Medusa - another 4" flute build

[Beer Baron]

Hello HD,
I've been bumping around here for a few months, but this is my first post. I built a pot still a while back and ran a couple batches of whiskey and rum through it with some success, but wanted to build a still that could knock out the final product with a single run. After reading through all ten million pages of Flute Talk I decided that a flute was the way to go. My build is about 2/3 completed, and I decided to name her "Medusa", since she's a mean looking bitch and her whiskey will hopefully turn you into stone lol.

The still is a 4" column, 4 perforated plates (~100 holes) with 1/2" downcomers and 3/4" cups. The dephlag is 5" of 4" pipe with 7 - 1/2" pipe inside that attaches to the column with a 4" triclamp with easy flanges. The product condenser is a shotgun condenser with 12" of 2" pipe with 4 - 1/2" pipes inside. I still need to assemble the plate tree, solder on the sight glasses and seal them up with cork gaskets, and add on a few other missing pieces, then shine her up. It will sit atop a 15 gal Bayou Classic kettle lid - the kettle doubles as my all grain beer boil kettle. I've been an avid home brewer for a few years before recently moving to the dark side and trying out distilling.

I have a question - after soldering on the 4" to 2" reducer last night on top of the dephleg, I realized that the 1/2" copper pipes sticks up about 1/16th to an 1/8" above the dephleg. This may cause a small amount of distillate to sit on top of the dephleg. Is this too much - should I have ground the tops down smooth so that all distillate drains back down? I'm worried about smearing of heads into the hearts. I don't want to remove the reducer to grind off down the pipe because it's all soft soldered and I'm worried I'll screw it up by re-heating everything to get the reducer off. Maybe I can fit a small file or grinder down into the 2" opening and at least grind down 1 pipe to help drainage.

Here's a few pics of my progress so far. Comments/criticisms welcome. I hope to have this girl put together this week so I can test drive her with the cleaning runs this weekend. Then I hope to start cranking out whiskey batches, since I recently aquired a used 5 gal oak whiskey barrel that is screaming for a refill.

dephlag top

Bottom of dephleg with triclamp

Flute dry fit

[Samohon]

Looks great Beer Baron... Diluted patio cleaner would be great for cleaning medusa up..

BTW, Welcome to HD....

[Prairiepiss]

Welcome aboard.

I would have suggested grinding the tubes off. Some say it wouldn't matter. But I don't like to have any place that distillate can pool. It can cause smearing of the final product.

The still looks great.

[Beer Baron]

Thanks guys! I can't wait to get this thing up and running. I'll have to figure out a way to file at least 1 of the tubes down on top of the dephleg to help it drain better - I hate heads. I'm scared to remove the reducer though, since I had to remove the reducer on my product condenser a couple time due to leaks and ended up wrecking the thing in the process (long story that involves a failed attempt at hard soldering). I had to rebuild the whole thing.
I'll look into the patio cleaner too - once she's up and running and I get all the bugs worked out I'll shine her up nice and purty.

EDIT: I'll post more pics as I complete the build and post some results too, after Medusa is up and running.

[Prairiepiss]

Yes if could grind one down that would work.

Idea. What if you took say a 9/16 drill bit. And drilled straight down on the center tube? Stopping at the plate? Mite be a lot easier then trying to grind it all off.

[Beer Baron]

Forgot I had these pics on my laptop - I know you all love copper pron. Here's the plate tree parts and the guts from the recently built dephleg. The plate tree will be held together with a McMaster SS threaded rod.

Plate tree and dephleg guts

[Beer Baron]

Yes if could grind one down that would work.

Idea. What if you took say a 9/16 drill bit. And drilled straight down on the center tube? Stopping at the plate? Mite be a lot easier then trying to grind it all off.

I like that idea, although my crappy drill press is limited to 1/2" bits. But I could use a 1/2" bit and just carefully drill down around the tube until it's mostly flush with the dephleg top. I think I'll give that a try tonight.

[skydivemd]

You don't happen to have access to a Dremel with flex shaft, do you? Put on a sanding disc and drop the long, thin handle of the flexible shaft down on top of the middle tube -- would not take too long before it was flush with the plate.

Looking really nice all around by the way.

