Greetings from Canuck land

[joel_brew]

Hello everyone,

I am from Canada and enjoy home brewing of various sorts. I recently started brewing using a continuos feed system but my lack of experience in this area is causing much frustration.

Perhaps through my readings and postings I can learn from others, and hopefully, pass on what I have found to help others with issues they may be having.

May the spirits be with you all!

Joel

[rad14701]

Welcome to the forums, joel_brew...

Are you using your continuous still to produce alcohol for fuel or for drinking...??? Due to the fact that making proper cuts is all but impossible with a continuous still it would only be good for stripping runs... You would then need to do a batch run in order to make cuts... If you have a sophisticated column that allows fractionated product take off you might be able to select the foreshots, heads, hearts, and tails fractions...

We'd love to see still porn if you have pictures to share...

Good luck...

[mrhooch]

Joel:

I built a continuous feed distiller, you can see it under one of my links. I am quite happy with it, it is fiddly to get running properly, but once you set the feed rate, you don't tweak around. It does take a while to process a batch, it is only a 900 watt element after all.

Show what you got, what issues you are having, and I can give you the benefit my somewhat limited experience on what may be your issue.

Hooch.

[beelah]

Welcome and glad to see another Canuck on this forum.

Where abouts are you in this big land of ours? East, West or somewhere inthe middle?

[blanikdog]

Welcome JB

blanik

[Mud Mechanik]

Welcome JB, you will find that everyone on this forum is willing to help you and there is lots of knowledge on the parent site for the taking, happy distilling. MM

[joel_brew]

Hello everyone,

Wow, I didn't expect to get so many responses from just a intro post!

beelah, I am in the maritimes... we have a great history here of "making our own"...

rad14701, I am using for drinking... and to share with all the local country neighbours...

I have been reading on this forum the not-so-successful attempts at turning a water distiller into a continuous still.

However, that is what I am working with. I have a Barnstead A1015 which in theory makes 15L per hour of H2O. I have modified it in several ways and in brief I am getting 25L (of 60%), from a 200L wash (17% turbo yeast base). It takes about 8 hrs to brew it all out. Since this of course does not strip off all the alcohol I run it through again and usually get about 15L (of 50%) output.

So, overall I am only getting 3L per hour which is pretty slow I figure.

Someone has suggested I scrap the continuous idea and just use it as a pot still, then dump it, then refill, heat, dump etc. May look into that idea.

Here are two photos. The 1st is a stock Barnstead photo, to better see the unit by itself. The 2nd is my setup. The present way of doing things is:
1) fill the 200L tank with 17% turbo yeast wash

2) pump the wash into the distiller at around 2/3 near the top, since there was already an opening here. On the inside of the distiller it comes out through a spray nozzle (set to wide mode) to help disburse the wash into a finer mist (the hope is that it would vaporize faster)

3) inside are 6-2100watt elements. I have rewired it so I am only using 4 of them. (this was done because the largest variac I could find locally could only handle 36A). The entire unit is going through a 240v variac.

4) is a Q-baffle they call it, which I have stuffed loosely with copper meshing, it is 8" high

5) water cooling is coming from a large water tank with 10-12C water, it is a continuous loop.

6) output comes out at a trickle (3L per hr on average)

7) another tube for condensation

I open the bottom drain a little so that there is a trickle of wash coming out, this was done to relive the pressure inside as I found that it would heat up too fast and all I would get out for output was hot water with 0% alcohol.

So, to start with I put the variac around 200v so it heats up the 18L of wash inside the distiller (takes about 8-10 min), then as the temp gets to around 78-80C I reduce the voltage to around 120 on the variac and at that stage I start getting output of around 70%. This of course tapers of to around 60% within 10-15 minutes. Between tweaking the 200L output value, (2) pump speed (which is also going through a variac), and the 240v main variac I can usually get it to stay at around 80C and get a continuous flow of around 3L per hr at 60%.

Afterwards I put it through a carbon filter and it comes out tasting pretty clean, cut it with distilled water and then invite the neighbours over!

My quest is to produce a better output/hr rate.

Any thoughts or ideas are welcome!

Joel

[Barney Fife]

Dude..... Nobody has so many neighbors and friends that he needs more than 3l/hr rates and 200L ferments.

Wrong forum, bud..

[mrhooch]

Joel:

The simplest explanation is that you don't have a column and no reflux. All that fancy equipment ends up to be nothing more than a simple pot still.

One thing, if you are opening a valve to draw off waste, it is not the best idea, because if you don't get your feed and waste rates right you run the risk of exposing your elements to disasterous consequences from personal experience. If you want to draw off waste, connect a pipe to the drain valve and have the end higher than the lowest point where you want to operate the still. In operation it will need to be an inch or two higher than the level as stills do work under a little pressure, and you need to adjust for the water column pressure difference.

Hooch.

[joel_brew]

Thanks for the idea hooch... I wasn't aware that the heights needed to match... I will give that a try

Joel

[kiwistiller]

do you know what cuts are?