I vote to "out" copper from the homedistillation process!

[Odin]

Yes, that's true, but I read consuming too large amounts of copper actually ... is addictive.

How would you call that?

"I am a copperaholic"?

Odin.

[Jimbo]

Copper is plum sexy!

copper.jpg (6.4 KiB) Viewed 3382 times

[Halfbaked]

I voted copper out! OK, I changed my mind, I vote copper back in.

[woodshed]

My favorite kind of plum Jimbo. Think her name is Brandy?

[Jimbo]

HAHA, yes her name is Brandy. Any votes for Brandy to be our mascot?

[woodshed]

Finally, some one worth voting for in this country.

[Halfbaked]

+1 copper and brandy is in.

[guittarmaster]

Copper:
group 11 element along with silver and gold.

Coppers electron configuration,

copper electron shell

Electron_shell_029_Copper_-_no_label.svg.png (14.82 KiB) Viewed 3513 times

offers it some very useful properties. The unpaired 4s electron and vacant 4f electron shell is what gives copper (similar with other group 11 elements) it's spectacular electric conductive-ness. This is why we use copper for electric wires, gold in computers, and silver to solder them together. the red-brown patina of copper 1 oxide is not like iron rust. Copper 1 on your sill will protect it form further oxidation by forming a barrier that inhibits the spread of oxidation.... SO... it you want to oxidize your still into disintegration like the bottom of a cheap bbq grill by all means, remove the protective copper 1 oxide, reuse, remove, reuse, etc, etc, etc!

Another amazing thing about copper is the attractive ozides that it forms. Copper 1 is red-brown, copper 2 is a deep blue-purple, and that wonderful green copper carbonate.

LUckly, most of those fancy oxides are just barely toxic. A great way to look into this is find a MSDS for the compound and look at the LD50 oral rat. example :
MSDS Copper (1); Oral, rat: LD50 = 470 mg/kg
Copper 2 sulfate : Oral, rat: LD50 = 300 mg/kg
but compare this to Asprin : Oral, rat: LD50 = 200 mg/kg
eg, copper is ~half as toxic as asprin!

The LD50 only compares acute toxicity and doesn't accurately indicate the long term chronic affects. However, the scientific date available suggests that copper is safe. The EPA mentions there is no correlation to copper and human cancer rates. As long as the inside of your still is brown-red your good to go!


My 2 cents is that if your that paranoid about oxygen messing with your copper then your shouldn't use a alcohol shield. Oxygen will dissolve into alcohol and still get to your copper. I'd wash it with enzyme based cleaners to preserve the patina. I'd make two cheap pvc one way check valves. I'd attach one to a tri-clamp endcap that fits the base of my still and the other would attach in the same manner as my leibig (for my it's a 1/2 in copper onion). I'd Then flush the inside of the still with dry Nitrogen gas from a local welding supply. The one check valve at the leibig then is caped after the Nitrogen gas flush.

No oxygen on the inside, no storage in drinkable alcohol, and a lot easier to hide and stash.

GM

[Jimbo]

Thanks guitarmaster. All this talk of coppper does have me wondering about one thing. My wort chiller is 50 feet of coiled copper. Every time I make a batch of beer, I drop it in the boil last 5minutes of the boil to sterilize it, and then use it cool my wort down to pitch temp. At the end of that exercise, the copper is SHINY new. From the pH of the wort and temp I guess. So that copper oxide and presumably lots of copper atoms are in my brew. Im not unique with this, heaps of folks use copper wort chillers and plate chillers.

HD needs that head scratching smily the other site has.

[heartcut]

Good thread, Odin. Probably need more shit stirrers in the world instead of less.
Been accumulating parts for a new build and am planning to eliminate copper parts in the descending path but leave copper in the ascending path. Copper reacts with SO2, H2S and COS to form salts which won't vaporize at distillation temperatures but will wash away with flowing liquid. I figure any sulfur that makes it past the copper in vapor form is more likely to offgas while the hootch is airing out than sulphur salts dissolved in the spirits. Like others have said, the danger from drinking ethanol is probably far greater than that presented by copper compounds, but I'm trying to get my stuff as "pure" as possible. Is there such a thing as organic whiskey?
Meantime, my old, trusty, 95% copper still is stll putting out some great spirits and I haven't turned green yet.
Edit- Brandy gets my vote, too.

