My firsts

[NormandieStill]

Seeing as there are going to be many firsts I'll put them all here in one thread, as others have done.

So my first first (although I've already posted a couple of others in this forum) is a wort chiller. I had some scrap 16mm copper left over from a previous job and since it was already a coil I tried to just shape it a little tighter, but it started to kink. So I straightened it out a little, filled it as best as I could with salt, and recoiled it around a saucepan. I used some off-cuts and 90° bends to get from the bottom of the coil back out again.

Definitely way more effective than just waiting until I get down to pitching temperature.

[Hambone]

That should do it...

[NormandieStill]

That should do it...

It does... although using a wort chiller in an on-grain wort requires either the chiller or the wort to be moving around a lot because the stickiness of the wort means there's no convection going on at all.

In the second of my recent firsts, meet the mini gin still.

Running a 1L batch of OEG in a 30L electric keg is not going to work, and I wasn't sure that directly heating the keg would work very well either. It seems a lot volume for not a lot of liquid. I had planned on getting an Ikea 5L saucepan and modding the lid, but found a standalone lid that would fit our existing 5L saucepan... which just marginally reduces the amount of paraphernalia that this hobby seems to be generating. Soldered a 2" triclamp fitting and made up a gasket from cardboard and PTFE tape. The lid is fastened down with the commonly used binder clips. 6 of them seem to be enough to get a tight seal. It's already had it's first outing, and when I've got a new batch of neutral cooked up I suspect it's going to get a bit of exercise.

[NormandieStill]

And a few months down the line a big one...

My first reflux run.

When I first ordered the parts for my pot still, I did so in the understanding that I could make it modular and one day tag on a column and coil to make a CCVM. Having started to get quite interested in gin and liqueurs, I needed a decent neutral to work from and started on a WPOSW run. By this point I was painfully aware of the burn that came from by greedy cuts on a pot stilled batch of birdwatchers, so I ordered the final bits and pieces and started assembling the CCVM. The column is a piece of 54mm copper from the local scrappy. It has a little ding about halfway up, but not anything major. I did my best to get the two ferrules parallel but between the ding and my alignment the column has finished slightly off-vertical (You notice it to look at, but you have to hunt to work out where the problem actually is). The column is packed with stainless steel wire mesh (sold on aliexpress as distiller's mesh). The rolls felt a little looser than I'd have liked when I pushed them in, but seem to work. The column is topped with a sight glass (with wrapped gaskets) because I'm quite visual and wasn't sure I'd be able to rely on the changing sounds to know what was happening. Finally the Tee and spool tube, and the elbow leading to the liebig.

The coil took two attempts. It's a 2m length of 10mm copper tube bent into a single coil with a centre return. My first attempt used a 12mm tube, but I forgot the difference between "écroui" and "recuit". Basically the straight lengths are all sold non-annealed, while the coils are annealed. I didn't need 5m and copper is pretty pricey right now, so I bought the straight length but forgot to anneal it. After about 8 winds the tube just cracked and the salt dribbled out!

The vinegar run worked, but did freak me out a little. I ran without the condensor as the goal was to clean the column and the coil. I got it up to temp without running the RC coil so that I had steam coming out of the top and out of the elbow. Then I plugged up the RC and tried to knock everything back. The coil seemed to have no trouble handling even 3kW which was gratifying, but the moment I lifted it a little steam started coming out of the top, even at "only" 1.5kW. A little light reading on HD suggested that I shouldn't see the same problem when running alcohol, so I pressed on with the sac run which was a success, resulting in about 300ml of 95,5% at a very slow rate.

The first proper run was 16.5L of WPOSW low wines at about 45% with another 3L of water added for good measure. For this run I moved to the shed and used a pump and 1000L water tank for the coolant to avoid pouring upwards of 300L of drinking water down the drain. The only problem I have is that my coil is a tiny bit too short meaning that I can't get 100% reflux. I was getting a drip every 3-4 seconds while supposedly in full reflux. I let it run like this for 30 mins, before lifting the coil every so slightly. I was collecting into a measuring cylinder so it was easy to calculate the take-off rates. At the start I was pulling about 500ml/hr for roughly 450W ( I don't have a power meter yet so these power values are guesstimated). For each subsequent jar I increased the power slightly, recalculating the take-off rate and measuring the resulting abv to see how far I could push it. By the 7th jar I was up to just over 2L/hr for roughly 1300W and at this point my abv dropped to a straight 95%. I backed the dial off slightly and collected a total of 23 jars. During jar 23 I tasted a small sample and got the bitterness of tails coming in. Comparing it to jar 17, it was clearly tailsy while 17 was clear and smooth. I ran another 100ml into jar 24 just to double check, and then powered down. By this point (having adjusted absolutely nothing since jar 7!) the abv was down to 94.5%. The CCVM really does just keep pumping out azeo like a machine.

So a big thank you to all the people responsible for the creation and refinement of the CCVM, and all the posters of stupid, and not-so-stupid questions over the years which meant I found the answers to all my dumb questions without having to ask them. I'll blend tomorrow evening but looking at my notes and having sniffed a few jars along the way, I should be getting 2.5L+ of classy, clean neutral and 95%. That should keep me in gin experiments for a little while.

Edit: Could a mod with image-fu please rotate this photo please. I forgot that phpBB has issues with image orientation.

[MooseMan]

Thanks for the super comprehensive write up Norm, I for one really appreciate it, having not yet quite finished my CCVM build and still feeling nervous of my first cleaning run!