[Beer Baron]

You don't happen to have access to a Dremel with flex shaft, do you? Put on a sanding disc and drop the long, thin handle of the flexible shaft down on top of the middle tube -- would not take too long before it was flush with the plate.

Looking really nice all around by the way.

Sounds like a cool tool to have, but I don't even have a Dremel anymore since my dumbass burned up the motor on mine thinking I could cut out the lid of a 15 gal keg with it a couple years ago. Not sure what I was thinking that day. Good suggestion though.

[Richard7]

Beer Baron if the other holes are to offset from the reducer you may be able to get that done on just the center tube, just grind/drill it first add a little water and see if you still have pooling

[Prairiepiss]

You can get 9/16 drill bits with a 1/2x shank.

[Richard7]

I don't guess I read the post good enough Mr. Piss already covered that! Maybe that is where I got the idea

[Beer Baron]

I was able to shave enough off the top of the center pipe tonight using a 1/2" bit to where I think the puddling on the top of the dephleg should be minimal. It's not pretty looking, but it should do the job I think.Thanks for all the ideas. If I have any problems with smearing after a run or two I'll grow a pair and remove the reducer and grind all of the pipes down properly.
I was also able to get my plate tree assembled, sight glass holes drilled, and the sight glass trap adapters soldered onto the column. I was using a step bit to drill the sight glass holes and the chuck kept falling off of the piece of crap Harbor Freight drill press I have. Took me 3 times longer than it should have since I bought junky tools.
I'm in the home stretch for this build, I've just got a bit more soldering to do, some tweaking of the coolant pipes, and I need to cut out the cork gaskets and install the glass disks. Then lots of cleaning and it'll be ready to test Saturday.

[Richard7]

My chuck falls off my drill press too. I was going to heat it and bang it back on like the ape I tend to be, but after research it seems clean is the answer. Here is a short video on drill press chucks I found, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... bI_7IHAsyw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow I haven't tried it yet but hope it helps!

[Beer Baron]

My chuck falls off my drill press too. I was going to heat it and bang it back on like the ape I tend to be, but after research it seems clean is the answer. Here is a short video on drill press chucks I found, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... bI_7IHAsyw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow I haven't tried it yet but hope it helps!

Good link - I pretty sure the problem with my chuck is that the spindle is covered with grease, so when I was trying to drill out 1"+ holes with the step bit the torque was pulling the chuck loose. I'll have to clean it up good next time it falls out. I think we just discovered a new use for foreshots - spindle and chuck cleaner for your drill press.

[NcHooch]

Although I think it's a good idea to have to tubes flush to the top, I gotta wonder if there's any liquid up there in the first place ...Vapor runs through the tubes and travels over the top to the product condenser, that's where all the liquid is. I imagine anything that runs back onto the top of the dephleg (during collection) would be easily re-evaporated by the hot vapor running through it.

Looks good man....keep the pics comin

[emptyglass]

No.2 morse taper, probably the one on your drill, is good to drill 3/4". You can go bigger, but its wise to expect issues.
Also, check the tang for burrs.
You can put the chuck in the freezer (more rightly, the taper shank), take it out and quickly bang it in the spindle. Open the jaws and tap it in sharply with a block of hardwood on the body of the chuck.
Just be careful if you don't have a coating of oil on it, it can grab up real hard and it wont come out.

[Beer Baron]

Thanks NC, I'm actually in NC as well. I think reading your 3" flute thread actually inspired me to try this, since your instructions made the build very easy to understand. I'm using 4", but still used your thread as a guide. I got my copper plates from Metaliferrous, and was going to use the Grainger trap adapters too, but saw them at PexSupply for about 1/2 the price so I grabbed them instead. Turns out the ones from Pex are brass (website says copper), so I had to coat the insides with solder so I could use them.

Made some more progress last night. Medusa is still a bit rough looking, she hasn't been polished up, but I want to test her a few times first before cleaning her up. My craftsmanship is a bit lacking compared to many of you guys, but for my first go at something this big I think it's not too bad. It should make some good likker. All that's left to do is cut out some cork gaskets and put in the glass, and add a product takeoff tube. I wasn't very happy with the glass discs I made with the glass hole saw, so I ordered some pre-cut flashlight glass discs instead. It'll be a week or so to get the new ones, so for testing I'll install my rough cut hole saw glass.

