G'day from West Australia

[MagnumDistiller]

Hey,

I've finally gotten around to building my still which has taken me over 6 weeks due to a massive lack of supplies over here, copper any bigger than 1 1/2" is damn near impossible to find without ordering in and then you may as well re mortgage your house! but besides that i still went out of my way and built a 3"copper 60" reflux offset head still (Pictures to come), so far it works a charm I’m getting 4L per hour at 94%, but unfortunately I’ve only done one which was a turbo yeast and tastes like SH*T so i am today going to keep distilling it and see if it improves in taste but i may be bum out of luck as it was the first ethanol run and the still has only previously seen a vinegar run and pure water run.

So I’m about to do BW sugar wash and see how we go. With the turbo wash's it has a weird fruity smell like an strong artificial fruity banana smell when distilled as well as a metallic, methylated spirits taste which I’m putting down to it being the first ethanol run, i was doing 200ml cuts with a smell and minor taste test and seem to be fine but when put in 700ml bottles it really becomes evident can anyone supply any idea why this may be?

Thanks

[olddog]

I live in WA and I never have a problem with copper supplies, you must be going to the wrong places.


OD

[MagnumDistiller]

what places would you recommend?

[rad14701]

Greetings, MagnumDistiller...

You'll find that the Birdwatchers wash will produce far cleaner spirits than the turbo wash you just ran... Keep at it until you get the quality of spirits you are after...

Collecting 4 liter per hour from a turbo wash is the crux of your problem... I honestly don't see how you could collect at that rate using an offset head reflux column and get a constant 94% ABV, however... Those columns usually produce less than 1 liter per hour at purity regardless of the column size...

Good luck...

[Bushman]

Welcome to the forum, I will second the birdwatchers recipe. I just ran it yesterday and it took me 17 hours to run, in previous runs it was about 12 hours. I am definitely getting better as most of the run was at 96% with about a 1/3 at 94% and then the last 300 ml fell off to 88%. I have a 2" VM still on a keg and my wash was 10.5 gallons. We finally had some nice weather here and I spent part of the run getting the fruit flies drunk so I had to put it through a coffee filter to get the buggers out.

[olddog]

what places would you recommend?

Any of the plumbing suppliers, Reece, Galvins, Trade Link etc, or you could try some of the scrap metal merchants for second hand copper, you gotto start looking, it won't come to you.


OD