My first.... Still

[PartsGuy]

I cobbed this baby together in a weekend. After a crash course in copper soldering of course! Its the same old, keg plumbed setup with a 55 gallon condenser reservoir. Around 3.5 feet of 2 inch copper column with a Tee into a 1/2 condenser coil. The coil itself is 17 feet submerged and can handle maximum output from my burner on straight water!

My first fermentation run was a failure, only yielding 15% alcohol at the heads phase. Not enough sugar, not enough fermentation time, on bread yeast.
My Second Fermentation was a failure, yielding 25% alcohol at the heads, more sugar (still not enough) double the fermentation time, (still not long enough) using Lav 1118.
My Third run was a success, at this time i was desperate for SOMETHING so i turned to 5 days of turbo yeast and the correct amount of sugar. Heads coming off at 82%. regardless of taste, i was a happy man to turn out something besides water!

My fourth ferment was cracked corn, let to boil for 1.5 hours, cooled to 60 degrees C. Amylase added, then yeast, and stuck to the fermentor, which fell flat on its face 2 days later with only the minimum of perking.

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions, I look forward to many years of this new found hobby!

[MichiganCornhusker]

Nice parrot. (sorry, couldn't resist)
Your rig looks like it will make good spirits, so let's focus on the recipe/method.
You have found the best place on the internet to gather information and develop your skills. If you hang around here, you will have access to the best people and the most reliable info there is to be had anywhere. Lots to read here. Check out the recipes in the Tried & True section, they will teach you what's going right and wrong with the batches you are doing now.
Good luck, enjoy your adventure.

[Bigbob]

As Michigan Cornhusker said, what's your recipe? We'll need to know to help you out. Also like he said, check out tried and true... Most of those recipes are foolproof.

[Brutal]

I would go straight to Uncle Jessie's Simple Sour Mash Recipe. (UJSSM) It will last you a long time and is still fun even with more experience. Use bakers yeast in it if you can keep the temperature about 75-85 in the mash.

Your copper is about 2 feet taller than you need it to be for this still. The good news is you can add a reflux condenser through the top and control the water flow to it to create a liquid management reflux still with very little modification to what you have.

[Twinrivers]

Nothing my wrong with that rig. Study up on ujssm as stated above. if you want to make good product then you will need to read up on fermenting. The stillin is the easy part

[bellybuster]

I'm grouchy tonight.... thats some serious cash spent on copper to get hot vapour to a cool spot. I don't get it. Sorry

[GrassHopper]

I am no expert on stills, but there is a reason these guys on here recommend us newbies go to Tried & True for recipes. They simply work. Really good! I had somewhat of a similar experience as you on my first run. Then found this site and started reading.....for months. Till I understood the fermenting process. I don't mean just reading a recipe and then doing it, I mean actually understanding the chemistry and science behind it. Then when I felt I knew enough, and had the proper instruments, I went to Tried & True and started with UJSSM (Uncle Jessie's Simple Sour Mash). This is so simple and makes such a good drink that I have not tried anything else yet. It makes a really good drink! These guys on here are experts and they really want to help, but you have to do your homework first. Good luck!
Check out this thread for my intro and my first bad experience: viewtopic.php?f=27&t=54270&p=7291395#p7291395" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow