Home Distiller

went to the local feed store to buy a 50# of cob with molasses. Told them NO pellets... got home, opened the bag....PELLETS! this was my 1st attempt at making a mash so I figured, WTH, might as well run it.... what a mistake! turned to mush and was pretty much impossible to rack off. through the entire bag out and drove 30 miles one way to a TS store and got the proper COB mixture.

You would think the local mom and pops would take pride in their business considering all the box stores moving in on their turf. I will drive by that store every time now to go to tractor supply....

Yer gonna love this one. Last week my wife asked if there was anything special I wanted to eat, I replied, "Chicken Fried steak with all the trimin's!". The next day she returned from the store with the fixin's and proceeded to make me one spectacular brunch. Chicken fried steak (double battered of course), , gravy, eggs, fried potato's and biscuits. While making this feast, she asked me to take the turkey breast out of the freezer so it could thaw for tomorrow. I did, and I do it this way, I put the frozen meat in a cooler, fill it with cold water in the bathtub and with in 24hrs she's ready to go. Back to brunch, I ate till I was as swelled up as a tick on a dog, waddled over to my recliner and dozed off. Several hours later, I woke and went to the bathroom to find I had left the water running for filling the cooler!!!!! What makes this go from being a good story to a great one is this, I put a plug into the drain to keep spiders from occasionally coming out and didn't remove it. This created an overflow and fortunately, most of the water went down the bathroom air duct line. I did not know this at the time. I cleaned everything up with a wet-dry vacuum and mop and thought I was done. The next morning, the heater came on and I noticed only 1/2 the registers worked. I called our handy dandy A/C & heater guy, to fix the broken ductwork. He came out, crawled under the house for about 5 minutes, came back up and gave me this diagnosis. There wasn't anything he could do until the water dried out. I asked sarcastically, with a small grin on my lip's, "Afraid of getting a little wet?". To which he responded, actually no, the water is soaked into the insulation and the vapor barrier is now about 2in off the ground on one side of the house, swelled out like a Macy's Parade balloon! The disaster cleanup crew is now diligently working to repair my "little faux pas", and although insurance is covering most of it, we have to pay a $1,000.00 deductible. My wife likes to point out that I have now eaten the most expensive chicken fried steak known to man!! My only defense is that if she hadn't made such a great meal, I wouldn't have eaten so much that I needed a nap, so this actually all her fault!

sltm1 wrote:Yer gonna love this one. Last week my wife asked if there was anything special I wanted to eat, I replied, "Chicken Fried steak with all the trimin's!". The next day she returned from the store with the fixin's and proceeded to make me one spectacular brunch. Chicken fried steak (double battered of course), , gravy, eggs, fried potato's and biscuits. While making this feast, she asked me to take the turkey breast out of the freezer so it could thaw for tomorrow. I did, and I do it this way, I put the frozen meat in a cooler, fill it with cold water in the bathtub and with in 24hrs she's ready to go. Back to brunch, I ate till I was as swelled up as a tick on a dog, waddled over to my recliner and dozed off. Several hours later, I woke and went to the bathroom to find I had left the water running for filling the cooler!!!!! What makes this go from being a good story to a great one is this, I put a plug into the drain to keep spiders from occasionally coming out and didn't remove it. This created an overflow and fortunately, most of the water went down the bathroom air duct line. I did not know this at the time. I cleaned everything up with a wet-dry vacuum and mop and thought I was done. The next morning, the heater came on and I noticed only 1/2 the registers worked. I called our handy dandy A/C & heater guy, to fix the broken ductwork. He came out, crawled under the house for about 5 minutes, came back up and gave me this diagnosis. There wasn't anything he could do until the water dried out. I asked sarcastically, with a small grin on my lip's, "Afraid of getting a little wet?". To which he responded, actually no, the water is soaked into the insulation and the vapor barrier is now about 2in off the ground on one side of the house, swelled out like a Macy's Parade balloon! The disaster cleanup crew is now diligently working to repair my "little faux pas", and although insurance is covering most of it, we have to pay a $1,000.00 deductible. My wife likes to point out that I have now eaten the most expensive chicken fried steak known to man!! My only defense is that if she hadn't made such a great meal, I wouldn't have eaten so much that I needed a nap, so this actually all her fault!

You win the internet for the day.
Wow.

Not long back I had this idea of converting a coffee peculator, the trial run worked to a point so I decided to put 2 in series this caused all sorts of problems with blown hoses and electrical fuses blowing.

