stockpot, about $30 worth of copper and a two dollar galv flange, with all of the bits of hose and clips it wouldnt cost more than $50 total.
The problem is that our hobby is not legal, or you could make a louder noise to get your money back.

[LWTCS]

Don't you hate seing guys ripped off. For a $15 stockpot, about $30 worth of copper and a two dollar galv flange, with all of the bits of hose and clips it wouldnt cost more than $50 total.

If the still was nicely done (and it would not take that much more effort) a buck sixtynine is a fare price (in my market). I mean a good mechenic deserves to be paid for his time. What with factoring in material markup and overhead etc.

Problem is that the poor fella bought a poorly designed and built unit. At least its totally fixable.

Dumb Shit selling those is not going to get many referals. A fraction more effort and ya got your self a business. What a lazy dumb shit.

[pumpman]

I have a pot that looks just like that one and its aluminum. I say srap the hole thing and start from scratch. There are plenty of designs on here and its not that hard. Just do a lot of reading. Sorry you got ripped off. Take it as a learning experience. I just built my first pot still with parts I got from Wally World and Ace hardware. Good luck.

[guerrila distilla]

welcome bigbaddog

the best advice i can give you, is before you even start off your first wash.put your "still" back in the box, and leave it there until you have read up and reread as much as you can about this hobby. it's good to see you have an interest in distilling, but if you cant even guess where the distillate will flow from, i suggest you dont even touch the still until you have at least a basic understanding. things like hooking up the water supply and which end the alcohol comes out, should be pretty obvious if you have even the slightest clue what you are doing.

it's not as simple as filling the still with a load of fermented liquid, turning it on, and hey presto -VODKA. you need to look up the basics first. things to look at include:-

how to make a basic wash
basic still design (learning to build your own still will gain you more insight into this hobby than you'd imagine)
methanol (look at this carefully, not reading up on this, could result in you're next hobby being learning to read braille!!!!!)
heads/foreshots,hearts, tails/feints
how to run a basic wash (heat sources, the temperatures different chemicles boil at, performing cuts)
SAFETY - most important of all. (for instance, your short condensor, if run too hard, will not condense all the ethanol. a room full of ethanol vapour + naked flame = bye bye house. again, a blockage in your column = boom)

you have to remember, this is an excellent hobby, but, as has often been learnt the hard way, it does have certain risks. 99% of these risks can be prevented by simply knowing what you are doing. i didn't touch the first still i made until i read, reread, and read again, the parent site here, the compleat distiller and every other bit of information i could find on the subject. for instance, i built my first pot still using some plan i found on here. what i found out by reading the site, is that i used a rubber seal on my lid and i used a chromed tube for my lyne arm. if i had read up on this properly beforehand, i woud have saved myself some time and money. both rubber and chrome plating leach chemicals when exposed to high proof alcohol.

as i said, welcome to the hobby, read up on at least the above subjects, and hopefully you'll have a good time learning this art.

[Fester]

bigbaddog, the first thing you should distill is water. it cleans the still and you can check for problems with your rig. Just look at the crap that first comes out of it. And if you don't use any cooling water to your liebig for a while, it gets a nice steam cleaning on the inside. I do this after ever 4 or 5 runs with any still. What comes out at first is disgusting.
You were certainly honest and open enough by posting this. People like Stilldrinkin are a taint to this ancient art. They are a stain on the paper that I throw in the toilet. But I did it too. About 4 years ago I got ripped off by the same kind of crap off ebay. I still have it as a reminder. Or maybe because I collect junk, don't know. But you haven't really lost anything. It led you here and now your are on the good road. Tons of good and free information. Perhaps use your recent purchase to practice your soldering? Take it apart, change it around, it aint hard. I'm pulling for ya.
If I may, I would suggest a beer keg boiler and a 2" copper column pot still. height is not so important. About 2 feet or so is OK. Keep it simple. Keep it cheap. You will build and rebuild many stills. And every one will lead you to the next better one.
Oh, and avoid turbo washes. I know they are easy, but you can so easily do much better than that.

[BIGBADDAD]

Thank you very much! I haven't done anything with it cuz I've been catching huge Largemouths here on Kentucky Lake....but I'll get to it!

