Install heating element vs readymade Turbo Boiler

[cayars]

Ya can learn more running 50 different recipes in a 1 gallon pot
Than you can running a 50 gallon pot once
Plus the little still can supply a variety of alcohol, while your building a bigger rig

Apples and oranges. I've got small one gallon stills and use them for certain things. But as I was specifically saying if you wanted to produce 1 or 2 gallons of finished spirits after cuts the bigger still will produce better spirits all things being equal. The big still will need all of 2 cuts while the small still will needs 30 cuts in the example as above.

What you will learn is how bad cuts are on a small still trying to accumulate a lot of one spirit vs doing one large run where you get much cleaner hearts for a much longer duration.

Cayars hot plates with thermostats are used by newbies who know no better......no experienced Distiller would ever consider using a thermostate operated hot plate under a boiler. Statements like the one you have just made lead other newbies down a path that eventually leads to more trouble.
If you really believe its acceptable to run a still using a thermostate your a bigger fool than I thought you were.
Please show me where these many people using hot plates with thermostats are.

I'd consider myself an experienced distiller and know many others who will use them as well. If you have a thick bottom on your boiler or use a diffuser, many hot plates and/or electric stoves can work just fine. Some of course cycle way to slow and aren't suitable. But just making a single comment that they can't work is false and falls into the same camp of thinking that PIDs don't work or can't be used to run a boiler on a still, when they obviously can work and also cycle power. You just have to know how to use them correctly and have the correct type sized with the correct wattage.

A hot plate that cycles can still be more controllable then distilling over fire or coals and people have done that for a long time. Wind blowing on your boiler or fire can more drastically affect your heating then a cycling of a hotplate especially when using a diffuser or thick bottom boiler.

I can turn off the heat and still get a stream or drip rate that doesn't change much for 5 to 7 seconds. So if I have a hot plate that cycles better than once a second or two I'm fine assuming it's sized correctly. If it cycles ever 3 to 5 seconds it would be very hard to use even with a diffuser.

I do agree with you that they are used by novices that don't know better and get poor results but often/some times this can be fixed if need be with something as simple as a diffuser which greatly evens out the heat input to make the cycling almost a non event.

The fact is, when you understand how a still works you can make most heat sources work.

[shadylane]

What you will learn is how bad cuts are on a small still trying to accumulate a lot of one spirit vs doing one large run where you get much cleaner hearts for a much longer duration.

Why do you say "how bad cuts are on a small still"
Big still or small, the shine is normally collected in many jars.
The only difference is the jar size and how fast the still can fill each of them

[Saltbush Bill]

The big still will need all of 2 cuts while the small still will needs 30 cuts in the example as above.

Only two cuts on a big still/boiler? Seems I and a lot of others on a lot of forums have been doing this all wrong for a long time.

[Yummyrum]

The big still will need all of 2 cuts while the small still will needs 30 cuts in the example as above.

Only two cuts on a big still/boiler? Seems I and a lot of others on a lot ofl forums have been doing this all wrong for a long time.

Salty ,this is my take on what Cayers is saying and yes... its confusing as hell .... but it shouldn’t need to be .

So from my understanding , Cayers is trying to say that if you ferment a batch and strip it and run it though a big still capable of handling it all in one spirit run , you do two cuts , a heads cut and a tails cut .

If you were now to run the same amount of strip through a smaller still you will need to do many spirit runs to process all that strip ... in his example , you would need to run 15 small boiler charges and on each you would do 2 cuts ... a heads and a tails cut so you would in fact be making 30 cuts .

Yeah I know ... its a funny way of looking at it but it is kinda true



Now Cayers , you need to understand that not everyone wants to process a large amount of strip in a small still .In fact I’d really be surprised if anyone was so stupid that they would choose to do it that way by choice .

Many are happy to do small batches that when stripped will just fill their small boilers .... and they can do a spirit run in one small run .. ....but they will be collecting in many small jars ...... just like if they were doing a big run .

Experimental small batch distilling is just as achievable on a small scale with small ferments , small stills , small cuts jars , small boiler power and obviously smaller total product as it would be if scaled up .

When everything is scaled , the only thing that does not change is time .
It takes just as long to do a small batch as it does to do a big batch .



And to clarify a small run means to run a small amount , a big run means to run a big amount .