[Odin]

Like your thinking. Similar to mine. I put a copper catalyst below the main column, that's made out of SS. By situating the catalyst there, there is no chance rising gasses can cause paricle transfer into the likker.

Glad this issue, with possible health threats, stirred our pot a bit! If for nothing else, to keep us thinking and re-thinking the best possible options for what we want to make & build.

Odin.

[Jimbo]

ya, but... damn, you got me wanting to make a wort chiller out of stainless now. Thats gonna be expensive!

[Odin]

Look at it like this, Jimbo: you will live longer. That way the period over which you write the extra investment off ... is going to be longer. In the end? It will cost you less.



Odin.

[drinkingdog]

Copper is addictive.

Odin.

But stainless steel shines.

I guess by putting copper with stainless you come up addictive shine

[Jimbo]

Look at it like this, Jimbo: you will live longer.

Live longer like shittin my pants in an old folks home, staring at the ceiling and only dreaming in my tortured mind I could fondle the supple breasts of the nursemaids old? OK, maybe copper's not so bad

[Odin]

"... supple breasts of nursemaids old?"

Can't wait to get there!

Drewling already.

Or is that the copper compounds building up?

Odin.

[Jimbo]

LOL. Like in the movie Soylent Green. Lay me on gurney with a tall bourbon, and show me movies of supple breasts until the lights go out.

Did I get that right?

[Odin]

Not sure.

But I like the part about breasts & bourbon.

Odin.

[heartcut]

ya, but... damn, you got me wanting to make a wort chiller out of stainless now. Thats gonna be expensive!

Not bad, really. A 50' roll of 3/8" 304ss goes for about $60 USD. Fittings can kill you, though.

[MDH]

Copper stays behind in the distillate. The only copper we have a problem with is that in the condenser. If you want to have a copper still with a stainless condenser, you won't have any trouble with copper salts.

[Odin]

Vapors rising through the copper parts in the top of the column may impart particle tranfer into the final destilate.

Odin.

[MDH]

I suspect you are more likely be poisoned by excess ethyl carbamate than the amount of copper particles that would succesfully make it through an environment as relatively gentle as the top of a column.

[guittarmaster]

there are scientific papersthat describe the Cu concentration in distilled spirits to be well within safe levels. The one in the link focuses on Spanish spirits and compares it to beer and wine as well.

The data would seem to indicate that unless your distillate greatly varies from those tested, you'd have turned your liver into a harden paperweight from alcohol Cirrhosis long before the copper would have a chance to ruin it.

gm

[Odin]

MDH,

I see the action in a boka, near the top, and there is nothing gentle there! Same holds for LM and CM, just under/above column cooling.

Guitarmaster,

I know pro likker is checked and tested. Please see earlier on in this tread. That is not where my concerns lay. They run semi-continuously. And if they don't they use detergents against the formation of copper rust. We, as homedistillers usually do a run, then put our copperware away for a week, maybe two, and then do another run.

Regards, Odin.

[Doogie]

@Odin, since you have researched this a lot, and are very knowledgeable, wonder if, since some chemicals bind to other chemicals, if putting plastic in the distillation path (like those nice clear tubes that show the sweet sweet likker flowing) would help absorb the poisons?

Just asking from a safety perspective of course

*takes cover*

Seriously of course, does carbon filtering help with this issue?

*digs a hole, builds a bunker*

[Jimbo]

We, as homedistillers usually do a run, then put our copperware away for a week,

Regards, Odin.

You put your gear away for a whole week

[Odin]

Hi Googe!

That would be something, right? Plastic + copper sorta getting rid of each others badies ...

Your question about carbon filtering is an interesting one.

Not sure how it could help.

Off course it would ruin the taste rich product you would be making, taking out most of the taste for sure.

And when making a vodka or neutral, SS is best, so maybe you don't have copper, but you do filter.

So in washes, drinks where copper may help (whiskey, brandy), you don't want to carbon filter. And in washes, drinks where copper has no use (neutral, vodka), you do want to filter ... but filtering is not going to help you control copper, since there wasn't any to start with.

