Long Liebig for stripping setup

[MooseMan]

I've even had time after cleaning up, to make a little condenser for a friend who I've gotten hooked on the idea of making his own bourbon!

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Oh you’ve been bitten bad Mooseman

I know, I know.....
It's like distillation kit reproduces over night when your not looking!

She's already starting to give me the raised eyes when I pick up anything remotely related to distillation, but with a grin at the moment, at least.

[shadylane]

What are the advantages of putting a flow control valve on the return line?

A disadvantage is that it puts all of the fittings and hoses before the valve, including at the hot end, under pressure. There is no convenient time for a failure during a run.

Liebig hose tails or fittings should be angled down so that hoses don't want to kink when they are full.

I hear Ya Chris.
Under pressure and Hot.
That's not a good combination with plastic hose, valves or fittings.

My 2 cents worth.
The cool input end of a condenser is the logical place for flow control valves.
Have the hot water output hose hanging down so it doesn't kink.
Have the hose pissing into a sink so you can see the flow and feel the temp.
Last but not least, have the water flow plumbed, so the jacket is always full of water.

[shadylane]

That's made me think some more Shady.

... why has no one built a simple cold finger that can be pushed up into the end of a Liebig, or for that matter any open ended condenser, to increase effectiveness?

If the vapor tube is 1" there's room for a true cold finger.
Or better yet, a 1/4" od tube down the middle of the liebig with cooling water.
There have been several posts on the subject over the years.

[MooseMan]

Just thought I'd post an update as I'm stripping with the long leibig today.

I've got it at approx 6-8° from horizontal, the minimum amount of water flow through the jacket with just a really gentle huffing noise from the output end but not actually huffing, surging or spitting etc.

I'm stripping at max input power and outputting 12l/Hr which is considerably faster than I was able to do with the Dimroth!

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Good solid stream at just above blood temp

Wanted to ask some of the old hands here about this last week when I did a back to back strip using a wort chiller to preheat the second charge

Because I wanted to get a handle of my water usage when stripping at max with this leibig, I collected all of the outlet into spare Corny's and buckets.

From a double strip, 2x charges of 40lts, run with just enough water to keep the product at 50c or just above on 12L/HR strip, I ended up with 160-180lts of water, so 80-90lts per strip or approx double the amount of water to boiler charge.

Is this efficient, average, wasteful? What should I expect with this set of conditions?

It feels like I'm maximising both the water and the condensers capacity to cool, but I just don't have a benchmark.

Of course all the water was used next day on the garden also, so I didn't "Waste" any in reality.

[OtisT]

MooseMan,
For comparison purposes, my last strip used 4.7 liters of cooling water per starting liter of 10% ferment in the boiler. If your only using 2l of cooling water per 1 liter in the boiler, I would say you have quite an efficient system there.

12 gallons (45 liters) @ 10.5 % ABV in the boiler, 5500w power, 1.75 lpm cooling flow, 120 minute strip time. 4.5 gallons collected. Stripped down low, to a 28% average ABV collection of low wines. Water in was cool and output was hotter than I would want to put my hand in, maybe 140ish F.

PS. You should really be comparing your water usage with the pre-heater to your water usage without the preheater to know how much water that is saving you. That takes all the other variables out of the equation.

[NormandieStill]

2x the boiler charge was what I was quoted when started. My liebig is not as efficient as yours so my consumption is higher.

But I now recirculate rain water in a 1000l IBC. The other day I ran the reflux column for about 11 1/2 hours. The IBC got up to maybe 30C!

[Yummyrum]

Moose , sounds good to me .
A lot depends on how cool the water is to begin with , but twice the charge volume is not too bad at all even when you consider you were doing a bit of preheating with the waste water .

50°C for product out is a good target . You could go higher by using less water , but you are then staring to run close to the brink of un condensed vapour occurring.

[MooseMan]

Ok so I'm running pretty efficiently, that's very good to know thanks guys.
Although I will confess that after writing the post I remembered that I used the last, hottest corny full plus approx another 10L in a bucket, to clean everything up, so total water use was closer to 180-190L.

Next time I do a double strip and pre heat, I'll compare usage as you suggest Otis, that didn't really occur to me.
It does take quite a while for the waste water to warm up on the first strip with it going through the coil as well.

Wish I had room for an IBC like you Normandie! (Although even if I did, it would most definitely not be wife approved!)

My mains water is a little warmer now as we are in summer but it's still around 12-14c I think, I've not taken a temp. I'm sure this helps a lot.

Speaking of temp Yummy, I don't actually check my product temp with a thermometer I just know that the skin on my fingers can take around 50c before I flinch, so that's kind of where I've been aiming for.
I have had it go higher on previous runs where my Dimroth shell used to warm the distillate back up though and seen wisps of vapour which I really don't like.

[NZChris]

If you are worried about the effect of cooling water temperature rising in a reservoir, draw off the cold water from the the bottom and return it hot to the top using a spreader plate to minimize mixing.

If the stratified hot layer gets close to the outlet near the end of the run, add cold water to the bottom of the reservoir and overflow the hot water at the top to the drain/garden/glasshouse/whatever. If your reservoir is large enough, you will never have to do that. The hotter the return water, the better this method works.

[StillDre]

Huffing can be sorted by tweaking coolant flow .

Amazing, I never even tought about that being the reason I assumed it was caused by the boiling liquid in the kettle, pushing gas and so on. A downside of having a smaller still I assumed.
I had some trouble especially when the parrot was attached, I couldn't get it to be stable enough to not cause a swing in the hydrometer. It is almost counterintuitive to cut down the cooling inlet. Awesome tip, thanks for the vid!

Edit: Super valuable topic, thanks all for the input