New 3" Pot still with pics

[Rocketboy]

It started with this:

Recent storms in our area brought down trees, limbs, gutters and just about anything that wasn't bolted down. After the storms, the neighborhood was littered with piles of junk piled up at the street. Walking the dog the day after the storm, I walked past this sitting in a big pile of crap. Didn't pay any attention to it until the sun caught the edge of it while walking past it and it winked at me. The edge of the pipe caught the sun just right and reflected it right back at me.

I didn't even hesitate. I picked it up and started walking. It turned out to be a piece of 3" copper downspout somebody must have cut off the house after it was damaged by the storms. I gotta believe it's over 60 years old. It took me several days to get this thing close to clean.

It ended up with some really cool distress marks over the entire pipe. It measures just over 5'.

I've been running a 2" Bok for just about a year now with excellent results. I've produced some nice neutrals as well as some really fine, all-grain wiskeys in pot still mode. Although the column still is alright for wiskey, it's not ideal obviously. I was tossing around the idea of a pot still of some sort and now I have something to work with.
I didn't want something just thrown together for the sake of having a pot still. I really wanted something a little different, mostly all copper, efficient and compact. I didn't start with any real plans, just a piece of 3" copper downspout and a 32-quart stainless cook pot. The plan was to use the propane burner I already had for the Bok.
Then I found this on ebay:

It's a 12" diameter copper planter with a brass base. I heated it up and removed the brass base, then flipped it upside down.

Now I'm starting to get a picture of what this could look like. I went to work searching for more copper I could add to this project.

[qball]

This looks cool! Can't wait to see what you come up with!

[Rocketboy]

After searching for a day or two I decided on this nice copper vase to transition from the planter to the 3" copper pipe I found.

I cut the bottom out of the base, flipped it upside down and now I should be able to get the 3" pipe to slide into it.

After a little filing and sanding, the pipe fit perfect.

Add a 3" DWV elbow and I have the beginning of a nice little pot still.

[rad14701]

Looking good, Rocketboy... Looks like you've got plenty of spare time to get that all pieced together...

[Bushman]

I like it, the pictures and your story description is great, keep us posted.

[Rocketboy]

The plan now is to cut a hole in the lid of the pot, attach the planter/vase/pipe assembly using stainless screws and a big gasket. I made the gasket from a piece of thick pressboard (thick, compressed cardboard) wrapped with 4 layers of PTFE pipe thread tape. This will allow me to use the pot on the burner for cooking mash and mashing my all-grain without the still assembly attached. The lid assembly will be attached to the pot with small c-clamps. Here's a few pics of the lid and gasket:

The rest of the still will have to deal with how to cool the vapor coming out of this thing. I decided to make a 14" cooling coil with a 3/4" cold finger down the middle. This will sit inside a piece of 2" copper attached by a tee and a fabricated piece of the 3" copper pipe. The fabricated piece will have to fit inside the 3" elbow and taper down to fit inside the 2" tee. I made a cardboard mock-up piece to see how it might work. All I need to do now is actually try to bend this 3" copper to make it look like the cardboard.

Here's a pic of the coil without the rest of the 2" pipe attached to the tee.

I'll continue to post as I move along. I have some engineering to do.

[Boda Getta]

Freaking beautiful! IMHO that ss BOP is an insult to the head and column; you have got to come up with a way to get or make a copper boiler.

BG

[Rocketboy]

Know what ya mean boda.....believe me, I'm always watching for something. Eventually, I'll find it.
Thanks for the replies, everybody. I've been working on this for a couple weeks and taking photos as I go. I'm just now getting around to posting the stuff. I should have the transition piece done by tomorrow night. I'll post pics of whatever I can come up with.

[Oxbo Rene]

Very, Very nice ! ! !

[mash rookie]

[EINY]

Can't wait to see the fabricated copper part that replaces the cardboard placeholder. The style on this puppy is great. Awesome.

[Hawk_]

Im digging the ingenuity. Loving the look!

[Bro-sephus]

Can't wait to see how this turns out! Looks like a beaut!

Cheers
Brosephus

[Rocketboy]

In order to make the transition piece from the 3" elbow to the 2" Tee, I cut a piece of the the 3" reclaimed copper downspout aprox. 12" long and fabricated the transition. I used a template found right here on the forum posted by Pint O Shine (I think). The template was for a frustum for a pot still. I tweaked the dimensions to fit my needs and proceeded. This 3" copper drain pipe proved a worthy opponent as it was quite thick and rigid. It took some patience but I eventually was able to cut and bend this thing into the correct shape. I used a lap seam and a couple copper-plated zip screws to hold it in place while I soldered. I then grinded off the heads of the zip screws and soldered over them. No leaks, I'm happy with it.