[alkoholics]

nice catch man, gotta love the action with the bass they just came back in season for us out in west canada i will have to get out and see if i can get a nice one

[Fester]

Wow! Good times... catching fish, cold beer, telling lies... so nice.

[guerrila distilla]

nice looking fish bigbaddad, i'm coming over to kentucky lake in october (i live in norway). i'm fishing mad, but we dont get freshwater bass over here. i'm staying close to paris. i'm looking to hire a boat while i'm there, are there many places that hire boats out?

[DamianRyan]

[quote="Fester"]bigbaddog, the first thing you should distill is water. it cleans the still and you can check for problems with your rig. Just look at the crap that first comes out of it. And if you don't use any cooling water to your liebig for a while, it gets a nice steam cleaning on the inside. I do this after ever 4 or 5 runs with any still. What comes out at first is disgusting.

Damian here,I've been wondering about running just water through the still to clean it,sounds from what you say its ok,is there any safe cleaning solvent to use or is the boiling of water enough? Damian

[Fester]

Damian, just water seems to be plenty good enough for me. no need to waste good wash to break in a still. just my opinion. i know many people here add some alcohol in some form or fashion for the cleaning run. maybe a good idea, don't know. i suppose the alcohol will help strip some additional crap from the still innards but i feel that live steam is going to do a fine job. if you do add alcohol to the cleaning run then I'd think a slug of heads or tails would be good enough because you will discard everything on that run. just distill water until it is fit to drink. then you are ready to use your new still for a higher purpose. and if you will clean your still in the same way occasionally, i think you will notice that the nasty heads do not last as long because the stench of a dirty distillate will make you think that it is heads when really it is just a nasty still/nasty packing. of course you should wash it inside and out and clean any packing every run. but really, after about 1/2 gallon has come across, most of the leftover still crap has been removed.
As for cleaning my packing... i always use packing but use it sparingly.... i have 2 boxes. One for clean and one for dirty. I only use copper mesh so your loveable Fester doesn't know much about SS packing or other kinds. When i get enough dirty packing to be worthwhile to clean, i just put it in a SS pot, cover with water and add some acid like lemon juice or vinegar (usually lemon juice). Then I boil the hell out of it (like making holy water, haha). Let cool. Rinse. Then it is sweet again and can be added back to the clean packing box. And this brings me to another point that i really should experiment with.... since an acid cleans copper so well maybe i should add some vinegar to the cleaning run and run it hard until i can detect no vinegar smell. just a thought...
always remember and NEVER forget, Fester is always learning. the more he knows the more he realizes how little he knows.

[Hawke]

Just water steam won't fully break down most of the available fluxes on the market. The alcohol will get to the oils and other chemicals involved. Cheap wine or sugar wash cleans things nicely. Also will start the patina process so that your hooch doesn't taste like a penny.

[Fester]

Fester bows to more experienced Hawke. Only know what i know from reading, reading, reading and going, doing and doing. Fester takes good advice gladly and never ever feels that his is the only way or best way. And solder residue is a bitch and i don't care what you use. it will go away but i really must explore the vinegar idea futher.... just feel in my bones that vinegar is better than alcohol at stripping away the flux. better, cheaper. i may be wrong but until i test it out i will not know. trouble is Fester will be out of the country on business in 2 weeks and will be gone for a month. you will miss Fester, yes? but internet is available for my travelling laptop. so maybe Fester can bore you with his words of wisdom/silliness? haha

[BIGBADDAD]

nice looking fish bigbaddad, i'm coming over to kentucky lake in october (i live in norway). i'm fishing mad, but we dont get freshwater bass over here. i'm staying close to paris. i'm looking to hire a boat while i'm there, are there many places that hire boats out?

When you get to paris, Tn give me a PM and I will personally put you on fish. Paris is 1 hour away and I will travel. I will have my guide license by then but won't charge you.....but you'll have to help with my still for an afternoon!!! Here is a web address for starters at Ky Lake. http://www.kentuckylake.com/fishing-main.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

There are many guides down Paris way I can give you names too!
Here is a4 pound 4 ouncer!

[nedscreekkennels]

On my cleaning runs on a new still "last one was a 15.5 gal ss keg "I add a gal of cider vinegar and 10 gal water and run the heck out of it . Granddad would do this if his still set for a long time between runs or any repairs had been made