Home Distiller

Steve, Thank you for posting your progress on this thread! I have been thinking about starting my own build.

I see you posted that you have a 1375 W element which kind of looks like the foldback in the photo below. The watt density is around 30 watts per square inch for this unit. Is this what you had?

Bolverk wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2025 3:09 am I'd love to see someone version of this with the element mounted horizontally and the drain far below the element so the solids have no choice but to be flushed away from the element by new incoming beer.

I had a thought of using a ripple type element in a 4 inch tri clamp cross. The element I have looks like it has 15 watts per square inch for 1375 W on 120 V. The tee is 9 inch wide so it will require a short spool on one side.


I have another idea to utilize external band heaters. (like you posted in another thread)
The heater would clamp to the exterior of a 1 1/4" copper pipe. If I use three x 375 watts on a 18 inch section, the watt density would be 16 watts per square inch. I have almost of all the parts to do this build below in my garage, so I am leaning this direction.

I've thought about those band heaters as well, if you look back at some of the old telluride threads he's using them them in some of his early versions, but at a certain point it just make more sense to me to go with steam.

I did not have any problems with the cloudy beer clogging anything up. I kept the bucket stirred with a paint stirrer every few minutes, which kept all the flour and yeast in suspension well enough. The flour made it through both heat exchangers and down through the marbles with no issues. The only problem I noticed was the scorching at the element.

The element I had originally used was a very short 1500w model: I was measuring a pretty steady ~1350W in actual practice. Given that it’s only about 7” long, that works out to roughly 100W/inch. The replacement is a 1650w folded element: If the actual power is lower than nominal in the same proportion as the other one, then it should be pretty close to 1500W actual, and I guesstimate that it had about half the W/inch.

Those band heaters could work, but I’d use at least 4 to get 1500W, and I would be somewhat concerned about the small pipe diameter. I suspect that my use if 1.5” triclamp components in the bottom 2” or so contributed to the failure, as stuff had less room to move around.

One idea I’ve considered is bending the straight or folded element into an L shape and inserting it into a tee, so that there is no dead spot at the bottom for anything to collect. I’d have the effluent flow out through an elbow at the bottom.

In practice, I am leaning toward the opinion that in this small a diameter it is likely just simpler to assume that anything which feeds into the system is going to be relatively free of solids. I’m sure it can be done, but I feel like the benefit isn’t really there compared to the additional construction challenges.