Here is a test fit of the coil through the tee before the rest of the 2" is added to enclose it.

This is the coil assembly pretty much complete and ready to attach.

I made the decision to include a bit more cooling to the system only because I hate hot distillate and I was concerned that the coil with cold finger might not be enough to knock down all the vapor when I have this thing in stripping mode. I plan to run the still pretty hot and fast for stripping and want to make sure I can cool the vapor well enough. I had an old jacketed 1" condenser I made for a previous build and ended up not using. I felt this would make a nice addition to the system and what the heck, it was already made and ready. This condenser is simply a 1" piece of copper feeding all the way through the 2" piece coupled with reducers and sealed such that cooling water can be pushed through the 2" via 1/4" feed lines thereby surrounding the 1" distillate pipe with cooling water. Hope all that makes sense. I will attach the lower condensing unit to the upper coil using the 2" reducer already attached to the lower unit.

[Rocketboy]

Here's the lower cooling condenser with the cooling feed lines attached. The upper line is the input and the lower line is the output. The input side of this lower unit is being fed by the output of the cooling coil mounted on top. I'll probably have to run my water with enough volume to keep it from heating up too fast in the upper coil. That way the cooling water going into the lower unit is still cool enough to be efective.

[Rocketboy]

Okay, I have to apologize for the lack of any pics between the last ones and the semi-complete rig. I just didn't want to stop what I was doing to shoot any at the time. So what I have is a still that needs some final prep work before it's first run. I'll have to connect the water feed line and the hot water output line with some vinyl hose and clamps. These are not shown in the pics. The only other thing needing attention at this point is making the seal for the lid to attach to the boiler. This will be done exactly the same way I did the planter to the lid, using a teflon-wrapped piece of hardboard. Since the still is designed to remove the lid of the boiler with the entire still attached, the gasket will have to be something that can be used over and over again. The teflon gasket is ideal for this. The lid/still will be held on using some small C-clamps modified to clamp down on the outer edge of the lid and boiler. This works great on my column still and should perform equally as well with this.
I decided to use 1/4" copper feed lines for the cooling water for a couple reasons. First of all, it looks cool and secondly, I had 10' leftover from a couple coils I made. While looking at the pics, you'll see an additional piece of 1/2" pipe attached to the transition piece going straight down to the lid for support. Since the weight of the cooling units are outside the footprint of the boiler, it was necessary to support it somehow. The 1/2" piece of pipe also serves as an attachment point for copper clamps to help support the feed lines. The clamps are simply cut pieces of scrap copper bent around the feed lines and support pipe and attached using some small brass screws.
So here's where I am with it.

This is the same photo with a few labels in case you couldn't follow along with my ramblings.

[Rocketboy]

A couple more pics a little closer to show a few more details.

I'm hoping my next post will be some results from a few cleaning runs. My biggest concern at this point will be distillate temps and of course, checking for any leakage. The cooling system has been completely tested and is leak-free. Hopefully, she has no vapor leaks. I'm looking forward to see how this thing performs. I'll keep you posted but it could be a couple days or longer before I can actually take the time to run it. I'm hoping someday to attach this to a nice big copper boiler, I'll continue searching for one but in the meantime this will have to do. My wife says it looks like some kind of weird musical instrument. Maybe there's a name for it in there somewhere?

[Durace11]

Is your cooling water draining down on your final condenser? Shouldn't it go in at the bottom and out on top?

Looks beautiful, call it a tuba special IMO

[Rocketboy]

My thoughts were to keep the cooler water at the top coil where the vapor first hits the condenser. I really don't have a preference at this point, any input from the crowd at large is appreciated. I can make the water flow any direction I want. If we all decide to bring the cooler water in at the bottom, I can simply switch the input/output lines. Frankly, I'm not sure it will make a huge difference but I'm open to suggestions.

[Bro-sephus]

It'll make your still run smoother if the cool water is introduced from the bottom. Having a smooth temperature transition (gradient) from hot to cool lets the vapor slowly recondense and prevents your still from sputtering and spurting when you run it, you don't want to have sharp drop in temperature in the vapor path. You'll get a nice constant stream of product out the end that way. Learned from Prairiepiss and my own mistakes.

Congrats on the GORGEOUS still brother!

Cheers
Brosephus

[WalkingWolf]

Just be aware that once your condensers are "watered-up" there will be additional weight hanging off the side of that pot. As the pot gives up its liquid you don't want it to tip over on you .

It turned out to be a real nice looking rig. With a few runs you'll get it dialed in and it should produce well for you.

