Home Distiller

i notice the mile hi ethanol tower "the beast" also uses it and it is the easiest thing for me to get my hand on. im pretty sure their still is for gas production and mine will be for making distilled water and also essence. i want to know if anything was boiled in those kind of drums if it will affect the end result in a bad way. as in it cannot be used for consumtion or andthing human related.

i got a few oil drums around here. in a word theres no way in hell id use one for making drinken likker. for several reasons. there steel, there toxic, they will not stand up to heat.at least the ones i have . you really need to do alot more research here on materials and safety.

Check eBay out for stainless steel drums! I got one from a guy in Cincinnati that was very thick food grade drum for about $250.00 awhile back. He is always selling S.S. drums, must get them where he works at cause you can not buy these drums as cheap as he sells them for on eBay! They look like new but you know they are not when you pull the bung and smell the sweet flavor smell that come out of it. You will need to clean it out when you get it! I'm one of his happy customers!

moonshine guy you got any info on the guy the name or what to search? is it lined? i do not want that and is it thick steel? i ned that. i thought steel was not toxic? i will add internal heating to it. please post links

http://www.amazon.com/SKOLNIK-Stainless ... B006P5S03S" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow


how would you grade this drum seems like no paint or lining. ill research more on it if i can but and you list the one two tree of boiler requirements. i no thew sell 304 steel made boilers i need that?

http://www.skolnik.com/winedrum.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

im pretty stubborn and got my mind set on a 55 gallon drum

I hope your happy with sitting with it fer about 24 hours... 15 takes me about 6hrs...

Stubborn or not, why do you think you need to go bigger than what we would consider "hobby scale"...??? I'm sure I'm not the only member here who is eager to hear your logic...

As for steel drums, they need to be stainless steel and unlined - even if used for fermenters... And they should have been used only for food grade purposes if they are used...


Edited to add: $600 for a SS barrel is just plain crazy...

10 gallon of wash makes 1 gallon of product. this can be repeated once a week.
if you drink that much you dont need a bigger boiler you need AA.
http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=28" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

ditto, 13 gallons of wash takes me 7 hours to run start to finish, give or take a little here and there?

I'm with Rad on this one, it's totally out of the hobby scale of things. I feel you're asking for trouble doing 50 gallon washes and 50 gallon runs. It's way too much product to be hobby level and where the hell do you get the space or the time to heat a 55 gallon drum anyway? The only way I can see this being a "good" idea is if you are in with 10+ friends on a group project and then you are really asking for trouble because when one guy feels slighted by anyone else in the group...there's a knock on the door and it's all over. Plus, when/if you get busted the cops are going to think you are selling because that's exactly what it's going to look like. No one needs that mush product unless you are only running it twice a year.

Dnderhead wrote:10 gallon of wash makes 1 gallon of product. this can be repeated once a week.
if you drink that much you dont need a bigger boiler you need AA.
http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=28" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

+1 dunder, lmao, oh, and you owe me a new keyboard I spit my coffee all over it.

im distilling water ..... and its for plants and home brew beer i cant handle liquor i used to drink that shit now i feel my liver needs to take it easy. i only drink a 6 pack every now and then. i also wanted to try making essence like for soap. i am just trying new hobbies. not making ethanol. the people i live with wont approve. and also i was never able to drink half a bottle one night. i quite smoking also.

i clearly stated in the first post what i was doing.

i also have a problem with b4 i do anything it take me a lot of considering and i always think bigger is always better kinda like who can pee father. the point is i was asking out of curiosity

If you are wanting to use it for water for home brew. I wouldn't use anything other then stainless. That's just me. I would also make the still head out of stainless. That would be the only material that wouldn't give your water a flavor that could carry over to the finished beer.

And why would you want to use distilled water for plants? We had a member a while back that was a botanist. Who used distilled water to clean bad stuff out of his plants. But used it on a limited basis. As it would suck all the good minerals out of them to. Much like it does in the human body.

And I think you are taking it a little more personal then you should. This is a site about distilling alcohol. And many come on here and state they are distilling water. So they don't have to say outright they are distilling alcohol. So sometimes its hard to tell who is actually wanting to distill water. And truthfully I haven't seen anyone in a long time that came here to get advice on distilling water. And you got to take this into account that someone new to all this might read it as such. And if its not clearly stated that 55 gal is a bit much for hobby scale alcohol distillation. They may take it the wrong way.

ill add you dont want a "tower"or reflux still to distill water.a simple pot still will do,as a matter of fact a reflux still wont work ,well it will but not as intended,and prairepiss is right you will be stripping all the micronutrients out so you will need to put them all back .so unless you have some real funky water it wont do any good.and then a reverse osmosis whould be a better choice.

