Greetings from Cairns Australia

[Tropic]

Greetings!
I've been using an Essencia Super Reflux (yep, that dinky little still) for quite a few years without really knowing how it worked or the proper way to drive it. I knew to throw out the first 100ml and keep the temperature around 80 degrees but after that, not much else. I ended up with a fairly pungent unpleasant un-neutral which is ok for rum but not much else. A friend of mine is a stainless steel fabricator and said he'd help out with making a still. He has a very impressive one.
So I've been trawling through here and assessing how stills work and the various designs. Just call me John Snow because I knew nothing. But now I know enough to be dangerous and want to do and want to do it better and freakier. I'm looking forward to experimenting with cooling, plates, packing, head design and electronic automation.
Be scared for I am here!
Rohan

[thecroweater]

Welcome Rohan, there are a few guys here from your neck of the woods

[kimbodious]

gday old mate
just down the road, send me a private message and maybe you can come and get some ideas from my set up!
cheers!

[NZChris]

Welcome to the forum.

I misspent some of my youth around your way. I wish I'd known as much about stilling when working in the mills as I do now

[nuntius01]

welcome

[Dantuss]

Welcome, seems like an pretty good friend to help you out making a stainless still!

[Tropic]

Thanks All for the welcome,
I'm leaning towards a liquid management system similar to a Boka in concept but with an outlet pipe below the condenser to make it dual purpose if I want to give vapour management a go. I'm also thinking of having a 1.4m column that can come apart and then just attach the head onto the boiler as a pot still.
Eventually I'd like to give gin a go, making a perfect neutral with the column then adding a gin basket to the vapour port running it as a pot still as a second run.
I'll scooch over to the column build forum to bounce a few design ideas. Hopefully you experienced builders will stop me from doing anything too stupid!
Ro

[thecroweater]

Yep I use to have a column extent ion for a pot or Ultra Pure™ still they would be easy to make.

[Still Life]

Welcome, Tropic.

[Yummyrum]

Welcome tropic
If you can catch up with Kimbodious , he'd help you heaps . Knows his onions

[sugar glut]

Greetings!
I've been using an Essencia Super Reflux ...

I am in arch rival Townsville.

CLean the column and packing regularly. It's one the hassals of owning a reflux job. I ended up selling my T500 and made a high-neck pot, just like the Scottish stills. No need to mother it during runs, either.