Another New Distiller

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Howdy. I am an accomplished all grain brewer but first time distiller from Texas. I am not interested in neutral spirits or rum much, preferring whiskey (bourbon, single malt, straight corn and rye). I read up on the forum and built this simple pot still from a 15.5 gallon beer keg. It uses two inch diameter stainless tubing with tri-clamp connectors attaching to a short 1 inch diameter copper lyne arm and reducing into a ¾” over ½” liebig condensor about 3 feet in length. I also built a copper parrot’s beak and an apparatus from lumber to support the condenser and catch the spirit at an adjustable hieght. The plastic bucket in the picture just corrals the hoses feeding cooling water in the bottom of the liebig and out the top.

The liebig has a copper wire turbulator spiraling down the outside of the inner ½” tube as well as a spiraled copper wire on the inside of the ½” vapor/spirit tube for good measure. The one on the inside is loose so I can insert or remove it as desired.

The rig seems to work just fine , knocking down as much water/vinegar/cheap vodka vapor as I could throw at it during my three cleaning runs. In normal use, the cooling water just trickles, and still the condensor only gets warm near the top. I don’t have a very precise valve on the coolant supply line right now, so I either tend to be using too much coolant or stopping the stream altogether, which is not good. When it is balanced just right, the top half of the tube is warm, and the bottom half is cool. Anyway, there have been no issues with huffing or other condensation problems. I get a smooth stream or trickle of drops out the end depending on how hard I run it.

Well, that is my rig and this is my intro. I just ran the stripping run on my first batch and everything went smoothly except fermentation, which is ironic, given my brewing experience. I guess I will post about that in a more appropriate topic.

[OlympicMtDoo]

Welcome to HD Fills Jars Slowly, Good looking rig, sounds like you've done your home work you'll do well. OMD

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Thanks for the welcome! I am already enjoying this hobby way to much and haven't produced a drink yet

[OlympicMtDoo]

Oh man wait til ya sip your first good stuff that you made yourself, then you're hooked forever. Let us know how she goes.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Well, I ain't drinkin' it yet, but I have it in the jar. I followed Jimbo's wheated bourbon recipe: 12.5 gallons of wash distilled to 9.25 quarts of low wines distilled again to 4.25 quarts of product, cut down to about 2 quarts of aging whiskey at 72% abv, with the rest going in the feints jar. I cut it down to 60% abv and added toasted charred oak sticks from Oak Solutions Group (charred them myself) at the rate of 75 square inches per gallon. If cut down to 40% for bottling, the yield is 3.75 quarts. I am pretty satisfied for my first time out. Looking forward to more of this.

Should I let everything go 4 months plus on the oak before trying anything, or maybe do the microwave trick with the little 1/2 pint jar?

Which is best to put the feints in, the next stripping run or the next spirit run or saving them up for a feints run?

[woodshed]

How long you age is really a taste thing. When I was aging in glass I found it best to let the jars breathe covered with a coffee filter. Barrels breathe and that transfer is vital to the process IMO.
Nice start and welcome.

[Truckinbutch]

Oh , Man ! Are you ever screwed , blued , and tattooed ! You did it right and by the numbers with research and no asked and answered questions . This demon has it's claws sunk in you and there is no salvation . Welcome aboard

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Thanks for the kind words of welcome folks! I tried to follow the advice here and read, read, read (and then think, think, think and repeat) before doing anything. Of course, there is no substitute for "just doing it" once properly prepared.

Appreciate the tip about venting the jars, woodshed. I have seen some posts around here on various method people use.

[woodshed]

As far as nuking the small jar. it's worth a try. Follow advice in that thread. I can always tell a nuke aged product and typically find them unsuitable. Using it to speed up barrel time strikes me as the best use for it.

[Truckinbutch]

I would nuke at least a quart if I was going to nuke . It will remove some edge and give you a better idea of where you are going . Can't take the place of real aging over a long term .

