The Waltons Baldwin "Recipe"

[PossumPie]

OK, OK, I know TV isn't real life, but I got thinking...I was watching "The Waltons" and the Baldwin sisters were making "the recipe" in their back room. The still looked to be a 55-gallon Copper still, but they had no cold water condenser. They had a VERY long coil of copper tubing going from the still to their collection keg, and no sign of cooling other than air. I got thinking, theoretically, that a long enough cooling tube would condense the ethanol steam into liquid without a water cooler.I know- "It's TV" but the theory seems theoretically sound. I would REALLY prefer not/ to run hundreds of gallons of water through my condenser...What do you all think???

[NZChris]

It will work, but the speed you can run at will be limited by length, diameter and thickness of the coil and the air temperature and speed.

Fans and fins are ugly and noisy but help.

[shadylane]

For a 55 gallon pot, I'm guessing 500 to around 1000 feet of 1" or bigger tubing would work.
Search air cooled condenser.

[BlackStrap]

Here is a screen shot of the still from the Walton's TV show.
It does not look like a 55 gallon still, this is just a terrible setup...
If you didn't blow yourself up first...The way those coils are in the picture it makes it a closed loop setup.

Like others have said and "air" condenser is a thing, and some have had good success with them.
This is not one of those setups

[Saltbush Bill]

The coil in the picture would be an absolute disaster, it sure was made for TV only.

[NZChris]

The pot is an autoclave, normally used for sterilizing under pressure. It would have to hold quite a bit of pressure between pukes.

[jonnys_spirit]

Is that jonny and jonny boy walton cooking up a drop? Well gawdamn!

Cheers,
jonny

[Saltbush Bill]

It would have to hold quite a bit of pressure between pukes.

I can't hear the gurgling ,farting and spurting from here.

[NZChris]

I actually would like to hook up a pressure cooker of wash to a sideways spiral just to watch what happens if you try to make the Walton's recipe, Granny Clampett's rheumatiz medicine, or the M*A*S*H* still.

"Hold my beer and watch this!"

Safer not watched from your usual chair by an indoors still. I have web cams and remote controlled power switches that I can use and would run the still without being present, contrary to forum rules.

[Yummyrum]

Always had a theory that feds turn a blind eye to film makers showing stills so long as the still looks so wrong that if someone copied it , it wouldn’t work .

[NZChris]

Some of the Moonshiners stills should work.

[MooseMan]

OK, OK, I know TV isn't real life, but I got thinking...I was watching "The Waltons" and the Baldwin sisters were making "the recipe" in their back room. The still looked to be a 55-gallon Copper still, but they had no cold water condenser. They had a VERY long coil of copper tubing going from the still to their collection keg, and no sign of cooling other than air. I got thinking, theoretically, that a long enough cooling tube would condense the ethanol steam into liquid without a water cooler.I know- "It's TV" but the theory seems theoretically sound. I would REALLY prefer not/ to run hundreds of gallons of water through my condenser...What do you all think???

I gave an air cooled condenser PossumPie, along with many other guys on this forum.
Aluminium heatsinks is what I've used on the outside of the copper vapour tube, to dissipate all the heat energy.
It's not something I'd use for stripping or with my large boilers, it's just on a little gin still, but it works really well with zero water.

[PossumPie]

OK, OK, I know TV isn't real life, but I got thinking...I was watching "The Waltons" and the Baldwin sisters were making "the recipe" in their back room. The still looked to be a 55-gallon Copper still, but they had no cold water condenser. They had a VERY long coil of copper tubing going from the still to their collection keg, and no sign of cooling other than air. I got thinking, theoretically, that a long enough cooling tube would condense the ethanol steam into liquid without a water cooler.I know- "It's TV" but the theory seems theoretically sound. I would REALLY prefer not/ to run hundreds of gallons of water through my condenser...What do you all think???

I gave an air cooled condenser PossumPie, along with many other guys on this forum.
Aluminium heatsinks is what I've used on the outside of the copper vapour tube, to dissipate all the heat energy.
It's not something I'd use for stripping or with my large boilers, it's just on a little gin still, but it works really well with zero water.

