Home Distiller

Hi, I am in a lot of trouble with distilling of thick mashes. I think to put the boiler in another wider pot with oil. But I don't know what oil to choose to not burn and smoke the oil after long time and repeated uses.
I know the palm oil is best for frying but the refined sun flower oil is cheaper. However, home-made rendered lard is the cheapest grease that I could get.
Which one do you recommend me?
Do you know something else more efficient/cheaper?
I appreciate your advices.

Not an expert, but isnt Glycol what most use?

Nope, water is what most use. Glycol is commonly used to control temps. in fermenters... more for keeping things cool.

There are a number of reasons why you see steam powered distilleries. It works.

Build a proper double boiler rig and your problems will go away.

Water is easiest and safest and cheapest. It also works great.

Refined avocado oil has a smoke point of below 520 F, the highest temperature of all the plant oils.
Unrefined canola oil (smoke point is below 225 F)
Unrefined flaxseed oil (smoke point is below 225 F)
Unrefined safflower oil (smoke point 225 F)
Unrefined sunflower oil (smoke point is below 225 F)
Unrefined corn oil (smoke point is below 320 F)
Unrefined peanut oil (smoke point is below 320 F)
Semirefined safflower oil (smoke point is below 320 F)
Unrefined soy oil (smoke point is below 320 F)
Unrefined high-Oleic sunflower oil (smoke point is below 320 F)
Unrefined walnut oil (smoke point is below 320 F)
Semirefined canola oil (smoke point is below 350 F)
Refined canola oil (smoke point is below 400 F)
Refined corn oil (smoke point is below 450 F)
Unrefined olive oil (smoke point is below 320)
Refined peanut oil (smoke point is below 450 F)
Refined safflower oil (smoke point is below blow 450 F)
Unrefined sesame oil (smoke point is below 350 F)
Semirefined sesame oil (smoke point is below 450 F)
Semirefined soy oil (smoke point is below 350 F)
Refined soy oil (smoke point is below blow 450 F)
Semirefined sunflower oil (smoke point is below 450 F)
Refined high-oleic sunflower oil (smoke point is below 450 F)
Semirefined walnut oil (smoke point is below 400 F)

I tried water but it's boiling point is near the boiling point of mash (a mash with 5% alcohol will boil at 96*C, water at 100*C). With a water bath, in normal atmospheric pressure, practically you can't ever bring the mash to boiling because there is a lot of waste of heat by boiling the water.

1. To make a double walled boiler with water boiling under high pressure and a valve is best but it requires a lot of work, I search for something simpler.
2. Adding salt to the water is an easy and cheap solution but there are 3 problems: solubility of salt in water is limited (maximum 1kg salt to 2,5L water). Salt does not increase the BP of water significant (maybe 107*C) and salt in such great concentration will corrode the stainless.
3. Oil seems to be good for this purpose but I don't know if it will burn after repeated and long time uses. It is as well expensive if I need to change it periodically.

You said something about Ethylene Glycol, MuleKicker. It has boiling point at 197,3*C, this sounds good but isn't it toxic or something? I mean it will steam the vapors in closed atmosphere.

MK is talking about propylene glycol. Ethylene glycol is toxic but propylene glycol is safe enough.

Obviously hot oil is flammable and will spit if water drips in it so a certain amount of care is required.

Why not experiment on a small scale with some oils that are easily available to you and report back. I would be interested to know what works best.

Are you cooking up fruit mash?

I tried sun flower oil bath (used oil) for distillation of a mash made of 10 kg rice and 2 kg malted barley (about 45 liters of mash with grain slurry). It was a nightmare! After about 3 hours of running the oil became to smoke more and more. I had to stop the process, to clean the boiler and with all risks of scorching to continue directly on the stove and the result was expected... carbonized mash on the bottom and smoked spirit that I used it just as fuel for cooking. It smelt terribly bad. I had to clean the pot's bottom with NaOH solution, but worked very very slowly. Now it's clean as new. Even if my boiler has a thick 3 layers of stainless and aluminum, I will never do the mistake to put the boiler directly on the flame.

I know, I should rinse and sparge the grains and ferment/distill off-grains, but I think there are some loss of sugars/alcohol and the yield is lowered with the off-grain way.

I make cereal mashes because is winter and the fruits are too expensive now.
I made cherry, plum and apple brandy, all distilled on pulp and there was absolutely no problem with scorching or something like this.

Did you measure the temperature in the oil?

A properly built water bath still is a treat to use... That boiling point thing you mention is an advantage, not a negative. And the amount of energy carried by steam makes it a very efficient way to run a boiler.

Using oil or something other than water defeats the purpose and design of a double boiler.

You may experience a longer time to heat the boiler to operating temperature, but this is part of the trade off for distilling with solids. I guess you have to determine if the gain in that small percent of alcohol is worth the time and expense to heat the still.

What does your double boiler rig look like? If you can get most of the boiler inside a larger container that is fairly tight, you'll have much better results. Proper design is key.

Good luc

Junkyard dawg, show me some designs, please. Do you refer to steam bath? I think there is steam passing through a heated pipe that rise the temperature of steam to 130-150*C. This is ideal for cooking grains and boiling of the wort. But I don't think that direct steam from a pot underneath the boiler will heat the boiler up to the boiling point. Anyway, I think a lot of steam will produce with negative impact on the walls of the house.

I tried even a way between the two: oil above water. Oil prevents evaporation of water until reaching boiling and very little vapors is produced but when it boils boils but the temperature of the mash is still in 80-90*C range (too low for distilling). If I put salt in water there is a small difference but last very much until it's done, far away of what I expect.

