My first steps towards 2" Boka still

[Vicknair57]

Hey everybody. My friend and I have been actively working on this project for two months now and are finally starting to make some real progress. We decided on a 2" x 36" copper column because of price and space restrictions, and a keg for the boiler. My brother in law being the head brewer for a local brewery, I was able to get an old banged-up 15.5 gallon coors keg for free. Our first purchase was the column and the 2" stainless steel Tri-Clover fitting for attaching the column to the keg. I hand wound the 1/4 in. coil, single-wound with 1/2 in. cold-finger, using the pack with salt technique. I wrapped it around the cold-finger with a cardboard spacer and was able to tug the spacer out, no burning on the barbecue required. Soldering copper is easy as pie and anyone can do it. Not to say that my work is perfect though, it takes less solder than you would think. Flushing the salt out was a nerve wracking process. We had to go in one way until some salt and a trickle of water came out, then in the opposite way which pushed out the rest of the salt. The water flowed fast and freely after that. the cold-finger coil ended up being 9" long, should be plenty to knock down all of the vapors. I am now in the process of making and installing the slant plates, templates found on the internet are proving very useful, more on that later. Our Needle valve is in the mail, along with our router controller for the 4500 watt 240 volt low-density heating element. thinking of using 240 for the heat up then switching to 120 with the controller for the rest of the run. Kind of off topic, but the Tri-Clover to threaded 2" copper fittings is really sweet in that it adds around 3 extra inches in my column for packing so that I will have a little more than 27" of copper packing. That makes the column 39" with the fittings. I realize with this short of a column we will have to take off slow to obtain close to the 95% azeotrope level, but from what I have read that is still do-able with a column of this size.
Anyways here are some pictures for Y'all of what we have so far, tell me what you think.

[Kidnapper2]

She's a real beaut Clark!

[Braz]

Lookin' good. I run off a Coors keg too. I kind of like the pot bellied look.

[Vicknair57]

Sweet, thanks for the votes of confidence Y'all.

[whiskeytripping]

That looks great, the only thing your gonna have an issue with is that clear plastic hose, it will melt shut when it goes into refluxing. Use 1/2" OD pex pipe hot ass water won't bother it at all.

[Vicknair57]

Cool, thanks for the heads up whiskeytrippin. I didn't realize the dang cooling coil would get so hot in operation, but makes more sense to me now, thinking of how hot the run off is from my wort chiller when I'm brewing. Guess I gotta go to home depot and stare at fittings for half an hour.

[Im gone]

I use the same clear plastic tubing on my set up and it has never melted. I say try it and change only if necessary.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[BareKnuckles]

Looking good bro... Keep us posted on your progress....

P.S. I know the feeling of staring at fittings for what seems like forever...lol..

[vinper]

Why cant I see were the product comes out?

[WIski]

Vin, I would suggest reading the post "Title" and then maybe taking a little look at the post "Body"

I am now in the process of making and installing the slant plates, templates found on the internet are proving very useful, more on that later. Our Needle valve is in the mail, along with our router controller for the 4500 watt 240 volt low-density heating element.

[vinper]

Ahh I see

[WIski]

Been there Dude.......

[kent_skinner]

Looks nice! I am a week or two behind you...

Where did you buy the tri clamp?

[Vicknair57]

Tri-Clamp came from Mile Hi Distilling. It is their 2" copper pipe to keg kit, costs around 60 dollars. It includes the female threaded copper coupler.