Interesting! I am new to this, and have only a 6gal distillation pot with a worm can smaller pot. you've seen the cheapo "Chinese" stills. It works surprisingly well for what I paid for it but came with a HORRIBLE design flaw. They had the condenser sitting on top of the evaporator! The hottest part of the still. I took it all apart and put an elbow joint with a longer piece of tubing so that the condenser could sit a few feet away from the still. It has a cold water in tube and hot water out tube and wastes a lot of tap water. I sometimes freeze 1 gallon milk jugs full of water, fill the sink with water and float the jugs in it. Then I pump the water in and out of the sink. This uses much less water, but I'd like to research a water-free condenser.

[PossumPie]

Always had a theory that feds turn a blind eye to film makers showing stills so long as the still looks so wrong that if someone copied it , it wouldn’t work .

I know, I know...TV isn't real life. The stills shown on MASH, The Waltons, etc. were constructed to look like what the "sterotypical" still looks like in people's minds. BTW, a pressure canner or autoclave is no less safe than an actual still. The danger doesn't come in the material used, it comes b/c at some point a still could become a CLOSED system (blockage somewhere downstream of the evaporator and it becomes a bomb. If you took the regulator off of a pressure canner, tightened the lid down but kept your tube clear from obstruction, it would work fine.
As I said in my original post, I'm NOT trying to recreate one, just postulating on the possibility of a non-water cooled system. A bit of researching after I posted shows that there are in fact such a thing. I don't think it would be practical for me, I'm just a small-time hobbyist. I've tried recirculating the same water through an icebath sink and back into the worm can, I don't have the right size pump to keep it cool though.

[MooseMan]

OK, OK, I know TV isn't real life, but I got thinking...I was watching "The Waltons" and the Baldwin sisters were making "the recipe" in their back room. The still looked to be a 55-gallon Copper still, but they had no cold water condenser. They had a VERY long coil of copper tubing going from the still to their collection keg, and no sign of cooling other than air. I got thinking, theoretically, that a long enough cooling tube would condense the ethanol steam into liquid without a water cooler.I know- "It's TV" but the theory seems theoretically sound. I would REALLY prefer not/ to run hundreds of gallons of water through my condenser...What do you all think???

I gave an air cooled condenser PossumPie, along with many other guys on this forum.
Aluminium heatsinks is what I've used on the outside of the copper vapour tube, to dissipate all the heat energy.
It's not something I'd use for stripping or with my large boilers, it's just on a little gin still, but it works really well with zero water.

Interesting! I am new to this, and have only a 6gal distillation pot with a worm can smaller pot. you've seen the cheapo "Chinese" stills. It works surprisingly well for what I paid for it but came with a HORRIBLE design flaw. They had the condenser sitting on top of the evaporator! The hottest part of the still. I took it all apart and put an elbow joint with a longer piece of tubing so that the condenser could sit a few feet away from the still. It has a cold water in tube and hot water out tube and wastes a lot of tap water. I sometimes freeze 1 gallon milk jugs full of water, fill the sink with water and float the jugs in it. Then I pump the water in and out of the sink. This uses much less water, but I'd like to research a water-free condenser.

With some more mods you could definitely make an air cooled condenser for that setup.

It's all about surface area and getting rid of as much heat as possible, as quickly as possible, from the condenser walls.

Since aluminium heat sinks from computer systems are carefully designed to do this very efficiently, I've just used that concept and adapted it to sucking heat from a copper pipe.
Works well with relatively low power input but it's not efficient enough for stripping at full power.

[PossumPie]

[

It's all about surface area and getting rid of as much heat as possible, as quickly as possible, from the condenser walls.

Since aluminium heat sinks from computer systems are carefully designed to do this very efficiently, I've just used that concept and adapted it to sucking heat from a copper pipe.
Works well with relatively low power input but it's not efficient enough for stripping at full power.

Interesting, I built my last tower computer from scratch, I could probably find some aluminum heat sinks around somewhere...Even if it's part water cooled, and part air cooled, the heat sinks would certainly help. They are designed to reduce the heat from a graphics card or CPU from 100 degrees celsius to a safer temp.

