Chinese double-wall still, ordering and setup

[Oldvine Zin]

Add another $123 to the bottom line bill. CBP inside DHS apparently reports information about imports with final destinations to state governments so they can tax it if they want. I just got a 3 month delayed sales tax bill from the state. LOL. What's next. It's up to $4181 now despite starting at $1720 from the manufacturer.

Ouch! Thanks for sharing your experience on this, sometime cheaper will cost more in the long run.
It does sound like you are getting her up and running and starting to make something drinkable And this hobby isn't about making liquor cheaper, just better than what you can purchase .

Stay safe
OVZ

[DetroitDIY]

Yes, thanks for all the financial details on the purchase saga Rainier. It's amazing (sobering?) to see all these hidden fees. When building my still, I had kept good financial records for the first 18 months. But somewhere between redesign #2 and nickel and dime #20, I stopped keeping records. I expect that if I had an honest accounting of everything into my build, it's not too far from how much you're into your purchase.

As with most hobbies, when you get deep into them and choose high quality tools and materials, they're about a work of love and creativity, and the expenses are just a means to that experience. At least I'm not into classic car restoration, where I imagine I would add another zero or two after these prices.

[still_stirrin]

As with most hobbies, when you get deep into them and choose high quality tools and materials, they're about a work of love and creativity, and the expenses are just a means to that experience.

Exactly...a man’s gotta’ have tools. Those tools will become your “friends” as you learn to “dance together”.

A woman’s closet is full of shoes she doesn’t wear anymore. At least your tool shed has useful tools in it.
ss

[MtRainier]

Nice ways to think about it Oldvine Zin, DetroitDIY and still_stirrin. Thanks. I have moments of feeling like a big dummy, but I'm hoping this thread will help folks count the actual costs of importing on their own and will understand better why domestic suppliers who are selling stuff that an end user can find direct from China have margins that aren't unreasonable.

In my case, I couldn't find anyone selling just what I was seeing from China, so I took a shot. I do like using it a lot, and hope to use it to get some experience and eventually open my own craft distillery.

[zapata]

Thats a nice rig!
Just a note to those who follow in your footsteps as I was recently looking into the tariff situation. You get an exemption on $800 / day for personal stuff. If you can break a large order down so each is less than that and spread the orders out by a few days you'll save the 25%.

Not sure if that would help in this case though, that boiler looks like it should be more than $800 alone, even straight from China.

[Irishgnome]

MtRainier
Was this purchased on Alibaba.com, or Aliexpress?
I placed an order on aliexpress.com and am currently trying to cancel the order because of this post. (which I didn't find until after I placed my order)
According to disillarus on aliexpress.com, the shipping charges will be from them to my door?!?
If I can't cancel this and I end up with a bunch of bills, my wife may cut my balls off.
I want the still and add-ons, just not potential added costs.

Cheers
Irish

[MtRainier]

It was alibaba.com and it was a really manual process.

I don’t know for sure, but I think aliexpress is more straightforward with their expenses. I think they ship with normal carriers so you shouldn’t get weird shipping charges, but maybe you’ll get a tax? Not sure how it works.

[kpex72]

With Alibaba, you use a Logistics company who will provide you all Freight costs up front, but will not quote the tariff. Once it clears customs, bond is paid, etc. they send you the Customs forms with everything shown, tariffs and all. You pay that and they coordinate an LTL delivery to your place.

AliExpress will use a common carrier - Door to Door service. Chances are DHL, FedEx, etc. or what ever delivery company they use will call you prior to delivery so you can square up any import taxes/tariffs. It's pretty simple.

[MtRainier]

Yep. Kpex72 has it right.

[DetroitDIY]

If I can't cancel this and I end up with a bunch of bills, my wife may cut my balls off.

Irish

That sound unfortunate Irish, and rather short sighted on your wife's part. Hope that return works out, or you can find a way to bury the extra costs. Your avatar looks like you already received that punishment from your wife.

ps. plan on pitching a large batch of panela on that EDV493 next weekend.

DetroitDIY

[MtRainier]

I honestly think you'll be good. At most you'll be out $250 in tariffs plus another $500 in shipping and handling costs.

(Just busting your balls which seem to already be in jeopardy. Sorry.)

[remlu22]

MtRainier Thanks for the awesome post and thread, it answered many questions I had. I'm also looking to mash, ferment, and strip all in the same vessel. I've read your post about doing the 'HBB in Fancy new still' and that was great as well. Now that you've had the unit for a while and had some time get some runs in, mind updating us with how it's all going, specifically with the all grain? Interested in things like the operation of the still, times, temps, volumes, things you like and dislike, things you would have added or omitted, general tips about how to run effectively, and things you would recommend for someone to know if they were to pursue purchase of a similar still. Thanks and hope you're enjoying running it and the product that comes out!

