Home Distiller

Did a cleaning run with just water, then 50/50 water + vinegar, and now with some rotgut vodka as a sacrifice run and always it comes out spurting or dripping never a stream

Things I have checked based on information here,

1. The worm is level
2. The inner diameter of the cooling coil is only 3/8 inch so maybe that is it...
3. I haven't found any vapor leaks anywhere
4. Have tinkered around with going from highest power setting to mid range (however I think I have a hot plate with a thermostat so the cycling maybe could be the problem)


This is all I can really think of. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT - If pics would help let me know!

With what you have given us I'd address that hot plate first . If it's cycling you won't get a steady return .

What Butch said.....

could just be bad terminology but #1 the worm needs to run down hill, not level

I say 3 things, maybe all 3:

No good temp gradient in worm

Low spot in worm

Cycling hot plate

If it were me, I'd make a Liebig and light a fire!

MichiganCornhusker wrote:I say 3 things, maybe all 3:

No good temp gradient in worm

Low spot in worm

Cycling hot plate

If it were me, I'd make a Liebig and light a fire!

Winter here so I like trying to stay indoors. Ill get a controller and try to fix the hot plate. The worm seems even so it should be ok. And as for the temp gradient i have my input/output set proper and i just have the water come from my faucet on cold. Should i maybe adjust the temp to the water in the isnt as cold as can be?

cob wrote:could just be bad terminology but #1 the worm needs to run down hill, not level

And yes I meant that the can the contains the coil is level so that the coil itself is level and spirals naturally downward.

Pictures of your still?

Would likely be worth a thousand words here....

Just to add to what has been stated already... You need a temperature gradient within your flake stand... That means cold water in the bottom and hot, even steaming, at the top... If you are recirculating your water, make sure the cold goes in as low as possible and take the hot out as high as possible... If the entire worm is cold you may experience shock cooling which results in huffing and surging, similar to what you have described...

That being said, your worm should perform better when condensing alcohol laden vapor than it does with water or vinegar and water... Address all of the issues discussed and you should be well on your way...

I'm not a pot still guy but ...

> The inner diameter of the cooling coil is only 3/8 inch

... that sounds very tight. I'd be concerned that you may not be condensing all the vapor.

Its a small pot only about a gallon. And the dealer is reputable. Figured it should be ok, so unless i want to find a way to make an entire new worm im unsure what i could do except return it.

StillLearning1 wrote:Pictures of your still?

Would likely be worth a thousand words here....

Ill get some up tomorrow for sure! Stay tuned!

rad14701 wrote:Just to add to what has been stated already... You need a temperature gradient within your flake stand... That means cold water in the bottom and hot, even steaming, at the top... If you are recirculating your water, make sure the cold goes in as low as possible and take the hot out as high as possible... If the entire worm is cold you may experience shock cooling which results in huffing and surging, similar to what you have described...

That being said, your worm should perform better when condensing alcohol laden vapor than it does with water or vinegar and water... Address all of the issues discussed and you should be well on your way...

Interesting ok yes mine is cold throughout, so maybe I should try luke warm water and not cold water which is what ive been doing, and its entering and exiting cold. Maybe that could be it

Turn your water flow through your flake stand way down. Doesn't take much flow.

Ok I thought it was pretty low already but I got some cheap vodka that i can keep putting in and playing with until it comes out right

thesource674 wrote:And the dealer is reputable.

And that comment is based on...??? eBay sales, or sales anywhere, are not an indicator of being reputable and should be taken in context... That context being that the product may only have been purchased by neophytes not knowing any better and feeling like they are doing better with it than they really are... Just sayin...

Yea I see what you mean, but I guess good ratings from people on Amazon saying theirs worked well plus everything is hand made. Im not sure if its kosher but the vendor is Copper Brothers. At the very least it looks very well made.

Rad might be able to run a 1 gallon boiler . Maybie Bigbob , too . Way too small for us novices to get good results . Start big and work your way down like Rad did as you gain experience . Don't start as big as Rad did . There are size limits here for us hobby distillers .

Just dont have the money for a larger one that wasnt a stainless steel boiler. Again thats why I went small.

thesource674 wrote:Just dont have the money for a larger one that wasnt a stainless steel boiler. Again thats why I went small.

Whats wrong with a stainless boiler?

From all the reading it just seems copper is better if you are doing a pot still for removing nasty compounds n such. Since with reflux you can pack it with copper mesh but not so much with pot.

From what I have read, not put into practice yet, the benefits from copper are realized with copper in the vapor path. So the boiler can be stainless steel. This why many of the boilers are SS milk cans or SS kegs

We use ss boilers, because they are cheap. We use copper only there, where it's practicable.

"The Impact of Copper in Different Parts of Malt Whisky Pot Stills on New Make Spirit Composition and Aroma"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0450.x/pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
"copper was found to reduce the level of this compound best when placed in the wash still condenser or spirit still pot."
So the vapor path has only little effect.

I have experienced "surging" or "ebbing and flowing" in a run due to a worm having some flat spots in the coil that I later fixed but I have not experienced huffing so can't comment on how to differentiate the two when you are standing there looking at it. I was warned to avoid a small flake-stand idea that used ice for the huffing reason - and I listened... for the record.

My limited two cents as a novice - mainly on what I have not seen in this thread and some experience...
With a sacrificial vodka run there are no foreshots or heads so there should be a consistent run once it starts coming out. I actually have some graph data (which is completely unnecessary if all you do is think about it) from when I had a data-logger connected to the head on a pot still during repeated sacrifice runs. The curve goes up at a near constant angle because all the energy is being pumped-in and retained and then bang - the graph curve levels out very quickly as the ethanol starts vaporizing and the temperature stabilizes and goes into a much slower incremental climb as the energy is lost in the vaporizing. The point being is that if all you have is ethanol to distill out and nothing else then you should get drips that become a stream fairly quickly. But with a variable temp hot-plate and only a 1 gallon boiler (no ABV was specified for your wash - ?) means you might be playing with such a small amount of product to begin with that anything is possible. But I'm going with the "variable temp hotplate hypothesis" that I think Rad mentioned as the cause for the ebb and flow.

When you get a chance check out some of the stockpot pot still builds. Buying everything new Its 80-100$ to build a 4 gallon and liebig. Easy as pie. Ditch the hot plate or get a controller for it.

Ok maybe I can try (1) turning the hotplate to max with the controller (2) finding the thermostat and removing it or (3) even trying to just put the bot right on my electric stove top.

10 gallon stainless pot here. Cheap and good. The copper needs to be in the vapor path, not the boiler. Just saying, big doesn't have to be expensive, and it's muuuuuuch easier. You're making things very hard for yourself.

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thesource674 wrote:Ok maybe I can try (1) turning the hotplate to max with the controller (2) finding the thermostat and removing it or (3) even trying to just put the bot right on my electric stove top.

There is no thermostat to find. The heat is being controlled by the simmerstat, (the thing the knob is attached to), switching the hot plate on and off and if you listen to it, you should be able to hear it clicking. To stop the cycling, you can turn the knob to it's maximum, or remove it and replace it with an on/off switch.

If your electric stove top has simmerstats it will be no different to your hot plate.

Can you afford a small gas burner and small gas bottle?.

Try this Ebay search

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R4 ... r&_sacat=0