[shadylane]

Here's how I did an aircooled condenser.

[PossumPie]

Here's how I did an aircooled condenser.

I love it...what is that hot water baseboard pipes?

[shadylane]

viewtopic.php?t=56652

Mason jars, he was nice enough to supply a shit load of links to other aircooled info.
viewtopic.php?t=54596&hilit=air+cooled+condenser

[MooseMan]

[

It's all about surface area and getting rid of as much heat as possible, as quickly as possible, from the condenser walls.

Since aluminium heat sinks from computer systems are carefully designed to do this very efficiently, I've just used that concept and adapted it to sucking heat from a copper pipe.
Works well with relatively low power input but it's not efficient enough for stripping at full power.

Interesting, I built my last tower computer from scratch, I could probably find some aluminum heat sinks around somewhere...Even if it's part water cooled, and part air cooled, the heat sinks would certainly help. They are designed to reduce the heat from a graphics card or CPU from 100 degrees celsius to a safer temp.

If you have some spare or can find some, give it a go.

I drilled out round ones from CPU coolers to fit straight over the copper, and used the smaller ones from Northbridge chips and GPU cards as shown above.

[PossumPie]

I LOVE it! As I mentioned, those heat sinks handle boiling temps (212F) on GPUs and CPUs. One challenge the PC world has had is to cool faster and faster chips. Liquid-cooled systems, high-efficient aluminum heat sinks, etc. I'd love to get my hands on a box of them. I only have a few from old Towers/laptops but I may see if I can get my hands on some more. have you put a thermometer on the tubing at various places to see how quickly it cools down?

[Steve Broady]

I LOVE it! As I mentioned, those heat sinks handle boiling temps (212F) on GPUs and CPUs.

Temperature isn’t really the issue. Pretty much any piece of metal can handle the temperature. It’s more about how many watts it can move. Our boilers run in the kilowatt range, an order of magnitude more than even the biggest consumer microprocessors.

[Yummyrum]

I LOVE it! As I mentioned, those heat sinks handle boiling temps (212F) on GPUs and CPUs.

Temperature isn’t really the issue. Pretty much any piece of metal can handle the temperature. It’s more about how many watts it can move. Our boilers run in the kilowatt range, an order of magnitude more than even the biggest consumer microprocessors.

Exactly Steve
Same reason those Peltier coolers can’t cope either.

[shadylane]

Surface area and airflow, in other words fins and a fan.

[zach]

There are better options than computer heat sinks.

I've seen baseboard heating element (like shady posted) with ratings of 500 watts/ft with 1 psi steam without a fan. A six foot long element can be purchased for less than $100,

101002060-4.jpg (1.31 KiB) Viewed 201 times

There is also spiral fin stock that can be added to a pipe of your choosing for a relatively low cost ($20/meter) and would have similar performance.

[MooseMan]

There are better options than computer heat sinks.

I've seen baseboard heating element (like shady posted) with ratings of 500 watts/ft with 1 psi steam without a fan. A six foot long element can be purchased for less than $100,

101002060-4.jpg

There is also spiral fin stock that can be added to a pipe of your choosing for a relatively low cost ($20/meter) and would have similar performance.

51dVE4piZpL._AC_SX679_.jpg

There definitely are materials that are more efficient than repurposed Ali heat sinks, but they are a long way from free!

I've also checked on every visit to the scrapyard and have never once seen a baseboard element in the UK sadly, or I'd be experimenting with them 100%.

[MooseMan]

I LOVE it! As I mentioned, those heat sinks handle boiling temps (212F) on GPUs and CPUs. One challenge the PC world has had is to cool faster and faster chips. Liquid-cooled systems, high-efficient aluminum heat sinks, etc. I'd love to get my hands on a box of them. I only have a few from old Towers/laptops but I may see if I can get my hands on some more. have you put a thermometer on the tubing at various places to see how quickly it cools down?

I did check temps with a digital laser thermo, and posted it here.
I don't think I did it very scientifically but can't remember. It's in my Stock Pot Gin Still thread near the end.