Home Distiller

Well this is my first time ever building a still. We are doing it with a stock pot. I got a 15 gallon Stainless Steel restraunt grade pot. Then I went out and got 20ft of 1/2in copper tubing for the worm. Here is some pics

Materials so far:

The worm (I really like how it turned out with the supports and stuff. No dead spots)



I went ahead and added some supports in so this is the finished product with the worm.

That's a nice looking big olé pot. Bet it would make a good mash pot for cooking corn... but then I guess that would leave you without a boiler. Dilemmas dilemmas.

Lol yeah

nice coil, i think i lack the careful touch for them, now for the tricky bit to drill ss and making the join i suppose

That is a fine looking worm. Any idea on the cooling water yet?

Thanks guys. I spent some time bending the worm that's for sure. As for the cooling water, I will be sitting it in a 5 gallon bucket feeding it with cold water from another bucket by just dumping it in. No hoses or anything.

And yeah, joining the lid and copper pipe will be hard. Do you guys recommend soldering them together OR using a sandwich clamp or something like that somehow?

With the nice job you did on the worm and that nice BOP, I think I would take my time, do some research and build a nice head and lyne arm and connect to the worm with a union fitting. There's a thousand ways to connect to the pot lid - maybe even replace the lid with a domed mixing bowl. Do some more research and figure out how you would like to continue.

S-C

Very nice!

When I first built my stock pot still I added a stainless bowel to the top. A 3"x12" pipe for the column to attach a lyne arm and product condensor. While your condenser is the worm line, the bowl attached will work well. I attached the bowl drilling holes about 1" apart then connecting the two with machine type screw fasteners. The gasket was made using cardboard wrapped with Teflon tape. For immediate use I opted for the pinch type clamps but later bought these for a more permanent use.

The column was attached to the bowel using a stainless exhaust collector and gasket. this was brazed to the column tube and fastened to the bowel with mechanical fasteners using the collector gaskets to seal the connection. Its worked well for me over the past couple years thus far. I also added a 2" nipple and ball valve at the bottom of the stock pot to make this a double duty pot for cooking and stilling.

hope this helps

DFitz wrote:When I first built my stock pot still I added a stainless bowel to the top. A 3"x12" pipe for the column to attach a lyne arm and product condensor. While your condenser is the worm line, the bowl attached will work well. I attached the bowl drilling holes about 1" apart then connecting the two with machine type screw fasteners. The gasket was made using cardboard wrapped with Teflon tape. For immediate use I opted for the pinch type clamps but later bought these for a more permanent use.

The column was attached to the bowel using a stainless exhaust collector and gasket. this was brazed to the column tube and fastened to the bowel with mechanical fasteners using the collector gaskets to seal the connection. Its worked well for me over the past couple years thus far. I also added a 2" nipple and ball valve at the bottom of the stock pot to make this a double duty pot for cooking and stilling.

hope this helps

Do you have any close up pics of your bowl on the pot? How you mounted it. Thanks

As I said, I drilled holes around the lip of the bowel and into the lid. If you choose this method, be sure to mark the bowel and lid to match the holes on final assembly. I don't have any photos of the bowel/lid connection, sorry.

Ok, here's what I'm doing. I'm getting a SS bowl and some high temp food grade silicone for the gasket. I am going to connect them with SS rivets for a permanent connection. Sound good?

Silicone isn't a type of material to use in contact with alcohol vapors. Also, you'll probably wand to service your gasket occasionally. Rivets will prevent removing the bowl for this service.

The worm turned out really nice to me

You're going to find that 5 gallon bucket to be on the small side in comparison to the 15 gallon boiler... The flake stand (bucket) needs to be at least as big as the boiler and preferably bigger... Otherwise you're going to need an auxiliary reservoir connected to the 5 gallon bucket...

If you ever sweated copper it is not that hard to solder stainless. I saw a thread (sorry can't find it) where a guy used a copper end cap, maybe 1.5" or whatever his column width was. He made a ring of solder, of course used the right flux, and sat the copper cap down on it, right on top of the lid with the cup side up. Then he heated the lid and the fitting until the solder melted and it dropped down. Once it cooled he drilled a large hole through the copper fitting and lid. Sorry if that sounds confusing, it was pretty simple actually. No gasket, no rivets/bolts. The desired solder/flux is Harris StayBrite #8 and Harris StayClean flux, but I have done it with Oaklely flux and silver solder also, purchased at Menards.

If you think silcone is an acceptable material to use, you probably haven't done enough reading here. You should probably take a step back and do the reading that Rad suggested in his post before proceeding. You've made some good steps with what you have so far. You just need to do the reading and research to finish the job.

S-C

S-Cackalacky wrote:If you think silcone is an acceptable material to use, you probably haven't done enough reading here. You should probably take a step back and do the reading that Rad suggested in his post before proceeding. You've made some good steps with what you have so far. You just need to do the reading and research to finish the job.

S-C

Well hey, at least I said hi temp food grade silicone and didn't just say window silicone. Lol.

Got some more goodies today.

Progress. Please no bashing on my soldering. It's my first time. Lol

How, may I ask, are you planning to mate your copper pipe to the lid of the stock pot?

BDF wrote:How, may I ask, are you planning to mate your copper pipe to the lid of the stock pot?

I'm putting a bowl on the lid first. But same concept when your using just the lid. I'm taking a male and female adapter and putting the male end through the washers for spacers. Then I'll put the female on the bottom of the lid and clamp the adapters together. I know a terrible explanation. I will post pics later

Ky_backwoods wrote:

BDF wrote:How, may I ask, are you planning to mate your copper pipe to the lid of the stock pot?

I'm putting a bowl on the lid first. But same concept when your using just the lid. I'm taking a male and female adapter and putting the male end through the washers for spacers. Then I'll put the female on the bottom of the lid and clamp the adapters together. I know a terrible explanation. I will post pics later

Something like this?

Exactly like that!

Worm looks good!

Looks really great I will try to build something like this myself

Looks good!

Don't worry about your soldering job. It' looks like it should be ok.
For a first time try it's fine..i've seen much worse than this.
Interessting how it will perform, after a cleaning run of course..

I've got 1.5' coming out of my pot still used a stepdown bit threaded male adapter into lid street 90 into that and use a flour mix to seal.I did this cause i have 3 different lids so i just remove the male adpter from lid to lid till i find out which produces the best.Good luck

sub'd

will be building my rig next week, what did you form the worm around?

Looks good!