[Rocketboy]

Great advice, guys. I will switch the cooling water feeds and see how she runs. Good call on the extra weight with the water in the condensers. I may end up devising a way to balance this thing a little better. I'm hoping with the boiler close to full, there will be enough weight to keep it planted but you're right, once it starts giving up some of the alcohol, it could cause an issue. Thanks for the heads up, now I know to watch for it during my cleaning runs.

[mealstrom]

Man, that is a thing of beauty! I did my cooling/condensing area almost identical to yours. Got torn up pretty bad about it here by a few of the guys. But I've noticed that it works beautifully. Probably not as efficient as a Leibeg or Graham, but it works pretty damned well. Have you run yours yet? I'm curious how that coil handled condensing as much vapor as a 3" pipe will let through.

I think I'm going to redesign the way mine attaches to the lid of the pot. Your's is just too pretty to pass up!

[Rocketboy]

Appreciate the comments mealstrom, I haven't run it yet but might get a chance to this weekend. I'm curious also to see if it can handle the vapor volume. I'm thinking it will have to run at lower temps to start just to make sure it can handle it. Cleaning runs should tell me a lot. I'll keep you posted.

[Rocketboy]

Finally had time to run a cleaning run through this thing this weekend. Overall, it was a successful run but I did make a few observations:
* I have two small vapor leaks in a couple solder joints. These will be an easy fix with a little heat and some additional solder.
* With all this exposed copper, I will need to insulate this or run it in a perfectly calm environment. I knew this going into the project but didn't know to what degree it would become an issue. During the cleaning run, the output was all over the map, sometimes coming out in a big stream, sometimes barely a dribble. With my heat being consistent, I knew right away the breeze hitting the copper was causing a huge amount of reflux to take place. I should be able to resolve this with some insulation or simply running it sheltered from any air movement.
* My cooling system works great. Cooling water exits quite warm and the product is coming out cool. I was able to run the cooling water at a very low volume. At one point during the run, I actually shut off the cooling water for a period of 3 minutes to see how long it would keep up. It managed to condense the vapor the entire 3 minutes without any cooling water running through it. The product began to heat up a bit but still, an interesting experiment. I would never run it like this but I was curious nonetheless.
* I currently have no thermometer installed and it really wasn't a big deal, however, in an effort to get a better idea of when I can expect distillate being produced, I've decided to install a simple dial thermometer in the boiler lid. At least this will give me an indication as to where I stand in the boiler.
* The volume of product was fairly impressive. I was able to produce a fairly large stream by keeping the propane burner around 1/3 of it's total BTU output. I imagine if I were to really crank this up, I could run a 6-8 gallon charge through it in just under 2 hours. At the rate I was running, I was collecting around a gallon and a half an hour. This would be my average for a stripping run, I'll run it much slower when it comes time for the spirit run.

Overall, I like the results. I really like the convenience of being able to remove the lid and still all attached together for cleaning the boiler. It's a snap to set up and just as easy to tear down and clean. If I had to do it over again, I would probably make a shorter 3" to 2" conical transition piece to move the condensers closer to the center of the boiler keeping it balanced better. The only other thing I would change is finding a really nice copper boiler instead of the stainless cook pot, then we could truly call it copper porn.

[NcHooch]

Congrats RB ,
Sure is purdy .....nice work.

[bentstick]

looks sweet rocketboy!!
Not sure or truely understand the way your cooling works,but if it gets to fiddely, (just throwing it out there), could or would it be possible to add small valves and split the cooling like on a plated column to find a better balance point?
Maybe others can chime for the pros and cons, you seem to have kind of a hybrid, if I understand correct.

[Rocketboy]

The cooling system is just a garden hose adapted to fit a 1/4" piece of soft copper line. The line runs into the bottom jacketed condenser and then out to a line running into the top coil condenser with a cold finger. It was suggested I bring the cold water in the bottom and out the top. In reality, I probably could do away with the jacketed condenser and just use the coil but I had the thing made already from a previous build so decided to use it. I also wasn't sure just how much vapor the 3" pipe was going to provide. Although the run was pretty finicky, I'm convinced the wind blowing across the copper had a lot to do with it. I had it running outside with a slight breeze all day. When the breeze would pick up, the stream of product stopped. When the wind stopped, the stream poured out like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

[Sloanick]

very nice i love the use of household items! I have been picking up things at thrift stores that i can use as funnels or whatever i decide. people must wonder why i'm looking at these ugly copper pots for so long, trying to think of a use

[magnetic_tarantula]

I love how this looks. I've been looking on eBay for some interesting shaped copper pots to make a still out of. When you look at some of the Copper Alembics on copper-alembic.es(?) they are very expensive, but these are easy to modify to get the same effect. GREAT IDEA YOU HAD!!