my still- one boiler-2 heads

[ROD01]

not the prettiest copper but I wanted to post to thank this forum for all the advice.
I have removed all the silicone I had for sealing the lid to the stock pot boiler and made the teflon gasket.
I now have a stainless steel bowl for a lid instead of the flat stock pot lid.pot is stainless 16 litres wrapped with insulation and covered with aluminum duct tape.
Flour paste is a great seal for the copper fitting to the bowl since my friends brazing was a little porous!
I made a pot still lyne arm to compliment my reflux colum and am running a strip of my first rum wash in these pictures.
The reflux colum is 1.5" copper with a 6" double wound condenser coil at the top before the bend.
I get around 94% neutral from this column using a 1000 watt hotplate for a heat source.
I have always used turbos(ducks the flames) but I use the runoff from my all-grain beer mashes and dilute to 40 litres.
Am about to start an all-bran wash and look forward to no more turbos or carbon filtering.
rod

reflux column

stripping rum wash

boiler 16 litre stainless stock pot

[just-a-sip]

ok please correct me if im wrong, but i am amazingly confused by the "reflux" head you have there. perhaps its just the pic so do forgive me but my perception of this is that you have a coil before the bend to the lebig, you are feeding the coil with cooling water from the lebig. i have 2 problems here....

1. where is the take off below the coil?.
2. how do you regulate the condenser flow from the Lebig to the coil.

without a take off, slant plate, or off set head of some sort the reflux is just going straight back down to the column ( which has no mention of packing) back into the boiler to just be re distilled. i cant understand how the column could equalize with it being open to the atmosphere (which is normal in say a boka, offset or some other reFlux) and have no take off other then the lebig condenser. how does the column stack the heads hearts and tails, how does it do anything other than re distill the same product over and over.

as for the cooling how does it regulate the cooling so as to turn off the coil condenser and allow for product take off?

i may be off base but i cant see it in the pic. please explain what im missing

[ROD01]

quite possibly my terminology is wrong - I called it a "reflux" column because the product ouput is controlled by the reflux(amount of cooling water to the double wound condenser) just below the elbow.
that flow is controlled by a small valve on the output of the internal double wound condenser that is fed from the lieberg cooling condenser. after the column reaches equilibrium I reduce the water flow until product flows out the lieberg.
there is also a valve that restricts the outflow from the lieberg to force water to the internal condenser.
I made it about 5 years ago from info gleaned from the parent site amongst others.
the column is filled with copper mesh packing from brehaus.
My neutrals come through at around 94%.
I will admit that turbos were only used until I found this site and I just discarded foreshots and kept everyhing else - no cuts as I felt at 94% purity it was ok to keep everthing. My next run I am going to collect in small jars and try the cuts so I can stop the tedious activated carbon filtering. I would filter through a 3 ft column filled with activated carbon at 1 drip per second so would take about 4 days to filter 4 litres(this was after aging the neutral on oak chips for 3-4 weeks.)
Hope this makes sense.
rod01

[alyeomans]

I like your parrot. Nice work with your construction.

[ROD01]

I finally decided that my original"reflux" design was too cumbersome as I was constantly having to adjust the cooling water flow to keep a high purity product flowing. Too much flow and no product would make it past the condenser, not enough and the purity would suffer.
After more and more reading on this site I figured it would be real simple to convert to a bokakob since I already had the condenser in the column and just needed to add the slanted plates and a take-off valve.
I also extended the column 8 more inches(to my max ceiling height).
After the two cleaning runs, here it is on its maiden run.
I wound plastic tubing around the outside for extra cooling just to be safe, it keeps the top of the pipe cool.

[rad14701]

Let us know how the maiden run goes... Many of us have stills that have undergone several bouts of modifications...

Is that rusted poop stains I see seeping through the orangeburg sewer pipe...???

[ROD01]

it's definitly rust on the pipe - it will be replaced before the "poop" makes its appearance

[Odin]

Now that would give a whole new meaning to the word "tails" if you are not careful with that!

Odin.

[just-a-sip]

Now that would give a whole new meaning to the word "tails" if you are not careful with that!

Odin.

that might be the funniest thing ive read here

[ROD01]

always fun to be the "butt" of the jokes
anyway the first run was a success with neutral produced between 94 and 95% and the temp steady between 78.6 and 78.8 without any tinkering with waterflow needed.
Thanks for all the great info here.

[ROD01]

Updated still for 2021
8 gallon boiler to replace the 4 gallon stock pot
Actually turned it into a thumper since I had some extra copper around

Way faster to build up stock now
Just wanted to share
Rod

[Jstroke]

I think what I see that is the best part of all of this is the simple fact that you have continued doing something you enjoy and have been a member of the community for roughly a decade, and are still making improvements as time and energy allow. Think of it. Updating your own post almost ten years later