I have a couple. Read the post about too small of tubing and blowing the safety, Had a the same problem. Only I didnt have a safety release. It was on
my first still, a two and a half fire extinguisher, stainless steel. I was using an electric hot plate to heat it up. Just about the time it was pushing out shine,
a friend showed up, left the garage to go say hi. We got chatting by his car for longer than I thought. There was the explosion. Ran in to find my still split
open at its side seem. I was glad I wasnt in the garage with it, and that it happened in the garage. It was a real mess.

when I was much younger I started making wine however I didn't have the money buy equipment so I was cutting corners, one of those corners was the breather or trap, instead I would put a needle hole in the cap of the bottle top on more than one occasion I had caps blow off once painting the ceiling of the kitchen

Had some 2.25L fizzy bottles with some ginger beer brewing in them. Put them. Put them in the back of the pantry and forgot about them. When I found them they were almost completely round and falling over. As I was taking them out side to put somewhere where they could explode and not mess anything. I dropped one on my deck. Knocked the cap off. Bottle went straight up, through the clear light roof, spraying ginger beer all over me, the shoes, the sliding door and the deck and roof. I didn't want it to happen again. So the next bottle I figured I would open it. Relieve some pressure. Bad idea. As soon as that seal broke. The lid flew up, followed by a shooting stream of ginger beer ( you ever seen when some one puts a mentos in diet coke?). I did not have fun cleaning sticky ginger beer off every thing.

I had the hose leaking again. About 4 to 5 m2 of wet floor. Changed the shitty garden hose for really good one and now everything is fine.

Odin.

Walked into the shed the other day and there was a sticky mess on the floor.
One of my fermenters had sprung a leak and was half empty.
Transferred the sugarhead to a spare fermenter and had a look to see what had happened.
Looks like a small critter had chewed a hole in the barrel.

Cleaned up the mess and moved my wife's house cat to the shed.
"Killer Kat" has been hard at work and doing a fine job.
My wife is mad at me and the dog is afraid to follow me into the shed now.
The cat is quite happy.

I love this thread, because no matter how many runs we do, somehow we can still manage to screw it up!!!

I got a poor conversion on my all grain, 60 lbs corn, 20 lbs barley and a bunch of amylase. I can handle that. It is when I start running it through the still and forget that the low starting gravity( 1.040) is going to throw off my standard issue cuts. Meaning my heads jar is going to be full of perfection, and the rest of my jars are going to drop straight to tails. Aaaargh!!! Looks like this one will be ran again!

It is hard to monitor, an all grain with low abv, when I just ran a birdwatchers on the final distillation and it came out to a full 5 gallons at 175 proof after cuts. Maybe next time I will sample a little less product, and a few less home brewed beers, while I am running the twins.

Red Rim how did you manage to get a poor conversion with 60 lbs corn, 20 lbs barley and a bunch of amylase?
Did you denature the enzymes with too much heat? Or under cook the corn?

Even after putting my fermenting bucket on a stack of towels infront of the mall heater, it still took my corn meal mash 2 days to start showing signs
of doing anything. The burper is finally bubbling but about half the normal rate. This is going to be a long ferment. I hear talk of yeast that is better
in cold weather. Any suggestions or advice? I was thinking of heating pads under the buckets, or the local home brewer store sells heat tape that you wrap
around the buckets then plug it in. Not sure which way to go. Would really hate to shut down for the winter. Have several friends as well as the wife and myself
that would really hate that. Didn't stock up enough reserves for the long winter ahead.

Build a hot box out of foamboard and stick a light bulb in with it. Or heat tape then wrap the bucket in reflectix or blankets.
Ol man winter can be a bitch or be your bitch.

An old fridge is an ideal fermenter cabinet. In winter I use a 40w lamp and a controller to keep 20 gallons up to temperature. None of mine cost me anything. A couple of them still work and can be used for crash cooling as well.

Back when I built my first still, I was a bit ignorant of the necessary cleaning steps. I just ran some water through it with no water in the condenser, figuring it would get steam cleaned and be good to go. So, after the water, I wasted no time refilling it with wash and lighting the fire.

I threw away that run after tasting it, as it was horrible with a wicked burn and nasty taste that had a lasting chemical finish that lingered. Stuff was just foul. I'm guessing the alcohol cleaned some flux residue out and into my "final product".

After that, I did what I shoulda done first, a bit of research on cleaning a new still.

That's a mistake you make once. And I use water soluble flux now too.

I collected some fients from a run last night in a 1 gallon jug and stored it ontop of the fridge in my brew room. When I came home today, the glass jug was shattered and ethanol everywhere. I don't know if the fients were hot and blew the jug apart or what. Huge, stinky mess.

Due51 wrote:I collected some fients from a run last night in a 1 gallon jug and stored it ontop of the fridge in my brew room. When I came home today, the glass jug was shattered and ethanol everywhere. I don't know if the fients were hot and blew the jug apart or what. Huge, stinky mess.

Gallo wine jug? Notorious here for blowing apart. Curious was the feints warm? There's a huge vacume created when hot sealed containers cool. Stills are known to implode. Wondering if this issue is implosion not explosiin.

Jimbo wrote:

Due51 wrote:I collected some fients from a run last night in a 1 gallon jug and stored it ontop of the fridge in my brew room. When I came home today, the glass jug was shattered and ethanol everywhere. I don't know if the fients were hot and blew the jug apart or what. Huge, stinky mess.

Gallo wine jug? Notorious here for blowing apart.

I'd venture the same opinion . I've had similar failures .

Did the jug have a hard cap or a cork?

tp

I edited in a thought below after TB replied/quoted. Hot liquid and vapor in a sealed container will create a serious vacume when they cool, enough to implode vessels like stills and mash tuns. Its happened many times in this and other industrys. Stills and tanks now routinely have a vacume break installed for this reason.

