How much $$$ do you have Invested?

[cranky]

Like my truck I find the cost of my stilling equipment is best not to think about.

Also like my truck I hope after I go my wife doesn't sell it for what she thinks I have in it

That said I probably have have about $12,300 if you also count the apple equipment. A very large part of that of course is the Apple Reaper but you can't process apples if you can't transport them

[Crabmanstyle]

From memory on all my bits, about €300. I’ve a 50L keg pot with a hefty shotgun condenser. Most ferment stuff I bought second hand and the still/condenser itself was made for free.

[8Ball]

All in, hardware & misc items, about $1000.00 — very low cost for the enjoyment in return.

[tiramisu]

I haven't added this up recently. I'm sure I am at least 1k cad in.
I will probably hit 2k by this time next year.

This being a hobby it can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be.
If I had scavenged the local scrap yards and soldered instead of buying lego from china the pricing would have been completely different.

[erykroom]

Luckily I already had my kegs and boilers from beer brewing and the welding was for free. I only had to assemble the columns. I started with a simple 2" pot still and at some point I added a dephleg to it and then I discovered that something else is missing etc etc. The current setup is approximately 1400 € that is 1600 USD.

• 2" Triclamps + gaskets 11,00
  2" shotgun condencer 500mm 56,00
  1.5" Triclamps 12,00
  2" Tee 14,00
  2" end-cap 3,00
  2" reducer 12,00
  2" Elbow 20,00
  2" pipe 500mm 26,00
  2" sight glass 27,00
  2" pipe 300mm 21,00
  2" Triclamps 15,00
  Copper mesh 16,00
  2" pipe 300mm 21,00
  Hydrometer 8,00
  2" dephölegmator 200mm 54,00
  4" ferrule 6,00
  2" heating element adapter 7,00
  2" ferrule 6,00
  4" ferrule 7,00
  10kw power regulator 19,00
  4" - 2" reducer 14,00
  2" End-cap 3,00
  4.5kw heater 28,00
  2" End-cap 3,00
  2" threaded ferrule coupler 9,00
  2" threaded ferrule coupler 9,00
  4" tri-clamps 21,00
  4" 4 plates flute 850,00
  4" - 2" reducer 23,00
  2" gaskets 2,00

[stillness]

Haha, I feel the same about my truck and stilling gear. I've slowly bought over the years and not kept track, but I'd guess around 2k usd.

[NormandieStill]

Yeah... this one's dangerous. Including some stuff which serves dual-purpose like fermenting buckets, and not including ingredients, I'm probably only in for around 300€ right now. Make that 330€ because I just ordered a sight glass to help with the learning curve when I finish the CCVM.

[shadylane]

How much $$$ do you have Invested?


Moneys the easy part.
Compared to the amount of time and labor invested.

[NZChris]

Moneys the easy part.
Compared to the amount of time and labor invested.

I'd like to get back what I've spent on fuel hunting down ingredients and useful equipment over the years. It's probably way more than I've spent on components and tradesmen. I've made several bottles of fancy spirits that have cost us more in fuel than in ingredients

[S-Cackalacky]

I have no idea. I started out on a shoestring budget. Most of the parts for my first still came from flea markets and thrift stores. First thing I ever bought for the hobby was a 5 gallon ss stock pot at a thrift store for $15. Most of the copper pipe and fittings came from a thrift store and public auction. The outer jacket for my liebig condenser was made from 1" PVC pipe and end caps and an inner vapor tube cut from an 8' piece of 1/2" copper that I paid $10 for at a thrift store. I would guess, all told, I have less than $100 in that first still.

God knows I've spent much more since then. I now have a modular 3" CCVM/pot still and a 50L keg boiler. I also have the pieces and parts to build a 3" 4 perf plate column. As near as I can figure, I have approx $400 in the CCVM/pot still config and probably close to $500 in the plated column parts.

Then there's all the other accoutrements that go into making a drop of likker. No idea of the cost.

