8" Copper Still and Accessories

[googe]

Congrats mate, must be an amazing feeling seeing your stuff in a shop, and people wanting more

[HDNB]

the picture of the make spilling outta that spout is worth a thousand words.
congrats on your success!

[skow69]

Yep. That's the biggest damn pencil I ever saw. Can you sell mail order? Or PM me if you would rather.

[Brutal]

Gorgeous! Awesome! Thank you for the update!

[Prawnstarr13]

Love love love this !!! If you decide to export to the uk just let me know as I desperately want a bottle

[DeepSouth]

Okay, thought I'd revive this topic because I've got a big contract production run coming up and I may try to convert this still into a continuous stripping still. Here's my thoughts: I will fill the 250 gallon kettle with water. The water will be heated with my pressurized steam jacket to bring it to a boil and start producing steam within the still. The steam will travel up the cone and back down into the base of the columns.

Beer will be fed into each column at the top using my already installed CIP spray balls. I'll use a peristaltic pump to control the rate of beer feed. The beer will work it's way down the column where it will be stripped by the rising steam. The bottoms will run back into the base of the kettle. The question is, will 4 plates be enough to strip all the alcohol from the beer?



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[DeepSouth]

I have an 8" diameter tube in shell heat exchanger that I'm going to use to preheat the beer. The bottom drain of the kettle will have a few fittings to work as an automatic overflow siphon that will run through the one side of the heat exchanger and incoming beer will run through the other before it's fed into the top of the columns.

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[yakattack]

When you make the mods I would absolutly love to see them. Do you have any specs on the pump you plan to use?

Very interested.
Yak

[Brutal]

The question is, will 4 plates be enough to strip all the alcohol from the beer?

That depends on the rate you feed it beer. Going slowly I'm sure it will be enough. Up to a point more steam will allow more beer to flow, but at the fail point it will just flood alcohol down the drain. One plate is enough in a pot still, but it's not continuous, and has a limited capacity. More plates would equal more speed I believe.

If you route the run off into the steam boiler again it will scavenge any alcohol the plates missed. It will also recycle flavor. And already be hot. You would just have to manage the boiler level, but you were going to have to manage that already.

Why would you use a steam jacketed boiler to boil water anyway?

[HDNB]

me thinks it will be dependent on reflux and time. and maybe introducing a plate or two down, the plans for continuous stills i have seen introduce beer midway in the column.

assuming you have the reflux capability to push the workload down a plate or two i think it should work.
I'm guessing a few tests with a known input and measuring the output will tell the tale.

great idea scavenging the heat to preheat the beer! can't wait to see some plumbing photos.

[DeepSouth]

Why would you use a steam jacketed boiler to boil water anyway?

My gas fired steam boiler doesn't produce sanitary process steam. There's chemical in the boiler that keeps it from rusting from the inside out, so that steam isn't suitable to be used to inject into the bottom of the columns. So instead, I'll essentially boil water that is then used to boil more water that is sanitary. The feed rate will nominally be 50 gallons of beer per hour. This project is actually for production of a flavored vodka product that is made by soaking blueberries in GNS for several days, then distilling the resulting alcoholic juice. Cuts won't really be made since GNS is the base alcohol. It'll go into the still at about 25% ABV. I've got about 20,000 gallons of wash to process.


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[Swedish Pride]

i think it's not the right tool for the application, you may be able to use as a continuous stripper but it will be slow and not very efficient .

Might be better building a dedicated continuous stripper column, it needn't be to pricey.
A simple packed 4" column like this if it's for neutral
http://visionstills.org/index.php/topic,436.0.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

or one like this if it's for flavored
https://www.stilldragon.org/discussion/ ... tripper/p1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[raketemensch]

How is this new process working out?

[DeepSouth]

How is this new process working out?

Never ended up running it continuous. Did several batches instead. I'm still hopeful to rig up a continuous setup sometime. Ideally I'd build a continuous stripper for bourbon mash with the grain in, but that's easier said than done.