Regarding your wort chiller, could you do BIAB to get grain free wort, chill it to pitching temps, then simply dump the grain from the bag back in, when you need to?

[NormandieStill]

Regarding your wort chiller, could you do BIAB to get grain free wort, chill it to pitching temps, then simply dump the grain from the bag back in, when you need to?

I need to get some bigger BIAB bags. My current ones won't take a full grain bill for a 25L wash. And I still do my mashing in the kitchen and I can't really afford the extra mess that happens when you start pulling full bags of grain out of a keg. Nice idea though. I'll keep it for when I have a dedicated brewing space.

Thanks for the super comprehensive write up Norm, I for one really appreciate it, having not yet quite finished my CCVM build and still feeling nervous of my first cleaning run!

One big update. When I came to blend I found the heads cut fairly easily but I couldn't get the tails. They just seemed to run right through. Getting stronger as I got further on. So I did some more reading and found kimbodious commenting frequently on the use of a 2" CCVM and specifically, not exceeding around 1,2L/hr because otherwise the vapour speed just drives the tails up the column. I'd sort of got it into my head that as long as you maintained azeo, you were in good territory. Always learning!

So looks like I get to run again, but this time throttling back a little.

[MooseMan]

That's golden info regarding the vapour speed limits on smearing tails in, I'll obviously have to find mine when I come to run my 2.5" column, but forewarned is fore armed!

[NormandieStill]

There's been a few firsts since then, but the most recent were first steam strip (of a very thick fruit wash, basically puree) and today, first large batch (of anything).

Until now all my ferments have been in a 32L buckets with a volume that would comfortably fit into my 30L keg (so around 25L charge). But for the apple pressing (another first) last year, we bought a 120L blue HDPE barrel. And since it's sat empty the rest of the year, I figured I could make it serve a second purpose so I just started a 75L batch of Wineo's POSW. Should save some faffing in my goal to keep a constant supply of neutral for liqueurs and gin.

[NormandieStill]

A new one... first All Feints Run!

I've not been able to much stilling recently, due to Life(tm) and a lack of space while I try and reorganise my shed (and garden... and finish building the second bathroom...). But I've got about 80 litres of weevil soup which needs running, and a batch of HBB and some of my on-going sugarhead on beer grains project. And then I counted my demi-johns and realised that I didn't have enough space to easily finish any one of those projects.

So I filled the still with the contents of several demi-johns of mixed feints (mostly whisky, some pot-stilled neutral, some fruit brandy) along with the low wines from a failed experiment in making a sugarhead on apple pomace, added a little water to drag the abv down to 40%, and set it up for reflux. The idea was to run it relatively low power to avoid pushing tails up the column, and get the reflux ratio low to keep some flavour. In the end, i was still pulling 93% for most of the hearts. I stopped when I could detect proper stinky reflux tails on my hands from catching drips. This gave me 23 jars of 400ml.

Blending was weird. It doesn't taste like a whisky at all. There's a fruityness that runs through it, but more of a dark fruit, than the fake apple smell that comes over in fores and early heads. In the end I made a conservative blend that doesn't have too much flavour, but is very drinkable when proofed down to 40%. That netted 2.8 litres of 93%. The rest refilled my firelighter bottle.

I wasn't really sure what to expect... and having done it, I'm not really sure what I've got. For the minute I'm keeping it white, but there's enough there that I can comfortably proof some down to barrel-entry proof and oak it for a bit.

[MooseMan]

Interesting choice to run it at slightly lower proof to capture some flavour of the feed stock.
I've only refluxed for neutral so I've not even tried to run my CCVM like that.

Are you aiming for a lightly flavoured base for Geneva or liqueurs or something then Norm?

Worst case scenario I suppose you can go back in with more water and re-run it to get a true neutral from it.

[NormandieStill]

Interesting choice to run it at slightly lower proof to capture some flavour of the feed stock.
I've only refluxed for neutral so I've not even tried to run my CCVM like that.

Are you aiming for a lightly flavoured base for Geneva or liqueurs or something then Norm?

Worst case scenario I suppose you can go back in with more water and re-run it to get a true neutral from it.

Originally I was going to pot still it. Then I thought that I'd stick the column on and see if I couldn't compress the heads somewhat to get a bit more of a hearts cut. I was going to cap the column when I thought I was into hearts and just pot still the rest. Then I started to second guess myself and thought that ideally I'd just define the column but I wasn't going to start pulling the packing out. So I defined as best as I could with the reflux ratio.

The first time I ran my column I pushed it too hard trying to find the point at which the abv dropped. The problem was that even before that happened I was pushing tails up the column and my entire run was stinky!

Originally I was aiming for whatever I got and hoping that it might be interesting. I think I'll use some for liqueurs and stronger flavoured gins. I'll age some white and some on oak. And some may just be used as a vodka for making White Russians (Which reminds me, I need to make some more Kahlua).

[MooseMan]

It will probably make a really nicely layered gin, and be great in a sipping cream recipe too.

Plenty of sloes/bullace/damson in your neck of the woods too!
(I went on a 4 day fishing trip in your area one year and came home with a 5kg bucket full haha)

[NormandieStill]

It will probably make a really nicely layered gin, and be great in a sipping cream recipe too.

Plenty of sloes/bullace/damson in your neck of the woods too!
(I went on a 4 day fishing trip in your area one year and came home with a 5kg bucket full haha)

A couple of years ago, when the timing was perfect, I collected over 25kg of sloes. I have around 2 litres of low wines from that lot waiting to be run!