i figured it was the same ph as r/o water if you are adding nutrients to the water

fresh distilled water has a PH of 7 BUT as you have removed all the gases (manly O2) so when it is exposed to atmosphere it will absorb CO2 making it acid
with of a PH of 5.

i had 2 failed wine attempts b4 basically bought a bottle juice poured a cup and added sugar and placed in hot water to dissolve. after i added couple grams bakers yeast. didn't work but it bubbled for weeks but no alcohol what the fuck. then i figured id jus try getting some thing to ferment instead of wasting 2L juice. i did water with dextrose because i heard sugar has to chemically change for the yeast and dextrose dose not. this one turned out with a swish in my mouth and eww tasted like oh my god worst shit ever and i spat that was a 1.5 ferment. is fermented sugar water drinkable? just bad taste because that shit tasted like acid or some thing it was horrible. so i am now gonna do a beer recipe with real yeast good water. also i wanted to try making soap and my favourite thing is orange. this is the novice section after all.

so what is a economical boiler size that is stainless steel that would work

if you boil water then you need to aerate ,doing so encourages the yeast to multiply.
yes fermented sugar is drinkable,it mite not taste good, i fiend it rather "sharp"
aging whould reduce that.
dont know what soap has to do with distilling ,but soap is fats/oils reacted with caustics.
and dont want distilled water for beer either.

depends what your doing,most use a beer keg and they hould 15 gallons. if distilling a wash (ferment)this gives about 1 gallon of product.

The only realistic use I can see for a 55 gallon stainless drum would be for a strip boiler for something like a molasses wash that foams a lot. 55 gallon drum charged with 25 gallons of wash to produce 5 gallons of low wines. You are mostly using the extra capacity as headspace.

I don't think anyone on here could justify using that capacity as a spirit boiler, but as a wash boiler it is possible, but probably unneccesary.

how you get essential oils is you put some thing like a bunch of orange skins as your wash and boil and the orange oils and water evaporate then you collect it and put it into a separator. its kinda like a glass funnel with a valve on the bottom. you let it sit in your stand and after a while the layers separate. thats how you get things such as rose water ( the water after the separation) and rose oil. these are used as scents for candles, soaps, and incense you light while your cooking or some thing. not all oils are safe. some promote better memory function and reducing stress and relaxation. use in moderation like anything else. i figured if i can get the raw ingredients i can make my own oils and use them in various things. i hear its a nice side hobby that can make money is you do it right and a bar of home made soap ends up costing you 90-100 cents to make including your own labour hours. you buy the non running colour dies and colour accordingly then you have a soap that looks and smells good made from simple indigents. aloe vera seems real interesting as its good for acne and all you have to do is chop the petal slit it length wise and peel of the outer layer. Im planning on also opening a craft soap / candle / essential oil website that only cost 15 a month and hopefully it can sustain itself and then some. wix offers the website in 2 good looking offers 1. e cart 2. unlimited band-witch for a limited time. if you double the batch size its essentially the same labour involved ( when making soap) and you can bring that 90 cent soap down 10 cents or so. i lit camping fires b4 and if u wont no what you got a lot of bad fumes come off. even some one in brazil making e85 with the mile hi beast tower form their web site Im pretty sure using their still for automotive fuel will smell some pretty bad fumes and black smoke probably from the oil can witch is why i find it weird. and i like the look on peoples faces when you say hey wait till you see this.

almost 2000 for 200ml rose oil. talk about money. it probally takes alot of product to make that

You can do that but from what I hear the oil can really stick to the inner surfaces of everything. I would be more tempted to use the boiler just as a steam generator, and to put the botanicals in a separate container, inline with the vapour path. Either like a thumper or like a vapour infusion basket.

You might need more than 1 basket as some of the oils do not combine very well with each other, and it is not easy to clean the still components between runs. Some of the oils are very persistent.

Yet another reason for stainless. Cleaning.

I also thought some of the essential oils you needed to use alcohol for extraction? As they didn't work well with water?

Most people have small stills for essential oil extraction. A 55 gal drum would take a lot of botanicals. And a lot of heat. Mite be better suited as a steam generator as Myles suggested.

yea i guess i made the tread without thinking when the first guy mentioned heat i was stuck. i think if you put a couple internal elements like 4 evenly spaced out it might work but like the other other guy said its way 2 long to sit with. is their such thing as a quick build one time use still? and i was reading how to infuse using a still and ran across a basket made of coper that you weld into the column that gin is made form. my first first idea was to buy a chemistry glass set with a 500ml boiler all glass . then i thought wtf 500 ml thats nothing and i have been thinking bigger and bigger since. i officially give up on the idea. this tread is now dead to me.

actually i am curious jus for curiosity sake.... how much internal heater do you think it would take to run this ?