Home Distiller

Fu Man back in the day. He is still all packed up waiting for me to get him out.

Excuse the mess. I still haven't fixed the broken solder on the arm, so flour paste to the rescue!

Nice set up. Looks well though out.

Thanks, it took a while to collect the pieces and put it all together.

My Redneck Bane Marie setup.
Man I miss running.

I like it, Hopefully you have these covered,

Did you space the boiler off the bottom of the pot?

Have you secured the boiler so it cant float in the bath?

Those milkcans have a chine at the bottom, so a potential air space that will fill up and decrease efficiency, some J tubes would fix this and the first point

Thanks,
I didn't think to look at that (air pocket) but it does set off the bottom about 1 1/2". If I ever get back to running I'll check it out.

5 gallon still build kit, works great but looking to upgrade .

My 3 inch flute with trombone condenser

Been a while since I posted a pic of my main keg-based rig. Latest configuration is CCVM, mocked up here without cooling lines or packing. It has gradually morphed from a 2" copper Nixon-Stone into a mostly SS modular rig.

Clean run hence plastic jug

I've also used a computer fan/radiator cooling system and found it to be quite effective. I can nearly knock down 1800W with just a 2 fan system. It's a working concept and still in development. I will be making a new design of LM head with fan/radiator cooling and will post again once I'm done.

+1 asking Smog to start a new post on your air-cooled CM rig.
I'm another one who'd like to see some more details about it. How many fans do you need to achieve 100% reflux? Why did you go for CM over LM?

The reflux condenser is 6x 1/2" very thin copper tubes with aluminum fins. The finned section is 15" high and use 4 high flow 80mm 12v fans on a pwm controler. It knock down 2000w easily. The product condenser is 2x 1/2" thin copper tube x 36" long and lined with super quiet computer fans that are ....quiet but with limited cooling capacity; it is ok for spirit run but cannot do stripping runs at full 5500kw.

I am not cooling water, I chose to cool the vapors directly. This still can hard freeze without damage.

I will certainly start another thread as soon as the built is complete, effective and pretty. So far, so good. I was doing 3L per hour @ 94% bit can hit 96% easily if I slow it down.

Kinda hard to get a clean picture in ccvm setup.
13 gallon milk can boiler, 2" inch by 35 inch column, and a 20x2 inch shotgun.

Got me one more... y'all know it well, rite?

Spring is coming and that means camping season is almost here. I might get one more ferment in before I have to put everything away
for the summer.

My new CCVM/ pot combo sits on a T500 type 30 litre boiler. So far working fine in pot mode, yet to do a proper reflux run

My 30 gallon copper pot with worm. I've really stepped backward in time with this build after my flute build but I really enjoy the traditional ways. Always good to have different tools in the arsenal .

A quick pic I snapped of my new DIY still, doing the vinegar run:



The heat of the vinegar run melted the hot glue sealing the tube in the bucket, so that has to be re-sealed. Oops.

EDIT: Oh yes, and the control box needs to be re-done. The cable I used for this is HORRIBLE. It's solid core and while it works just fine, it's impossible to control. So I'm adding a plug to the element so I can plug it into the control box instead, and that should solve a lot of the problems I have with the control box's controlling.

Pot still mode
420mm 2" shotgun condenser
CCVM modular mode
1.2m 2" packed section, double helix coil and 2" shotgun condenser

50L keg with 2x2500W elements and power controller, 4" fill port and 1" ball valve drain (not in pics).

I bought an airstill 2 months ago but quickly realized that it is too small to make anything meaningful and to make cuts that make sense.

I found a person who builds and sells these -



He is willing to accept my airstill plus money for one of these.

The boiler is 17l. It is made from stainless steel. No silicon gaskets.

Any opinions? Is it a good option to upgrade? I live in appartment so size matters.

My humble rig. Just need to buy and fit the quick release RC fittings and some hose then work out how to plumb this little puppy. I like to think 4X and buy and do once.

Many thanks to all the forum members that contributed on my threads and posts, enabling to get to this point.

I have a 50l keg that I can bolt this to but I think I will use the 50l for in pot mode for stripping runs and do my spirit runs through the 30l.

Should have cleaned the pot.

The portion under cooling is 600mm, 35mm water jacket over 22mm distillate tube.

RC is 250mm long.