The power to the boiler needs to be scaled accordingly . Whether running a small amount in a small boiler or a large amount in a large boiler , when the power is scaled correctly , the time taken to distill either will be the same . Small boiler charges need less power .... larger boiler charges need more power .

[cayars]

Yes Yummyrum you got it.

I know it's confusing and maybe I didn't express it best but the easier way to look at any run is how much you want to get.
But if you work the problem backwards it makes more sense:

Let's assume you have a 3 gallon barrel you want to fill to age/oak some whiskey.
If we assume we'll keep 65% of the final spirit run as our hearts cut to oak, we need 4.16 total gallons output from the spirit run.

Assume each run leaves you with roughly 1/3 the boiler charge and triples your overall ABV. In order to have 4.16 gallons of distillate from the spirit run you would need 13.8 gallons of low wines. <-- that's the ONE RUN vs many mentioned earlier. This can be ran as one batch in a keg boiler vs many runs needed with a one gallon boiler.

You can substitute your own real world numbers above but the process/calculations will look similar to that above.
The amount of finished product you want to have will dictate the amount of distillate to cut from, the amount of low wines you will need to have stripped and the total amount of ferment that will be needed.

I'm sure a lot of people are fine with smaller boilers and making just a few bottles at a time and nothing wrong with that at all! I do a lot of small batches as I don't always want gallons of a particular spirit. Small boilers are also great for recipe experimentation. But it DOES MATTER to spirit quality when you are scaling up operations and trying to make larger quantities at one time. You can make cleaner spirits using a bigger boiler (vs many smaller runs) as the scale of the still can work to your advantage as there is less smearing taking place per given sample output size on a bigger still.

This is of course talking about pot distilled spirits. Refluxing spirits is a different ball game (apples and oranges).

[Saltbush Bill]

Sorry Yummy but I agree with Shady here.

Big still or small, the shine is normally collected in many jars.
The only difference is the jar size and how fast the still can fill each of them

Yes you can make cuts on the fly if you want. I personally don't I still like to air my jars and sniff through them to see what I want to keep and what I don't.
I cant wait for the onslaught of questions from newbies about why their new spirit tastes like shit when they

[cayars]

You're reading too much into things Saltbush Bill.

One run on a big still will give you the same amount of distillate as many small runs but will have greater separation (rate of change) per given output.

Let's try this a different way. Assume you make a run on a small still and collect 1 liter of distillate. You collect in 100mL samples thus will have 10 jars of 100mL. You have to do 15 runs to process all the low wines needed to fill your small barrel. So you will have 150 jars of 100mL samples.

Now on the bigger still you run this all at the same time collecting to the same 100mL sample size and end up with 150 jars.

You have the same amount of jars. But unlike the multiple batches will have clearly defined heads at the start and clearly defined tails at the end. The rate of difference between each jar will be roughly 15 times that of the multi-batch run on the smaller still. It should be much easier to find your cuts when each jar changes much more slowly between same size samples. The bigger run will have 15 times LESS SMEARING or rate of change per jar. The transition of each jar on the bigger run will be far less dramatic and will make doing cuts that much easier. You may only have to find the cuts point of heads to hearts an then hearts to tails. You of course could explore other jars to see what to include as well if favorable but this will be easier as well as the rate of change between jars is 15 time greater.

You can argue in the real would you would never collect 150 jars and I'd agree on principle but you could and it would be no different then all the jar changes needed on the smaller still. Instead you can use a modified approach where you collect in big jars for KNOWN heads, KNOWN hearts and KNOWN tails based on the part of the run you're in and experience. Then we can use the small 100mL jars for the portions of the run where these interesting transitions take place (heads to hearts, hearts to tails). This makes doing cuts even easier.

Does that make more sense?

[still_stirrin]

...Does that make more sense?

Problem is....”when I shake it up, I still get a bunch of tiny bubbles!”

In other words, you’ve used too many words that still lead the reader to confusion and misunderstanding. Sometimes, the best description is succinct. Many readers (especially those on smart phones) will simply pass over long-winded responses.

Bite-sized pieces are easier to swallow.
ss

[cayars]

Problem is this just developed from a simple comment made that another person said was false. It was never meant to be a different topic. I did start out trying far less words but the other person didn't get it and still kept saying it was wrong, which led to more and more explanation to the point it was spelled out a few different ways very long winded.

