Home Distiller

I attempted my first run last night, and the results were less than desirable. First I'll lay out my still. It's a pot still made from a 24qt stainless steel stockpot. The column is drilled through the center of the lid and is 1 1/8" copper, it's about 3' tall. The top of the column has a reducing 90, it goes from 1 1/8" to 1/"2 copper. I used a 2' section of hard drawn copper between the column an the worm. The worm is 20' of 1/2" copper coiled in a 5 gallon bucket. I used flour paste to seal the lid and the base of the column. Now for my wash... I boiled 4 gallons of water, stirred in 5 lbs of white corn meal slowly. I poured in a 5th gallon of cool water and allowed it to cool to the mid 90's. I rehydrated 1 1/2 tbl spoons of distillers yeast in 2 cups of warm water. Stirred in 10lbs of sugar to the wash. Mixed well, pitched the yeast, and blended by pouring back and forth between buckets. Put it in the carboy, plugged her, and installed the air lock. She bubbled good for about 5 days. I let if set for 4 days after it stopped bubbling. So on to the distillation. I did this outside last night. I'm using a 1300watt burner for heat. I had constant cool water flowing through my bucket. It took 3 hours before I got my first drops of anything. It was 50 degrees outside with a stong 20mph wind. After 2 1/2 hours the column wasn't warm at all. So I wrapped it to insulate it. Within thirty minutes I was getting a good flow of what I assumed were foreshots. I collected 6oz and tossed it. I then collected maybe 4oz of clear "liquid". An then from the top of the column to the worm the pipe went ice cold. The 4oz I collected proofed at 152 and with the correction factor was 156. So out of frustration, and the want to go to bed I shut it down. I had hardly lowered the level of the wash at all. And the temp of the wash was 200 degrees. So I was out of the prime range for spirits. Anyone have any indication on where I went wrong? Could the cold wind chilling my column have created a reflux type effect and stalled my production? Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

sounds like your "burner" could not keep up.if it was electric "hot plate" it probably shut off.(they heat to? then shut off cool to? and reheat.

That's got to be it. The burner I bought does cycle on and off. So did it not produce a constant enough temp to keep my wash in a production temp? It obviously has the power because the wash hit 200 degrees. But only produced 10oz of fluid. Does the fluctuation inhibit the evaporation a nd collection of the alcohol?

Did you add any sugar? Enzymes? Sounds like you didn't ferment much of any alcohol.

Yeah I had 10lbs of sugar to five gallons of wash. I also added 5 tsp of nutrient. Anything I need to change in my recipe to produce more alcohol?

"10lbs of sugar to five gallons of wash"
thats about 14% as high as id go.

Burybrew wrote:Yeah I had 10lbs of sugar to five gallons of wash. I also added 5 tsp of nutrient. Anything I need to change in my recipe to produce more alcohol?

I used four teaspoons of yeast nutrient and created an ammonia alcohol degreaser for my wife, by accident. Be careful, so that you don't create cleaner like I did.

Go find the UJSSM recipe. And stop playing with a unknown recipe.

it's pretty easy to put in an electric heating element, I'd do that. My 5gal boiler has a 1.5 kwatt element that works great. should solve your problem.

Or since you're running it outside, use a propane burner for power. That would work even better but just be sure you are able to really fine tune the heat of the flame.