Home Distiller

The gods must like me since I just dodged a proverbial bullet.

Carrying a carboy full of fresh All-Bran wash to it's final location using one of these handles:



About halfway there I had just gotten off the hard tile floor into the carpeted area of the room when the carboy neck slipped through the handle and hit the floor.
The airlock went flying and just a little bit of 1.080 wash splashed out of the carboy but it stayed upright.

Morals:
a) Make sure that when you tighten these handles down, do so where the neck is the smallest.
b) Keep it as low as possible to the floor just in case.

tp

Did you utilize some TP TP and change yoru underwear after that?

Close. I did just stand there in shock for a few seconds soaking in what just happened.
The airlock flew six feet away.

tp

I use a plastic milk crate to carry around carboys. like this one -Always worried one would get away from me with your type handle.http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/prod ... =T13WPSHP1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I have one of them handles, but was always afraid the neck would snap off the bottle carrying 50 lbs around like that. ? probably unfounded, but I sure wouldnt like to be carried by my neck.

SOH bought us a rolling lift plate years ago and it's one fine way to lift, carry and place carboys and such. Those big glass things still scare me, though.

Carboys and hydrometers are made from the same material.
Suicidal Glass.

Haven't broken any of either (yet).

tp

T-Pee wrote:Haven't broken any of either (yet).

tp

Tp just screwed himself!

T-Pee wrote:Haven't broken any of either (yet).

tp

I'm prolly gonna jinx myself now. I had a three gallon carboy full of 70% feints kiss a concrete floor. Heard the ting of it hitting and waited for the antibacterial foot bath. Never broke. It never leaves it bucket now.

ga flatwoods wrote:

T-Pee wrote:Haven't broken any of either (yet).

tp

Tp just screwed himself!

Yup. Carboys explode very impressively when dropped on concrete. Im still finding glass years later

I said "YET". Isn't that like crossing your fingers or something?

tp

I broke a hydrometer in my parrot mid-run. You've got to have talent to pull that off...

My most recent was not enough Teflon tape on a union. The SOH happened by and pointed out a drip. That will get you moving, for sure. Thankfully, it was an easy remedy and caught early.

hidalgo wrote:The SOH happened by and pointed out a drip.

Mine did the same but it had nothing to do with a still.

tp

T-Pee wrote:I said "YET". Isn't that like crossing your fingers or something?

tp

Nope. Its an open invitation. Like waving your hand up in the air, "over here, over here..." mmhmm

I use empty Vodka or White Rum bottles to store my vodka in and there was one of each in the cupboard. A few nights ago I poured myself a drink from the "Rum" bottle and it tasted weird. So I smelled the contents of the bottle and I thought I must of screwed up and diluted one of the "heads" jars and poured that into the bottle. I went and checked my "heads" jars and they were all accounted for. WTF!!!! Then it dawned on me ............. My daughter had just returned from a vacation to Mexico and brought me back a bottle of duty free white rum. Problem solved. It wasn't my heads in that bottle.

Last winter I was out wandering around the backside of the homestead looking for a spring and a suitable area, when I came across a large hornets nest. Not a big deal in winter because the hornets are hibernating. I didn't have the proper tools to take care of it and its a long walk back to the house, so I just noted it and continued on. I "planned" on taking care of it later on, but never got around to it. So Spring time comes, temps get up into mashing range, I set up my first batch of mash (100 gallons of corn and a 100 gallons of molasses). Couple days later mash is working hard, cap is looking good, got the mash barrels covered in burlap and screen wire. A week later I go out and I have mash barrels full of hornets. The had eaten thru the wire screen and the triple layer of burlap to get to the mash. An area about 100" X 100 " was swarming with hornets. Not wasps, not yellow jackets, not honey bees or bumble bees, but big old hateful drunk hornets. Hornets LOVE mash. And hornets are some of the meanest drunks out there. Needless to say, I lost the mash, the site, and all the equipment out there for a week or so.
So now I have a large hornets nest with a large white oak branch thru the middle of it sitting next to the shed wrapped up in plastic bags and duct tape.
Moral of the story is when something needs fixed. Fix it ASAP. Make yourself get around to it. And yeah, it hurts like hell when they sting you.
SF

A good big hornets nest could be worth upwards of $100 on ebay if you can figure out how to ship it.

On my last run, my homemade PTFE gasket blew on my boiler (it's a 14" flange) Well I got the burner off pretty fast, flames were flashing everywhere around the boiler and burner!