Im wondering if this is a common theme here with the folks who have had gallon jars mysteriously shatter. Often for no obvious reason. Were the feints or likker put in the jar warm, and then the jar sealed? This is an important item that needs to find a safety list if we have one (Rad?), a gallon of high proof flammable liquid pouring all over while no ones home, or worse, sleeping, is a potential very serious issue.

If this is the case, a cork vs. a sealed cap could be an answer to avoid shattered glass jugs.
They'll breath when a hard cap won't.

tp

Jimbo wrote:I edited in a thought below after TB replied/quoted. Hot liquid and vapor in a sealed container will create a serious vacume when they cool, enough to implode vessels like stills and mash tuns. Its happened many times in this and other industrys. Stills and tanks now routinely have a vacume break installed for this reason.

Im wondering if this is a common theme here with the folks who have had gallon jars mysteriously shatter. Often for no obvious reason. Were the feints or likker put in the jar warm, and then the jar sealed? This is an important item that needs to find a safety list if we have one (Rad?), a gallon of high proof flammable liquid pouring all over while no ones home, or worse, sleeping, is a potential very serious issue.

I never tighten lids on any spirits until they have sat for an extended period of time... I keep my feints and blended spirits in real gallon jugs, the old ones, and always back the cap off about 1/4 - 1/2 turn... And even though I blend as needed in a thick glass 1.75L Svedka bottle I still back the lid off after shaking the bottle to mix the spirits into the water - just in case... I always figured it was common sense and that others did the same, but over the years I've come to realize that common sense really isn't all that common anymore...

It was a Gallo jug and I'm inclined to suspect implosion. It had a screw-on cap which I unwittingly tightened down.

I'm hoping we found the 'red X' as we call it in my industry now we just got to get the word out to keep them caps loose for a bit.

About two years ago, I found a recipe for "sweet feed" whisky. At the time I was still VERY inexperienced in the art of distillation. The recipe I found really wasn't that informative as to what types of ingredients I should use. It just called for "a few" inches of sweet feed in a 5 gal fermenting apparatus along with 4lbs of sugar and one packet of bakers yeast. So that is exactly what I did. Having never owned any type of livestock, I just assumed (my first mistake) that any type of sweet feed was acceptable. Told myself they all have to be about the same. You know, kinda like dog food. So I grabbed the cheapest bag I could find at the co-op. So I get home and mix my feed with warm water and pitched the yeast. Stirred it real good for a while, covered it up, and let it be. Next morning it had formed a cap and was just a bubbling away. I was like a kid counting down the days to Christmas. About 5 days later the cap had fallen and it looked pretty inactive. So then I decided it was time to run. So then I pick up the bucket and try to strain it into my SS stock pot rig. (next mistake) There still was a huge amount of shit floating around in there. I just figured "hey, it will just add more flavor, right?" Honestly, it looked like muddy, stagnant, pond water. But not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground, I continued with the distillation anyways. So I clamp the lid on my pot, paste everything up, and stand there waiting in anticipation for those first few drops of love to come. It's coming to temp, the worm starts to get a little rumble, and out comes something that smells like pure liquid ass hole! So I tell myself "maybe it's just the fores, I read they have a odd smell" and I throw those out. Into the run and the smell still isn't clearing up. At this point I am still trying to figure out what is going wrong. After collecting a pint jar and sniffing it out for a while I realize it smells similar to rancid, scorched peanuts. Pissed off that I waited almost a week to get this, and confused as hell as to what I did wrong, I begin to read the ingredients on the bag of sweet feed. Come to find out that, that particular brand of sweet feed does indeed have crushed peanut hulls. So I take a sip anyways just to see what it's like, and down the drain it went. So long story short, take the time to educate yourself on everything that goes into your product, from you equipment you run all the way down to the ingredients you use. You definitely get out what you put in!

SF with pellets makes a shitty shine. That's a shame because it's one of the fastest ferments I've seen.
Makes for a great sacrificial run. Or if you want to clean up a copper part.
In a 5 gallon bucket add 2" pellet SF, 2 pounds sugar, the copper part you want cleaned and fill with water.
In a couple of days the copper will look brand new.

Just took a shot of +190 proof neutral by accident.
Went out to the shed to get some booze for the night and found a part full jug marked "malted wheat "
Dang, thought I'd finished drinking that batch a year ago. This is going to be good.
So I took a shot. Bad friggen mistake.
Looked a little closer at the gallon jug and on the other side it said 190 neutral.
Guess I'd forgotten to wipe off the old writing before refilling the jug.

Ouch!

tp

Shady , I've been guilty on both counts and one worse . Poured a double in a water glass with the intent of fillin it up with water to cut it . About #3 for the evening and was all involved in some randy thread here . Middle of a post here I paused to take a healthy sip of the drink and had half of it too far past the swaller to stop before I realized I had forgot to cut it . I didn't finish that post

TB, ditto last night....tis the season. Started to sip some UJ and got a tremendous "sugar burn", I thought I was back to square one in my distilling and got pissed. I decided to proof it, and discovered I'd forgotten to proof some 150....happiest mistake of my stillin career!!