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I would solder it up and try it out. As far as the joint on the column I would go ahead and solder it, if you dont your gonna have all kinds of problems with it leaking. You dont want the pure alcohol leaking down on your boiler as it will be pretty warm, it could be a fire hazard, you dont want that.. solder it up and be safe.

I had a fire with one boiler because of a leak and you dont want to risk it.. Solder up all joints!

sounds good.

This is just my opinion, and you know how opinions are like buttholes, everybody has ones and the other guys always stinks.

But I would go : water into lower lyne arm, out upper lyne arm, in upper column tube , u turn to lower column tube, to dump or bucket return

This way your coldest water would be closest your product outlet. Hottest at first "step" of reflux.

There is a problem with that design. You will not be able to run it as a pot still, because you cannot independently control the two different condensers (reflux, and product), ie you cannot switch off the reflux condenser.

Welcome XXX. I built the same still you have and I have to say yours looks a lot better than mine. I ran both my cooling tubes through the top first thing and it worked great from the get go once I learned to use a little dough to seal the lid.
It makes great vodka, rum and the best sour mash bourbon I've ever had. Beats Jack Daniels at two months old and thats no lie. Easy to run too. I run the water fairly fast and adjust the heat to control the % reflux. Slower for vodkas, faster for rum and whiskey. No problem at all getting 90% ABV. Don't let these guys discourage you, It puts out good stuff. The hardest problem I had was to seal the lid. I tried everything before I discovered that dough actually works.

I just converted it over to a slant plate by covering the holes and adding a removable 10 inch section of pipe to the top that contains the cooling coil. I like it a little any better, It knocks down all the vapor when when I boil the heck out of it which the first one wouldn't do. I still just get 90 % ABV but at a faster rate, anywhere from 35 to 50 ml/min. I'm too impatient to slow down for a higher purity. Al in all, I gotta say, I Love This Stuff! I'm sure you will too.
Nemo

yeah that sounds great , ive been side tracked making dadilion wine but will start back soon

hello, again just fixed the cooling lines on the still. made mash ,made a product,seemed easy but i have some qestions.
1. ive read diffrent things on mash do you have to cook and why-i did. 5lbs cornmeal 4lbs sugar 4gal water i brought to boil then let cool before adding yeast. do you have to cook it ? 2.i syphened liquid off the top of mash and ran that my qestion is do i syphin liquid or cook all mash cornmeal too or strain in pillow case? 3.the still stopped drippin at 83c where where the tails? every thing seemed the same till the end ,exept the begining the first 150 ml was oily and would not burn when i tried to light. any help will b app. thank you,xxx

overall i think the first time went well

Going too slow is hardly ever a problem. Too fast is always a problem in stillin

Your new still is a VM style with CM, ie the only controlls you have are the coolant flow and the heat input and it will work.

Adding a needle valve for LM or a gate valve for VM gives you two essential extras; 1.The ability to do 100% reflux, an 2.Direct control regardless of the heat or the cooling within the parrameters.

Pot still = heat control. Coolant must condense everyting.
LM&VM = heat control and 100% reflux control. Coolant must condense everything.
CM = heat control, and coolant control which provides the reflux while condensing everything at the same time. It's a fine balance achieved by having a valve in the coolant flow that directs more or less coolant into the cross pipes while the leibig condenser condenses everyting using the same coolant flow.

Commercial CM stills operate as far as I can see by having a fixed wattage of heat and a fixed balance in the coolant provided the coolant pressure is constant... an it ain't. A valve in the coolant flow between the reflux and final condenser is a good idea if you really want to control the coolant. Even better is to put the valve in the liquid flow or the vapor flow for 100% reflux control.

1. ive read diffrent things on mash do you have to cook and why-i did. 5lbs cornmeal 4lbs sugar 4gal water i brought to boil then let cool before adding yeast. do you have to cook it ? 2.i syphened liquid off the top of mash and ran that my qestion is do i syphin liquid or cook all mash cornmeal too or strain in pillow case? 3.the still stopped drippin at 83c where where the tails? every thing seemed the same till the end ,exept the begining the first 150 ml was oily and would not burn when i tried to light. any help will b app. thank you,xxx

yup i figured that out.temp would rise, at 50c i would turn on cool water it would knock back the temp 2 much. so what i did was use a clamp on the hose to reduce the flow. that worked fine.

