My journey

[Bushman]

After reading different posts this morning I wanted to talk a bit about my journey and also the following thread but didn’t want to steer it off course Dephlagmater Comparison. When I started most members were building a 2” boka (short for bokakob) or they were building pot stills. I built a 2” VM. After a couple years of only making neutrals and getting my whiskey taste through flavoring I decided to build a CM still. At the time the CM had a bad name because of poor designs with through pipes which gave very little reflux. With larger diameter columns being built we had an explosion with members designing new stills to handle the size difference. Members started moving from coils to a shotgun design. Old Dog (OD) came out with a hobby sized flute and that became the rage. Many members moved from experimenting with different packing to plates. I built a shotgun for both my RC and PC with a 4” column but stayed with packing. Also at this timer members were moving from propane to electric still and I followed the crowd and not only is it cheaper to run, safer, it is also easier to control heat. After my build the CCVM was introduced. Members thought this gave them more flexibility. I can’t answer yes or no to this as I have never built one. I did find that when I learned to run my CM I could get both a vodka (don’t want to use the term neutral) and a quality whiskey depending on what I was fermenting and how I ran my still. I always thought that manually moving a coil up and down would have problems for me. The first is I would have to have a small ladder to reach the coil to make an adjustment. I will say that with my CM the adjustments have to be small and a few minutes for it to take effect or I will over compensate. I want to credit Jimbo although he wasn’t the only one but he made AG whiskeys easier for most of us that were basically only doing different sugar washes. With that said after 10 years of running a reflux still the last two I have built have been small pot stills, one for essential oils and the other for gin. I love the flexibility I now have as after I built my CM more members were making their stills modular so they could make modifications depending on what they are making. I am lucky enough to have a large outbuilding so having the space is not an issue. This has been my journey would love to hear others thoughts or influence's.