[ga flatwoods]

Oh , Man ! Are you ever screwed , blued , and tattooed ! You did it right and by the numbers with research and no asked and answered questions . This demon has it's claws sunk in you and there is no salvation . Welcome aboard

One! One in 500! Damn! A Big Welcome FJS! Nuking is NOT aging. If using oak it is oak infusion. Only time ages. Big debate.
GA Flatwoods

[Fills Jars Slowly]

OK, I got you guys on the nuking as flavor infusion and not accelerated aging. If I understand, it is not mutually exclusive of standard aging. I could nuke a jar in order to get an idea of where things are going as Truckinbutch says, but I could still age that jar and not worry about it being "ruined" by nuking.

[ga flatwoods]

Correct.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

I thought this would be a good place to post some pics of equipment I have recently found useful or been inspired to build based on my first go round at making some corn squeezins. These are not innovations of mine, just pics of what I am doing to try to make my life easier as I learn the ropes in this hobby.

I just cobbled together a mount for a drill driven paint stirrer over my mash pot to auto-stir my mash when desired. Especially for 30-45 minutes at a whack as I cool it with an immersion chiller to pitch yeast after mashing. I got the idea from our discussion in Jimbo's wheated bourbon recipe thread. This is by no means a safe or approved contraption. It is what I did in my garage in literally 30 minutes with no drawn up plans or even much good sense. I am comfortable with the risks of using it and plan to have it strapped down but good and plugged into a GFCI outlet when in operation.

The second item I think I will find a use for is a 5 gallon SS corny keg converted to hold spirits by replacing any rubber parts that would contact the spirits with cork, cotton, and Teflon tape. I found little corks that fit the liquid in and out holes perfectly, and I replaced the rubber lid o-ring with a wrap of cotton butcher's twine to give a nice base layer, and then covered that with PTFE tape. Should work nicely for storing low wines or aging spirits.

Here's the pics:

[Truckinbutch]

Flatwoods , we can pick friends but not family . I think we are gonna have to accept this child as family . Whatcha think?

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Glad I fit in here, Truckinbutch. This all seems like good fun and a challenge to me, and the more seasoned people here (and some newbs!) seem to have a lot of worthwhile knowledge to share.

Tonight I am sitting up pretty late sipping on some of my homebrewed beer, as I wait for my harder stuff to age, and some ideas have struck. Heaven forbid. That is often the beginning of the end.

Now this is just speculation, because I am loath to go from a good simple method (Jimbo's stir corn into boiling water, insulate, and wait process) to something with more steps or complications, but it occurs to me that with my setup, I could use my drill stirred chiller combo in reverse, and maybe gelatinize cracked corn in less time than the insulate and wait method and without the danger of scorching with direct fired cooking. I have three of these big ass pots, sitting on three big burners, with pumps and hoses to move anything anywhere I want. I could boil water in one pot and recirculate it through the copper coil in the picture, while the stirrer moves the whole mash past the coil to keep the exchange efficient. I wonder how fast corn gelatinizes if it is in a homogenized agitated mash that is 200F+?

This might be worth it if I can cut my corn "cooking" time from 4-5 hours using the steeping method to 1 hour or so using this. But, time being one of my cheapest commodities when it comes to this hobby, I kind of hate to trade "do nothing" for "do something". Of course, since the corn gelatinizing is the single longest step in the mash process, I could potentially take this from an all day process to a half day, which will mean I get to do it more often... Heat water for 1 hour, Gelatinize corn for 1 hour, chill for 30 minutes, mash barley/wheat/rye for 2 hours, chill for 45 minutes, pitch yeast. That might be 5.5 hours to fix up a batch of mash. That is about half the time I have been dedicating so far, and in line with what it takes me to produce a batch of beer wort.

Again, I don't want to go spouting things and thinking there is anything new under the sun. I am a homebrewer and RIMS and HERMS (both are just heat exchange methods) are old hat in that sandbox, and this is a variation on that theme.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

I have another handy piece of equipment to add to the list above: a mop wringer. This makes separating 12 gallons of wash from 36 pounds of grain lots easier and less messy. I won't post a pick of the wringer. Ya'll know what that looks like