Welcome Aboard..

thanx, but my main question is , i syphened liquid off the top of mash and ran that my qestion is do i syphin liquid or cook all mash cornmeal too or strain in pillow case? 3.the still stopped drippin at 83c where where the tails? every thing seemed the same till the end ,exept the begining the first 150 ml had no smell and would not burn when i tried to light.

please help ,making more mash now .

xxx wrote:1. ive read diffrent things on mash do you have to cook and why-i did. 5lbs cornmeal 4lbs sugar 4gal water i brought to boil then let cool before adding yeast. do you have to cook it ? 2.i syphened liquid off the top of mash and ran that my qestion is do i syphin liquid or cook all mash cornmeal too or strain in pillow case? 3.the still stopped drippin at 83c where where the tails? every thing seemed the same till the end ,exept the begining the first 150 ml was oily and would not burn when i tried to light. any help will b app. thank you,xxx

1 I am not sure that you need to cook it at all. You say you are using corn meal or cracked corn? You would be better off going to UJSSM and reading through that. I think you will have better results with it and it would be cheaper to buy cracked corn from feed store. Not cooking would be fine, heat water with sugar to invert sugar and pour into fermenter while still hot. Let cool and pitch.
2 I would siphon or strain to keep as much solids out as possible
3 I have not the experience to tell you what temp what comes out but would suggest collecting in small jars until you can tell when what is coming out of your still. Label all that come off at what order to what temp and ABV. All women are not the same personalities and stills would be the same so it would be best to figure it out with small jars and notes.
I hope I did not offend anyone with my comments, and correct me if I am wrong!
Edit= This is UJSSM: http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=725
Edit= I said invert sugar and should have said dissolve sugar like I did below

thanks sounds good i collected in small jars but did not lable.200 ml at a time. i collected about 5 jars at 200 ml off of about 3 gallons of mash.my boiler is 5 gal . with 4 gal it wanted to boil over,so i put 3 in. that worked fine

newbee mistake- just learned what backset is . i did not save it . ooppps, i will the next time. thanks for all the help

xxx wrote:newbee mistake- just learned what backset is . i did not save it . ooppps, i will the next time. thanks for all the help

Yea you can use it instead of boiling water to dissolve sugar wait for it to cool then you'll not need to add yeast if you leave meal in fermenter. Yeats bed will be waiting for next batch. You can learn a lot from UJSSM thread.

sounds good.ive got 3, 5 gal jugs fermenting now . on monday i want to make another .3 are cornmeal mondays will b sweetfeed. can i use the backset from a cornmeal run to put in the sweetfeed or should i start fresh?how long is backset good for can it be reheated and used a a later time?

IMO you should not use backset for sweet feed and only because you should be doing things so they are easy to repeat and get same or better results. To get the same results from doing it this way you would have to do corn meal wash again and add backset to sweet feed. If you have room for backset in a big freezer you could save it in case sweet feed is not for you. Just a thought in case you want to come back to something you know.

xxx I want to apologize for using term invert sugar, I don't know why I did that and did not realize I did it until I got a PM telling me.Inverting sugar is done with citric acid or lemon juice sorry if I caused any confusion.

Hey XXX, AzFramer. If it was me I'd go ahead and use the backset from the cormeal batch to start the sweet feed. After all the main ingredient in most sweet feed formulations is.....corn. Itll give you a headstart on the flavor complexity that comes of sourmashing these sugarhead washes(Ala UJSSM). You wont be able to detect any noticeable difference in flavor. Itll get lost in the wash so to speak. As far as repeatability goes, we're hobby distillers and IMO need not be too concerened with rigid consistency. Even if you used the exact same recipe, method, etc. every time, each batch will still taste a little different. Thats just the way it is on a hobby scale. Embrace the variety, dont fight it.

Smokehouse Shiner wrote:Embrace the variety, dont fight it.

+1

My favorite part really. Aside from the building, stilling and drinking

thanks for all the help !! ill tell u how it turns out . should b in a few days. i already want a new still and i think it will b a pot still. as for my next batch going to take the milkcan off and use a keg . will all of the temps b the same or will that change things? and i still dont know when to cut the tails to me it smelled and tasted the same untill it stopped drippin. i guess i need a parrot and hydrometer . it stopped at 83c whats a good temp to start looking and smellin for tails?

All about cuts.....http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 46&t=13261

thanks for that it will help alot .

Way to go, xxx. It's all experience and all good.

starting a new run sat or sun.