[cranky]

Everybody familiar with me knows I do everything on a shoestring budget because I'm a cheap bastard. That is why I use 1.5" copper instead of 2" and bought most of my fittings and things I can't make myself at stores that were going out of business. I am still using my original heating element but have a pile of them that I couldn't pass up at 80% off.

When I got started it was with one of my wife's 3 gallon stock pots, a thrift store bowl that couldn't have been more that $2 and copper pipe I removed from my house during a remodel of the bathroom. I don't remember how much the fittings cost but it wasn't a lot. The Harbor Freight fountain pump was the biggest expense of that whole setup and it made some very nice product.

Today things seem to be much more expensive. I was at the hardware store yesterday and noticed that a stick of 3/4" copper pipe was $43 1" and 1.5 weren't even an option. I have a whole pile of copper pipe, tubing and fittings I bought at 80% off when the price was low. I feel kind of bad that I turned so much of it into wind chimes I even have a stick of 1.5 that I bought for some ridiculously low price because it was on closeout but if I were starting out today and had no option but to buy new it would certainly cost a lot more than it did back then.

[LWTCS]

Raw cost on copper is up 50%
Raw cost on SS is up 30%
Logistics have more than doubled.
A 4.5k (USD) container just a little bit ago now costs 20k.
Then factor in tariffs and....well you see where I'm going.

This is why some of them little table top copper still vendors are choking on their price points and scrambling to deliver in a timely manner.
They didn't factor quite enough for "the cost of doing business ".
Hopefully the supply chain catches up and things can normalize a bit.

[Acrylic]

More time than money invested I suppose, however, there is always a payoff over the long term if interested on continuing forward through the errors. Finding 50 liter kegs (4) at $20 each was nice. Two of them being used, one as a boiler and the other as a keggle for beer. The burners were found from a beer brewer converting to electric. The 2" copper column was $$$$ as is everything up here in Canuckland.

I purchased the 10 foot 2" copper through the local plumbing wholesaler, while bumping into a plumbing buddy of mine, who gave me the strangest look. (He knew where I lived, as well as how old our home is) "Its an old house and I want to keep it original." He laughed and we talked later about building a still, and I learned that he was involved with a group of young guys that were already well into their experiences with liquor stills. He was 24 years, and I'm well into my late 50's. A philosophical view would look at the $$$ as an investment into future friendships, and experiences with something rather rare. There is also the realization of how many old tales of rural moon shining was just made up stories. This is something I learned after I got my head wrapped around these recipes.

All in I figure $4000 with absolutely every nickel and dime counted, however, the spreadsheet (not a complicated one) shows me over $3000 ahead. I use the all grain beer brewing as a cover, and that is quite common. However, I also have a reputation of making very nice beers.

This hobby, I find, also leaves a person with many items purchased and not used. This is a very satisfying hobby. It runs full circle. Cheers everybody!

[Uncle B]

I stopped keeping track, but probably in the $2k range, maybe a touch more. (Much respect to the builders, but I'm more of a cook than a fabricator; I bought most of my equipment either pre-fab or with minimal modification. I'm pretty happy with my capacity, so it was worth it.)

I'd say about $500 of that was on bad ideas, trial and error, and newby mistakes, but I'm still truckin' along, so there you go. This hobby is damned addictive.

[NZChris]

I wouldn't have a clue. Nearly every still I have is made from materials from scrapyards and friends and built by me and friends, plus it's been spent over thirty odd years. I have a collection of boilers that can be run in various configurations and probably cost me less than some newbies spend buying their first still. There is a healthy collection of copper in my steel rack for when I get the urge to build something, none of it new.

My biggest spend on a single still would be my latest acquisition, a second hand 3l copper alembic that I picked up for about a third of it's new price. I'd been waiting for a cheap one to come up for several years, wanting to be able to run gin on a table top, off grid, in front of guests.

Probably less than I paid for my new phone today.