new pot still in the making... need suggestions on stuff

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 11:30 pm

having such a loving and understanding woman by my side who witnessed the failure of my reflux still (story posted on my other post) came home today with a pressure cooker for me to make a pot still for the stove top... so here are some questions before i start...

i plan on having a bubbler for the second distillation benefit... and for a condenser i plan on running 3/8" copper coiled in a large coffee can full of water... can i run my lynn <<(spelling) arm flat horizontal instead of at a degree upwards for the reflux effect since i am using the bubbler or should i keep it at an upward angle incase foam or nasties go up the tube?

also i removed the safety valve (little red thing that sits in the rubber grommet) but left the rubber grommet and ran my tubing through that and ran my thermometer through the shaker valve on the top... i blew into the tubing to see if there was an airtight seal which there is. and now all i need to do is get rubber grommets for the bubbler jar and the soft copper for the condenser...

i plan on making mostly whiskey but also rum, brandy and sugerwash vodkas... what i am shooting for is 60% - 80% a/v

any suggestions, comments, or concerns on the design would be great...

thanks in advance

LeftLaneCruiser · Post by **LeftLaneCruiser** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 2:35 am

Well i take a little step back here for the real PSP's (Pot Still Pro's), but to me it looks like you've got it all figured out quite well.

I don't see any harm in having your lyne-arm horizontal, i have it and has never given me any problems. Against foaming up i always have a piece of scrubber dangling out of the lyne-arm (inside the pot).

Hope your pot-still adventure will turn out a greater succes than your reflux story.

Good luck,

KJH

swpeddle · Post by **swpeddle** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 5:15 am

While I don't call my self a PSP, I would make the suggestion that you may want to skip the thumper. I tried out the thumper route at first as well, and while I found that using a thumper was interesting, I also found that it wasn;t worth the effort.

The first thing I discovered was that doing this hobby well takes time and introducing a thumper really slows the whole process down even more. I did try a number of different type of jars, etc for my thumper and i even set up a secondary heating supply for the thumper to improve its effciency and heatup time. In the end though, I found it was much easier to remove the thumper and do a double run through the pot. That way, I could do the stripping run hard and fast one night, and then take my time with the cuts on the second run on the second night. Otherwise, you're there for a really long time at one stretch.

On top of all that, I had always found that attaining a good seal around tubing passthroughs in the thumper lid was always problematic. If you have a jar with a metal lid then the metal tended to wear through the grommets you use as passthrough gasket, and if you use a plastic lidded jar, it can't sustain the stresses and will quickly crack and having your thumper lid fail in the MIDDLE of a run is a REAL pain. Take it from me.

Post by **Uncle Jesse** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 9:53 am

sometimes i do double runs, but my fractionating colum is efficient enough that normally i only do one. when i say effecient enough, my column has never produced greater than 86% ABV for me, perfect for whiskies, brandies and so on.

as for neutral spirits, i have a 6 gallon still which makes neutral spirits but i've only done it once as i'm not a vodka drinker.

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:44 am

thanks very much for the replies... so i'll take the thumper advice and just do 2 runs without the thumper...

experiment a lil and see what happens...

thanks again

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:49 am

the pot still works great... i am experimenting with different condenser designs but with the coil in bucket design i distilled water for the test run then i tried i lil bit of the wash i have and now i am sipping on the results... very flavorfull and ready to do more tomorrow night...

i need some suggestions on lyne arm and condenser ideas...

for my first run i noticed that my distillate was coming out at about 100ml per hour at 177F (very slow)... i was looking at a type that had a lyne arm with what looked to be another pipe soldered along side of it as a condenser... is this the "shotgun" style?... if so/not how is its performance?... also how well is a jacketed condenser with a pot still?... i am trying to shorten the length of copper being used because i was running 10' ... i would like to keep it down to at most 2 - 3' of copper at 3/8 diam...

thanks in advance...

MyDBear · Post by **MyDBear** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:18 am

scooter wrote:the pot still works great... i am experimenting with different condenser designs but with the coil in bucket design i distilled water for the test run then i tried i lil bit of the wash i have and now i am sipping on the results... very flavorfull and ready to do more tomorrow night...

The first thing I want to say is Congradulations.

scotter wrote:for my first run i noticed that my distillate was coming out at about 100ml per hour at 177F (very slow)... i was looking at a type that had a lyne arm with what looked to be another pipe soldered along side of it as a condenser... is this the "shotgun" style?... if so/not how is its performance?... also how well is a jacketed condenser with a pot still?... i am trying to shorten the length of copper being used because i was running 10' ... i would like to keep it down to at most 2 - 3' of copper at 3/8 diam...

Slow is good about 1 drop\sec, unless yer doing a striping run then ya want it to come out in a stream and then run it again slow and make yer cuts.
the jacketed condenser yer talking about is a liebig and they work very well. the shotgun I dont know much about so I cant comment on it.
having yer colection container 10' from yer boiler is a good thing reason being ya dont want vapor build up in yer colection container to be to close to yer boiler or heat source.
Read the SAFETY section at
[url]http://homedistiller.org\methanol.htm#fire[/url]

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:14 am

scooter wrote:the pot still works great... i am experimenting with different condenser designs but with the coil in bucket design i distilled water for the test run then i tried i lil bit of the wash i have and now i am sipping on the results... very flavorfull and ready to do more tomorrow night...

i need some suggestions on lyne arm and condenser ideas...

for my first run i noticed that my distillate was coming out at about 100ml per hour at 177F (very slow)... i was looking at a type that had a lyne arm with what looked to be another pipe soldered along side of it as a condenser... is this the "shotgun" style?... if so/not how is its performance?... also how well is a jacketed condenser with a pot still?... i am trying to shorten the length of copper being used because i was running 10' ... i would like to keep it down to at most 2 - 3' of copper at 3/8 diam...

thanks in advance...

I use a liebig(water jacket) and I am very happy with its performance. Yes, slow is much better. Most run thier first pass fast and thier second pass slow. But I don't think that your condenser will play much a part in that. It will depend on your heat.What kind of heat do you use?

I have been having a little trouble with my heating as well...(well, sort of). I use to use a 6qt pressure cooker on a hotplate with a downwards sloping lyne arm into a coil-in-bucket condenser, I used an old 500w hotplate that has no regulator. This took me about 2 hrs to run 6qts of wash.
I recently switched to a 6 gallon boiler with a liebig condenser and a 1250w internal heating element(unregulated).It takes me just a little longer to run a 4-5 gallon wash than it took me to run 1 gallon through the old one. however, my new one is giving me a much lower %abv because it runs so fast. I didn't understand why at first because I have a 18"x1 1/2" riser and my liebig is efficient. with help from the people here, we narrowed it down to my heating element. I have to get one that will allow me to run at a slower rate (probably about 750w or so). But, on the good side, Now I know that I have an element that will allow me to do a pretty fast stripping run, and then I can put the slower one in for my final run.

I didn't want to drag this on and tell you my story, but...you wanted a faster output, so I felt it might help you out a bit. I hope it does.

You can get condenser ideas here...

http://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/Pot_stills

pothead here · Post by **pothead here** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:15 am

The above post was me..... POTHEAD