[MtRainier]

When I got it I quickly made so much bourbon and rye that I had to make a decent investment in barrels. Haha. I've had a lot of it aging for a while and it's great.

Here are a few tips I've worked out.

Be prepared to clean every bit that touches the product thoroughly. Mine was full of oil and machine dust.

I fill the jacket up with water only enough to cover the elements. Basically until I can see some water in the sight glass. Then it is mostly steam touching the walls and it transfers heat way better. I've discovered that you don't need lots of pressure in the jacket. A couple PSI is more than adequate for most mash. By the time most of the alcohol is out of the mash and the temp of the mash boil is close to 212F you don't want it to be cranking out the boil anyway, most likely, but the pressure will go up toward the end a bit. There's a pressure relief valve that cracks at 14PSI which is way higher than I've gotten it.

This jacketed still with elements in the jacket has a lot of lag time where any heat adjustments take a long time to propagate to the wash, as a result I had a hard time when running it as a flute and keeping perf plates loaded by balancing the dephleg condenser and the heat input. It was very easy for me to shoot way past where I wanted to be in heat before I realized it and then when I would dial it back it would take a long time to recover and then the plates would drain. Operator errors for sure, but it just felt way trickier than running a flute with an element right in the wash. Bubble caps would probably be easier to keep loaded, but I haven't done a run with those yet. As a result I settled on just doing a strip and then a spirit run.

Hook up some hose to the jacket drain fitting on the bottom that can take boiling water without being destroyed (i.e., not garden hose which will collapse) and another hose fitting with some heat proof hose to an fitting on the top manifold. When you're done with the heating you can start pushing cold water through the jacket with the input on the bottom. Hot will come out the top for a while. Run the agitator in the wash to cool it down. It will go from the alpha enzyme temp around boiling down to gluco temperatures really fast. I'd drop in the gluco right at the point below where it will start to denature. It will keep going down for a while since the jacket is likely cooler than 130F or so. Getting down to yeast temperature takes much longer. It isn't the most efficient way to cool it with just cold water in the jacket, but it sure is convenient.

Cleaning is pretty easy. I just mostly hose it down inside and out the drain hole into a bucket with a bit of scrubbing with a soft kitchen sponge. It's about a 15 minute job. The last little bit of dirty water needs to be tipped out the drain, and it's awkward, but that's the only big struggle. Getting a full corn mash out requires scooping for the majority of it and then a rinse out. You ain't going to lift this up to the sink or trash to dump it. It's too heavy. I about wrecked myself getting it into my basement.

I drained and refilled the gear box on the agitator. It's a 30:1 worm gear which turns some pretty thick stuff, and it would squeak every revolution. I used Mobil SHC 634 which is a high pressure synthetic gear oil and now it's quiet and smooth. No idea what they put into it in China, but it wasn't doing the job.

[DetroitDIY]

Good feedback Rainier. Two questions on all that:

1) Did you find a hose that can take the boiling water? If so, do tell. I keep destroying garden hoses.
2) What are the specs on your agitator. I see the gear reduction, but can you tell the unreduced motor speed and the power in? I've been thinking of making one, but would be guessing a bit at the right power and reduction ratio to get a torque speed ratio at the impeller. Knowing some proper specs would be nice.

Thanks,
DetroitDIY

[MtRainier]

1) I'm using the thermoplastic stuff from Northern Brewer. It's yellow and opaque. It seems to hold up. It's kind of expensive, though. Regular clear vinyl hose from Lowes works ok too, but it has a tendency to kink right at the fitting. I found a metal 90 degree hose support used to bend PEX tubing around corners worked ok to prevent the kink. The thermoplastic works perfectly, though, with no kinks.

2) It's a 0.37HP 3-phase motor wired to run on single phase by using a couple of capacitors with a base speed of 1080RPM and a 30:1 gearbox. Pics of the motor label and gearbox are below:

[DetroitDIY]

Thanks Rainier!

[hypnopooper]

2) It's a 0.37HP 3-phase motor wired to run on single phase by using a couple of capacitors with a base speed of 1080RPM and a 30:1 gearbox. Pics of the motor label and gearbox are below:

IMG_20200215_101739.jpg

So out of curiosity does the single phase connection for the motor run on 240/220 or standard 120 connection? Ive got a tank coming from china in the near future with a mixer motor as well but was curios on whether it can be wired to 120 standard or if ill have to run a 220 to power it.

[MtRainier]

It seems to be 240/220. The power supply coming in to the control box included two hots and a ground, no neutral, so it's definitely not 120.