My kettle lid has a 2" copper threaded adapter soft soldered to the SS lid, and my column will drop down into that. The sheer weight of this thing is probably too much for the lid to handle so I plan to rig up some kind of pulley system to carry the weight of the still and support it during a run. I've got some ideas on how to do it, but haven't set anything up in the brew shed yet.

Here's some pics - I did some crappy soldering on the 180 bend at the top so the product condenser points inwards toward the column a little bit, but I don't think the distillate vapor will give a sh*t about that. Probably need to build a parrot for her too, but for now I'll use the free standing parrot I already have.

Plate tree before sliding into column

Front view

Back view

Inside the column

[emptyglass]

If this is your first go, you have done well grasshopper. The flange in your last pic looks like it has a leak point (right hand side). Are you sure its good?

Looks like it will make a nice drop.

[Prairiepiss]

Looking good.

[Beer Baron]

If this is your first go, you have done well grasshopper. The flange in your last pic looks like it has a leak point (right hand side). Are you sure its good?

Looks like it will make a nice drop.

Thanks EG. I got a PTFE gasket with my tri-clamp and I ground off the ridge on the gasket to make it flat and was hoping that gasket would press up against the 4" pipe on each side to seal it so that the gap in the flange would not matter. I could be wrong about that - it's something I haven't tested yet and may have to fix. I'm not even sure the PTFE gasket will work, since it's pretty hard and may not seal well. If not I'll make up one of those cardboard wrapped with teflon tape gaskets I saw on HD, or try wrapping the PTFE gasket with teflon tape. I may have some work left to do with the flange though.

[Prairiepiss]

I don't use gaskets in my easy flanges. I wrap PTFE tape around the flanges. Works good for me. Could be an option? Someone else was going to try wrapping a PTFE gaskets with PTFE tape.

[Beer Baron]

I ran my vinegar run Saturday morning and found a small leak in the soldering on one of my ball valves - fixed that pretty easily. I also did about 5 wraps of teflon tape around my PTFE gasket (that I had previously ground smooth) and had no leaks from the tri-clamp connection, sight glasses or from my dephleg or product condensers!
Then I ran a low abv cleaning wash and had good bubbling action on most of the plates. Like others have mentioned in flute talk, the bottom plate had minimal action, but the other 3 were going nuts. I'm planning to run rum and whiskey through her so I really only need 3 plates anyways. I was only getting 50% abv output, but I believe I diluted out the wash way to much (probably 2-3% wash) and I was running her too hard. I'll work on learning to control her better next weekend when I run a corn/barley wash through her.

Yesterday I mashed up the whiskey wash. I drained 6 gal of boiling water onto 10 lbs of cracked corn in my 10 gal Home Depot water cooler mash tun with false bottom. Stirred it and put the lid on it and covered it with a blanket and left it for 2 hours (I did stir it a couple times during the 2 hours). When the temps dropped to about 152 I added 8lbs crushed barley malt (Briess 2-row) which took temps down to about 148 (also added a tsp of 5.2 mash stabilizer, 4g gypsum, 4g calcium chloride. Our tap water is lacking in calcium - it's very soft water). Covered it with a blanket again and went inside and took a nap for 2 hours. I went back out and fly sparged with about 8 gal of 172 degree sparge water while draining wort into my boil kettle until I hit about 11.5 gal - then heated to a boil for about 20 minutes. At the end of boil I added some Wyeast yeast nutes and 5lbs of sugar just to beef up the abv a little bit. I estimated I got about 75% efficiency from my mash/sparge (I use BeerSmith for my calculations and recipes) and had a OG of 1.061 for 11 gallons of wash. Cooled it down to 80 degrees, pitched some Crosby Baker distillers yeast and had airlock activiy after an hour. This morning it was going nuts. It should finish at around 7.5 to 8% abv.
I know I don't have to sparge and boil whiskey washes - I just prefer doing it that way.