Jake_leg, I don't measured the temperature of the oil. I used about 6 liters between the pots and I don't think there was very high temperature since the mash is cooling by boiling and the surface area is enough to lose the heat. I think the reason was the oil depreciated and long time heating led to what happened.

Baths are very useful not just for distilling, but even for cooking grains, mashing, boiling the wort and a lot of jobs in the kitchen. But what is the perfect liquid which can sustain the process?

I am sorry, but I don't have any design to show you. I can tell you some things that are key to making it work.

First, the double boiler container must encase as much of the boiler as possible. Picture a beer keg boiler sitting inside a metal drum. Water covers the bottom of the drum. A few inches deep. The top of the keg should be loosely sealed to the walls of the drum so that the entire wall of the keg is exposed to steam. In your example, the heat transfer is only occuring where the oil contacts the boiler. With waterbath, the heat transfer will occur anywhere that the steam contacts the boiler. Make the most of it.

I simply put my keg into a big pot. I use aluminum foil to fill in the gap between the boiler and pot it sits in. When its running, the water heats up, turns to steam, rises and condenses of the foil. Not much escapes into the room (good) and you don't have to refill the water.

Here is a thread that shows what I am talking about. He is planning on using pressure to up the temps a little, but the first picture shows exactly what the boiler/pot combo should look like.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 50&t=26723

I hope this helps.

The link you put presents a double walled boiler with hermetical encase where water boils under high pressure between the walls and two releasing valves for release of the excess pressure, another goose in another bag. Under high pressure, water boils well above it's normal BP (100*C), thus it reaches 120-130*C. It's perfect for what we want.

About this:
"First, the double boiler container must encase as much of the boiler as possible. Picture a beer keg boiler sitting inside a metal drum. Water covers the bottom of the drum. A few inches deep. The top of the keg should be loosely sealed to the walls of the drum so that the entire wall of the keg is exposed to steam. In your example, the heat transfer is only occuring where the oil contacts the boiler. With waterbath, the heat transfer will occur anywhere that the steam contacts the boiler. Make the most of it. "

So I have to find taller, cheap pot, maybe some sort of sheet welded with an iron board.

Anyway, water loses it's heat by boiling and thus some of the heat is lost if you don't create the pressure. Instead, oil has no boiling point, at most it will burn and smoke like hell but the heat is retained better than in water. You can fill the space between walls with oil and it's done, simpler. If you have small space between walls you need lesser amount of oil. Oil conducts the heat very well and heats uniformly.
The only thing you have to do is to constantly measure the temperature of the oil not to rise to much, which can make some scorching as well. Another disadvantage of oil it is greasy and must be cleaned thoroughly.

There is my pots, the white one - 50L, the stainless - 36L. What can I do with what I have?

I used sugar to increase the boing point with good result, then used it for a ferment.

I thought to sugar also
Please, say something more about this method, how it works to you?

Sugar increases the boiling point of water lesser than salt but it's much more soluble in water. 2 parts sugar with 1 part water will boil at 116*C and is easy to clean (just water). These sounds good but the sugar will caramelize terribly and I don't know what happen in time. Moreover, I need a lot of sugar to significantly increase the BP of water. Say, for making 12 liters of syrup I need 10 kg sugar with ~6 liters of water for filling the space between boiler's walls.

Rachiu wrote:I thought to sugar also
Please, say something more about this method, how it works to you?

Sugar increases the boiling point of water lesser than salt but it's much more soluble in water. 2 parts sugar with 1 part water will boil at 116*C and is easy to clean (just water). These sounds good but the sugar will caramelize terribly and I don't know what happen in time. Moreover, I need a lot of sugar to significantly increase the BP of water. Say, for making 12 liters of syrup I need 10 kg sugar with ~6 liters of water for filling the space between boiler's walls.

I built my double boiler with tight specs so I only needed 1-1.5 gallon, as I remember I used 10lb of sugar. What I did was add sugar about a pound at a time until I reach the desired output. I held it at a low simmer and the output of my still reached a rate I was happy with. The sugar should not caramelize until it gets very low or out of water. I imagine for a fast stripping run you would need about twice the amount of sugar, this was before I had a reflux head so I tended to run at a leisurely pace. Like I said if you are making sugar wash you just what is left over for your next batch, thats what I did.
As stated earlier, trapping the steam against the side of the boiler is critical, when ever I took the styrofoam off to check water level the output would come to a crawl in seconds.
temp by percent of sugar by weight
% Boil temp
10 100.4
20 100.6
30 101
40 101.5
50 102
60 103
70 106.5
80 112
90.8 130

God idea for recycling.
I do not intended to make double walled boiler. If it was so, I would chose very little gap between walls but this is an improvisation with what I have in my house.
I will try your idea soon and I will post impressions.
I have a column too but I want to use the syrup bath not just for distilling, but even when cooking grains or boiling beer wort.
Thanks a lot for all who given me ideas, you helped me very much

I succeed ! Oil bath rules !

I have to say that the level of oil must be upper than the level of mash. But do not fill the boiler up to the border of the pot because the oil expands when heated and might flow over.
The space between bottoms was 3 cm and 4 cm between walls.
I used refined sunflower oil. I needed 18 liters of oil to fill the gap between pots.
It ran 7 hours but never exceeded 118*C.
I left the oil to cool and I will reuse it unlimited times. It works well.