[hypnopooper]

thanks

[batch97]

That's very nice! But oh my gosh! The cost of getting it to your front door!
I've ordered a few much smaller things from Aliexpress, and the shipping was always all that was paid. Was it because it was thru Alibaba? And that shipping is just what it cost to ship out of China, but not accept into the USA? I'm just wondering if I bought anything larger than usual from aliexpress (like a still head, or SS pipe fittings) if the cost of shipping/part would also double.

Edit: never mind. Saw your post about the difference between Alibaba and Aliexpress

[LWTCS]

2) It's a 0.37HP 3-phase motor wired to run on single phase by using a couple of capacitors with a base speed of 1080RPM and a 30:1 gearbox. Pics of the motor label and gearbox are below:

IMG_20200215_101739.jpg

So out of curiosity does the single phase connection for the motor run on 240/220 or standard 120 connection? Ive got a tank coming from china in the near future with a mixer motor as well but was curios on whether it can be wired to 120 standard or if ill have to run a 220 to power it.

Getting a single phase motor is doable. Though factories don't usually like to include stuff that disrupts their economy of scale. Similarly, motor factories dont like to build one motor at a time. They want to build 500 motors.

Kettle factories doing lots of business do have some leverage to convince motor factories to submit to one off requests though.
Single phase motors are not usually available as explosion proof motors so be aware.

[Halfbaked]

You have 2 heats and an agitation on your controller. Do u use all these? Are you 60 amps input or 2-30 amp connection? If the later does the fan come on with either or big?

[MtRainier]

You have 2 heats and an agitation on your controller. Do u use all these? Are you 60 amps input or 2-30 amp connection? If the later does the fan come on with either or big?

I don't run it all at once, but I think I probably could. I have a 50 amp circuit. Each heater goes up to about 23 amps if I do 100% power on the controllers and the motor uses about 1 amp, so that's 47 amps total verified by a clamp meter on one of the 240 legs when I was setting it up. Not exactly a ton of headroom if you're following the 80% rule on a circuit, but it hasn't blown yet. The supply cord doesn't get warm, but the cords leading to the heating elements do get warm. I'd like for them to be a bit lower gauge and will replace them at some point. The fan comes on when you turn on one of the two heater controls, but not the other. The fan isn't temperature controlled.

Because I'm paranoid I never run everything at once, though. I do run both heaters all the way on (11,000W) when doing the initial heat-up until the mash volume temp gets up to around 180F, then I start turning it down so I can start the agitator going for the strip. During the heat up I also drop the power from time to time to run the agitator for 30 seconds or so every 10 minutes just to distribute the heat.

When I'm actually doing my stripping run I turn one heater off and run the other (the one that includes the fan control) at around 15 amps, so that's 3600W. Spirit runs I do at about 2000W.

[MtRainier]

I just reread this page of the thread and this is wrong:

2) It's a 0.37HP 3-phase motor wired to run on single phase by using a couple of capacitors with a base speed of 1080RPM and a 30:1 gearbox. Pics of the motor label and gearbox are below:

It's a 0.37kW motor which is actually 1/2 horsepower.

Not that anyone is basing engineering decisions on my thread, but wanted to clear that up.

I've considered taking out the capacitors that let the 3-phase motor run on single phase and switching it for one of these VFD's to give me speed control and maybe make the motor last longer:

http://www.gohz.com/1-2-hp-vfd

[DetroitDIY]

Not that anyone is basing engineering decisions on my thread, but wanted to clear that up.

Well.... somebody might do something like that...

[MtRainier]

Cooking up a batch of HBB in it today.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

I can smell it

[MtRainier]

I can smell it

It smells so good. I want to put that honey malt in a pillow and sleep with it.

[MtRainier]

I learned one new thing and had one reminder today when running the still.

New thing: The overpressure valve in the jacket cracks open at 10PSI. I decided to see when it would actually open and was ready to turn it off quick and open a vent if it hit 14PSI. 10PSI is plenty high.

Reminder: Take out the mash paddle before turning on the agitator. Otherwise you'll hear lots of loud noises.

[MtRainier]

I was running the agitator motor this morning and heard a pop. There was a stream of smoke coming out of the little box that converts allows the 1-phase supply to drive the 3-phase motor. Removing the cover showed this:

popped capacitor

It seems that the left capacitor for driving the motor popped.

It's a CBB60, 16uF, 450V, 25/70/21 capacitor. Amazon seems to sell them fairly cheap, but I thought maybe someone here would know if it's possible to replace it with something more robust. I assume the important element is the 16 microfarad capacity and second most important is the voltage and temperature rating. Does anyone have a suggestion for making this more robust so it doesn't pop again?

Thanks.