Here's some PICS:
Medusa sitting atop my 15 gal kettle. I have a steel worm clamp wrapped around a 2x2 piece of wood supporting the cooling control arm to make more stable. The kettle is heated by a 5500 watt ULWD element, and that is controlled by my electric brewery control panel (includes a PID controller that runs my HLT and a PWM circuit which controls power to the boil kettle).

Still on the kettle

Ignore the rough cut gaskets - I used some cheap craft shop cork for the test run gaskets, but will make new/better gaskets this week with musical cork.

Bubbling plate during test run

[Beer Baron]

My corn/barley beer is fermenting out really well. I should note too, that the cracked corn I bought from the local feed store had prioponic acid as one of the ingredients - I didn't know until I had paid for it and they guy loaded the sack into my trunk. The 5.2 stabilizer, mineral additions and the boiling probably negated the acid though, since it didn't affect the mash or fermentation. The gravity went from 1.061 to 1.008 in two days, and there is still activity so I'd expect to finish closer to 1.000. I was a little concerned about the yeast too, since I read mixed reports on how well that brand distillers yeast works, but it's working like a champ for me. I'm curious to see how it tastes. It should be done by this weekend so I can run the new still with a real wash

Here's a look inside of the bucket where 6 of the 11 gallons are fermenting away.

Popped the lid on the bucket

[Beer Baron]

Question - how high up on your dephleg to you all have your drain tube (how deep should the water be inside the dephleg during a run)?

I think my drain tube is sitting to low on the dephleg so that the water just flows right through and doesn't really give me as much reflux as I should have during a run. It works great at 100% reflux with 100% of the water diverted to the dephleg, but when I dial back the flow my flute runs almost like a pot still. I started off at 94%, but as the run went along each jar dropped about 3-4% so by mid-run I was in the low 80% range. I tried tilting the still in the direction away from the dephleg drain tube and that helped boost the reflux and abv by keeping more water in the dephelg.

I think it's an easy fix - I can put a 45 or 90 degree elbow pointed upwards on the output tube, so the it will force more water to stay in the dephleg. I am curious how deep you all have yours.

I consider it a succesful run though - i mixed some low wines into the wash and should have close to 2 gals from the run at 50% that I can put in my barrel. I'll air it for a couple days and then make the cuts. While I was distilling I mashed up 11 more gal of wash to run next weekend. Gotta fill up my 5 gal barrel.

[Beer Baron]

OK, looks like I'm on my own.
To try to keep a bit more water in the dephleg and force partial reflux during a run, I put in a 45 degree elbow pointing up on the coolant output. This should keep around 5/8 - 3/4" of water in the bottom of the dephleg, and hopefully the additional reflux will allow the still to put out consistent 90%+ abv like others are getting. I have another run planned for this weekend so I can test it out. If I end up needing more reflux I can modify the output some more to hold even more water back.

Added 45 bend to dephleg output

I was getting great bubbling action on all 4 plates during my run last weekend, so I'm very happy with how the plate tree worked out. Now if I can get the dephleg working correctly I'll be a happy camper.

[NcHooch]

Err ....you need to feed the dephlag from the bottom, ...the hot water is sposed to flow out the top .

[Beer Baron]

Well that explains why the damn thing ain't workin right, lol . Coulda swore I read somewhere that the flow was supposed to be opposite of the vapor direction, but maybe I confused it with the product condenser.

It'd be a pain the arse to re-run the copper tube to flow the water in from the bottom, so I think I'll replace the 45 degree elbow on the output with a 90 degree elbow and extend the height of it enough so that the dephleg gets filled up to the same level as the current inflow tube. That will keep it mostly filled up and hopefully accomplish the same results as pumping in from the bottom. Let me know if there's any problems with that plan. I'll redo the plumbing if i have to, but I can be dangerous with a mapp torch and am worried about accidently de-soldering the whole dephelg.

[acfixer69]

The flow should be counter flow. in the top and out the bottom. the flow regulating valve, ball valve on mine, needs to be in the exiting water to stack the water in the condenser and the temp controlled with that.
AC

[Beer Baron]

Well I picked up a couple extra 90 degree elbows from Home Despot at lunch and will re-configure the output so that the water will get stacked up coming out of the dephleg to keep the dephleg filled up most of the way. It should provide similar results as putting a ball valve on the output I think. Thanks for the help again.