It really isn't a difficult concept to understand when you understand the physics of distilling. The conversation developed from a comment that a bigger still will produce better spirits than an Airstill. The Airstill isn't even designed for spirits but for distilling water which makes the whole conversation that much more bizarre.

[NZChris]

You're still trying to blame poor results on the still.

If you choose to run stupidly high volumes and choose to run it too fast and choose not to swap the jars as often as you should and choose not to put much effort into selecting your cuts then you will get the results you deserve, but nobody on this forum is recommending you should do any of that, so what's your real point?

[charcoal]

This is my take on why cuts can be easier on a larger still. Even if you need to taste each jar, the time taken is much smaller with the larger boiler as it is all over within 4 hours.

I am discussing pot stills in this.



Assuming each 4 litre gives one jar of fores, 2 jars of heads, 2 jars of hearts and 2 jars of tails. 4 hours to sort these is a lot less than 24 hours. In second run, hearts are easier to test. Also, when the first tails appear, there is no need to test further.

[NZChris]

So where did the 30l of 30% come from?

[RC Al]

In addition there is stacking to consider...
Using charcoals table, the 8 fores would become 1 or 2 and the resultant 22 heads would be much reduced to the benefit of the hearts, not real life numbers/percentages of course, but a bigger boiler will give more defined cuts due to this

[charcoal]

So where did the 30l of 30% come from?

They come from the stripping runs from 4L boiler or 30 L boiler. I don't make any cuts there and don't need to monitor it that closely.

I have a 30 L Coors beer fermenter.

My wife used to start the still when I was leaving from work. Airstill takes like 60 mins to produce the first drops. It used to take me so much time to do a strip and spirit run in my AirStill.

[charcoal]

In addition there is stacking to consider...
Using charcoals table, the 8 fores would become 1 or 2 and the resultant 22 heads would be much reduced to the benefit of the hearts, not real life numbers/percentages of course, but a bigger boiler will give more defined cuts due to this

That is correct. Ideally I wanted to use colours so there is another picture here.



Orange=fores
first green=heads
blue=tails

[cayars]

That's a good illustration charcoal.
Actually it won't even be as bad as the bottom row. You won't have that many foreshot jars, your heads will be more compressed and overall smaller as the ABV will be a bit different. You will also end up with a bigger hearts section as well and the middle part will be much cleaner as the heads and tails are push out much wider. Far less smearing jar to jar the bigger the boiler. In reality you would have a couple of 1.5s and a couple 2.5 in there. These 1.5 and 2.5 jars would likely be right around your cut points (for a reason).
The bigger boiler would look more like this (added space instead of color coding)

001111111111 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 2222222222222222222222 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.5 33333333333333

Try color coding the line above for the bottom row in your chart without the spaces

PS you added another color chart since I typed this

[NZChris]

If there is a still handy that does the whole spirit run in one go, why would anyone consider spirit running the whole 30l through a 4l still? It's not that you can't and it's not that the small still is incapable of producing decent product, it's just that it's the wrong tool for that sized job making hard work out of what should be easy.

That said, if you did one spirit run using a sensible amount of jars and identified the cut you want using the same method you use when running the 30l still, you could then run the rest using volume alone like Odin does with Odin's Easy Gin, only having to swap jars twice for every run.

[charcoal]

If there is a still handy that does the whole spirit run in one go, why would anyone consider spirit running the whole 30l through a 4l still? It's not that you can't and it's not that the small still is incapable of producing decent product, it's just that it's the wrong tool for that sized job making hard work out of what should be easy.

That said, if you did one spirit run using a sensible amount of jars and identified the cut you want using the same method you use when running the 30l still, you could then run the rest using volume alone like Odin does with Odin's Easy Gin, only having to swap jars twice for every run.

This 30 litres is my New still. I got it like 12 days ago. Before this I had a 20 litre still and before that an airstil

This new still is a modular still. It has thermometers, copper mesh and other nice stuff. I am in the process of upgrading it by adding heater element, insulation and pid controller

[Yummyrum]

Sorry Yummy but I agree with Shady here.

Big still or small, the shine is normally collected in many jars.
The only difference is the jar size and how fast the still can fill each of them

Yes you can make cuts on the fly if you want. I personally don't I still like to air my jars and sniff through them to see what I want to keep and what I don't.

You know I don’t make cuts on the fly Salty .