Well in my haste to get my gasket working, I made a batch of flour paste, took off my flange and starting applying and bolted my flange back.

Unfortunately in the 5-10 minutes it took to do this I had breathed enough vapors to get me very drunk!! Killed my operation for the rest of the day (this happened around 9AM) and gave me a splitting headache and hangover I won't soon forget!

Not really a mistake but something to learn from. I use two 7 gallon bottling bucket for fermenters, the ones with a drain spout on them. The other day I moved them down to the basement to cold crash them. Picked one up and it was light . Opened it up and the only thin in it was the grain bed, running ujssm. Today I was gonna start up another uj ferment in the bucket using backset from pear cider run. Checked the spout and it was loose. Went to tightin and it cracked off. Hopefully I can get another spout before I do my next cider run. I really wanna try pear backset in ujssm.

Was filtering the last 300 ml of my aged on oak all bran for the GF. The collection vessel was sitting on a glass bread board with one of those thin plastic cutting board things on it. Did not realize that the jar was sitting on the overhanging plastic and I turned for a brief second as the last drops caused the jar to tip pouring it's entire contents on the floor. A month ago she never drank whiskey. Tonight she was more disappointed than I when the last of the "good stuff" hit the floor. Good thing I am planning to load up the fermenter tomorrow morning.

Well . . . I started an all grain Mash. Cooked my grains nicely, then realized I have no malt.... ended up adding sugar and splitting it into 5Gal fermenters, added yeast at temp, and it's been working like mad for 38 hours. Smells amazing. I admit, it could have been worse

Gathered enough grains from the local TS and 6 row barley from a not so local brew shop . Green as I was I started mixing my own sweet feed . With practice I started turning out a good drop with sugar heads . Imagine my chagrin when MichiganCornhusker showed up for a visit and identified that 6 row barley that I had been mixing in sweet feed as malted barley that I could have been putting to better use

still getting used to driving my new 5500w submersible, i was heating a stripping run at full smoke the other day.
figured i was getting close to turning down the heat so i touched the top of the boiler...still cold...thats odd. checked the amp draw and cooling water, everything was normal and less than a minute later i touched the boiler again...hot hot hot. so instead of turning the power down, i touched the column to see if it was warming too, when the whole thing went off like Mt. Vesuvius. (2" column with loose top cap that hit the 9' ceiling.)
glad i was on electric with no flames, and the controller was far enough away i could shut down easily.

only got one drop on my arm. lucky.

so i now know what is meant by "puking" (projectile puking with ballistics)

i believe the AG barley was foaming, and the foam insulated the top of the boiler from heat until it reached critical mass. lesson learned.

glad i had a loose top cap. if that would have all come through the product condensor (4 x 1/2" shotgun into a 1/2" discharge) that would have been a powerful jet of boiling mash.

That is one of the reasons I like my thermometer in the bottom of the boiler. It enables me to turn the heat down a couple of degrees before the charge reaches it's boiling point.

Not a mistake I did but. Guess a flaw in my stand. While making a run today touching the column my rig start leaning and then it happened all 4 legs went straight to the ground. The only thing I can see that would of made happened was the thin metal legs got so hot and softened the metal and made them weak. With only 10 gallons of wash in the boiler don't see that bending the legs like it did.
Shut the gas off quick. Pulled the boiler off and switched it to a different stand. Could of been real bad if I wasn't standing right next to the boiler to guide it down instead of it tipping over.

Dang! I just sipped my latest batch of Cornflake Whisky as it ages on oak... Bitter! I'm pretty sure I goofed up my cuts and blended too far into the tails. And it tasted so good when I was testing the cuts. Looks like I'm going to run this one through a 3rd time.

Johnny6 wrote:Dang! I just sipped my latest batch of Cornflake Whisky as it ages on oak... Bitter! I'm pretty sure I goofed up my cuts and blended too far into the tails. And it tasted so good when I was testing the cuts. Looks like I'm going to run this one through a 3rd time.

How long has it been on oak? I've had some get bitter and then smooth out with time.

jedneck wrote:

Johnny6 wrote:Dang! I just sipped my latest batch of Cornflake Whisky as it ages on oak... Bitter! I'm pretty sure I goofed up my cuts and blended too far into the tails. And it tasted so good when I was testing the cuts. Looks like I'm going to run this one through a 3rd time.

How long has it been on oak? I've had some get bitter and then smooth out with time.

aye. that 3-6 month time frame has been giving me fits. i keep thinking it's full of heads, but then one day it goes smooth again.