Logically that means it could only help when you make a vodka or neutral in a copper column. If it helps. I guess it would only help if copper compound molecules are bigger than water/ethanol molecules.

Hi Jim,

No, I don't put away my gear for one week for sure! Hmm ... not true. I use my copper alembic maybe once a month only.

Odin.

[MDH]

The biggest danger is from soluble copper compounds being brang over, rather than the metal. These will be oxides. Since alcohol is naturally acidic they will form copper compounds mostly of very short chain carboxylic acids. The only way to truly get rid of this is to add a very minute amount of sodium carbonate (as to not lose flavor) to the distillate and run it again through stainless steel sans copper.

I seriously doubt that the level of copper present in distillate is significant enough to cause health issues unless there is copper hydroxide forming in very large quantities within the condenser.

[guittarmaster]

MDH,

I see the action in a boka, near the top, and there is nothing gentle there! Same holds for LM and CM, just under/above column cooling.

Guitarmaster,

I know pro likker is checked and tested. Please see earlier on in this tread. That is not where my concerns lay. They run semi-continuously. And if they don't they use detergents against the formation of copper rust. We, as homedistillers usually do a run, then put our copperware away for a week, maybe two, and then do another run.

Regards, Odin.

yeah, i read that. but as i mentioned before copper 1 brown-red oxide protects against other oxidation states. You'd need stuff with lots of Sulfur (like certain rums) to get blue copper 2. Even leaving your still to oxidize to green copper carbonate is even better as it has a ld50 of Oral LDSO (rat)1350 rng/kg so it's the safest of all of the oxides for acute exposure while protecting against further oxidation!!!

note: Unless you have a resource with copper content information for some sample moonshine, then we have no hard data to determine the copper content in our spirits. We could have 100X more or a 100X less. We simply don't have a concrete answer.

The link i provided broke analyzed spirits and found copper at the ug (10^-6) concentration The brandy had the highest concentration at 8.01 ± 1.58 ug/ml. that's 0.000,008,01 g/ml.

So that's 8.01ug/ml OR 8.01mg/L of spirit. Assuming an average body mass of 80 kg and using the copper 1 oxide Oral, rat: LD50 = 470 mg/kg Then the 50% lethal dose for said person is 80kg*470mg/kg=3.76*10^4mg or 37.6g of copper 1! it's worth mentoning that there is no data for LD50 of plain old copper. It's that safe (as far as we know).

Now assuming that our moonshine isn't drastically more concentrated than the tested stuff, an 80kg person would need 37.6g of copper oxide to have a 50% chance of dying and at a concentration 8.01mg/L said person would need to drink

37.6g/(8.01mg/L) = 37.6g/(8.01*10^-3g/L) = 4,694 L of the highest Cu contaminated Brandy tested for a 50% chance of death. This theoretical 80kg person would have hit the LD50 for Ethanol at the first Liter!

that's 4,694 liters or 1,240 US Gal. That's WAAAAAAAy too much to even think about drinking! You'd have to have 4000 times the copper concentration in your spirits before it was more toxic than the alcohol itself!

waaaay past the amounts described in the rules we live by!

AND that's just for 1 sitting! (for acute toxicology)

There are good questions to be had for this and the long term effects of our hobby and our health. What is the effects of chronic exposure to copper on our health? What rate does our bodies metabolize copper? What else BESIDES Cu is in our spirits? Personally I'm not worried about it. Civilization has been using copper in drinking water for over a century and we haven't found any cause for real concern.... well, not any greater concern for copper than there is for the effects of chronic alcohol exposure. The alcohol in our spirits is worse for us than the copper.... As far As i can tell. I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything, I just don't see an obvious smoking gun for real concern or to warrant storing our stills in an oxygen-free environment. Could be wrong, but I'm not seeing it. I'm interested to what if any supporting documents someone else can find on either side and I'm on the side of the science .


gm

[Jimbo]

Looks like Odin loading the barrels and stepping back for a show had a bit of a flashback on this one and singed his eyebrows. LOL.

This has been quite entertaining. Its fun when there's a metalurgist on staff haha.