47F53F1B-127A-4D6C-A485-7E1F4F1905BB.jpeg (40.08 KiB) Viewed 2624 times

Only way to make cuts is to collect in lots of jars . You know that , I know that . Ain’t no other way to do it and get it right . Lots of big jars for big boiler fulls .... lots if little jars fir little boiler fulls .

Hope you didn’t think I was endorsing anything other than that . If I did I’m sorry .

[charcoal]

Heating element fitted!



Temporary insulation created for boiler and reflux column. Real insulation coming from China.



Suspending the pump makes it less noisy. If it touches any side then it makes the entire vessel vibrate.



Already did a test stripping run. No leakages but the electric cord became warm.

Now waiting for my PID + related parts to come.

[NZChris]

Is the PID for your fermenter?

[charcoal]

For my reflux still!!

[Yummyrum]

Charcoal ,whats your plan for pissing off that whopping big Silicone seal ?

Hoping at least you’re gonna wrap the shit out of it in several reels of Teflon tape .

[charcoal]

Charcoal ,whats you plan for pissing off that whopping big Silicone seal ?

Hoping at least you’re gonna wrap the shit out of it in several reels of Teflon tape .

What seal? the one on the heater? That would remain as it is. My other seals are PTFE now.

[Yummyrum]

Unless I’m mistaken ... and it has happened before , the seal between your boiler and it’s lid looks like a silicone gasket ( seal )

Iff’n you switched it out for Teflon then all good .

[Slow42]

Charcoal nice job with the heating element. Looking forward to your PID setup. If your looking for gaskets try brewerygaskets.com. Lots of specialty gaskets and all the regular stuff. Cheapest SS ferrules I could find anywhere also. Keep up the good work.

[6 Row Joe]

Heating element fitted!



Temporary insulation created for boiler and reflux column. Real insulation coming from China.


Suspending the pump makes it less noisy. If it touches any side then it makes the entire vessel vibrate.



Already did a test stripping run. No leakages but the electric cord became warm.

Now waiting for my PID + related parts to come.

How big is your element? 120 or 240v.? Looks like a 120v by the size and the wire. Building a pid or buying one done? They are fun to build if you're into that sort of thing. I have a pid and I just built a pulse width modulator. Both are similar how they work but I think the PWM is a bit easier. Here's my 120v. controllers.

[cayars]

charcoal, try putting a sponge or piece of soft foam under the pump. That might be enough to reduce the vibrations.

[charcoal]

Unless I’m mistaken ... and it has happened before , the seal between your boiler and it’s lid looks like a silicone gasket ( seal )

Iff’n you switched it out for Teflon then all good .

There are two silicon seals in my equipment now. I will try to wrap the small gasket (heater element) with PTFE some days later. My hands got many tiny cuts when filing the hole and now even soap stings.

For the top gasket, I am not sure how to proceed as I cannot wrap it in anything. Maybe I can get a circle of PTFE which will fit. I have a 10mm dia PTFE pipe but that is so stiff that if i try to make a gasket out of it, then it will leak.

I will check if Aliexpress has some gasket for the top thing.

[charcoal]

Heating element fitted!



Temporary insulation created for boiler and reflux column. Real insulation coming from China.


Suspending the pump makes it less noisy. If it touches any side then it makes the entire vessel vibrate.



Already did a test stripping run. No leakages but the electric cord became warm.

Now waiting for my PID + related parts to come.

How big is your element? 120 or 240v.? Looks like a 120v by the size and the wire. Building a pid or buying one done? They are fun to build if you're into that sort of thing. I have a pid and I just built a pulse width modulator. Both are similar how they work but I think the PWM is a bit easier. Here's my 120v. controllers.Resized952018030795101911.jpgResized952020020595091333958236.jpg

240V from here https://www.kegland.com.au/2200-watt-st ... ement.html . The IEC cord gets slightly warm running this.

20 years ago I would have been happy to solder the things but now I prefer them prebuilt. I ordered a mini oscilliscope on Aliexpress but chose something that was fully assembled. I still try to repair things if they get broken but even that is getting harder.

I have bought an Inkbird PID (Inkbird ITC-100VH 100-240V AC PID Temperature Controller Probe Sensor 25A SSR AU). This would need a heatsink (already ordered) + a case. This should be all here by Tuesday or so.

I mistakenly ordered Inkbird 240V Pre-wired Temperature Controller ITC-308 last week. Yesterday I realised that it is actually a thermostat.