Home Distiller

I searched all over this site and could not find any posts involving this specific scenario. I have a solid copper 10 gallon still that I have been successfully running for over a year with no issues. I built it following the EXACT design of the stills on Clawhammers Supply's website.Today in the middle of my 2nd distillation of a routine sugar wash that I do, I noticed a small spot on the cotton ball "filter" that was very light blue. I am pretty sure it is copper sulfate. Below I will post even more specifics, and am hoping someone who has dealt with this can give me good advice as far as what should be done next.

1) Yesterday I did the first run at a very slow pace and it came out tasting great. No issues at all during the run. I wish I had left it now.

2) I quickly disassembled the still after yesterday's run and rinsed it with hot water and a tiny drop of dishsoap in the column just to help get the smell of the tails out. I rinsed VERY, Very well.

3) Before today's run I noticed a tiny speck of green on the end of the condensing jacket, so I rinsed the column/condenser assembly with some hot water and vinegar, and again rinsed way more than I had to with hot water. I used the same solid copper and stainless scrubbing pads to pack to column from the previous run and had rinsed them with vinegar and then lots and lots of hot water right after.

4) This is where things get strange. I decided to do my best to get all the heads as condensed as possible in the start of the run, so I put it on a very low heat, put a long wet rag over the column and had a fan pointed at it. I kept wetting the rage, and my distillate came out at a record 92% alcohol! It had never distilled above 84%.

5) I was running the distillate through a cotton ball in a funnel and doing pint sized cuts. I was changing the cotton ball with every cut. In the middle of the run, after I had heated it back up and it was running around 57%, I went to check on it and saw the cotton ball had a spot of electric blue on it. I smelled it, and I could smell the tails were going to start very soon from the faint oily smell. I am pretty sure that it was a small amount of copper sulfate.

My questions now are (1) is this something I should throw the whole batch out over (No distillate was blue, and the cotton balls were all clean other than this one). (2) What exactly could have caused the blue spot (this was a 2nd distillation- just watered down sugar shine). And finally, how do I prevent this from happening again if its possible?

I apologize for the novel. I actually find the science behind this very interesting, so I tend to look really deep into these things. And I could not find anything on the internet even mentioning this scenario. Just people on their first cleaning run or people with whole jars of distillate coming out blue.
Any real advice is appreciated. Thanks

And here is the cotton ball, just incase it matters. The blue spot is faint. It would have been a short spurt of blue. I was checking it every minute and never saw the distillate turn blue.

Verdigris. Probably from somewhere in the downward path. Check your condenser.

+1 NZChris

I wouldn't be too worried about it ... certainly wouldn't toss it over a spec of blue .
Never tried it myself but if you stuck your cotton wool under your drinking water tap I'd hate to see what comes out of your household copper pipes .

Seriously though I'm not a big fan of vinegar cleaning as it does tend to promote copper corrosion . If you must religiously clean then use Citric acid . Rinsing should be done immediately with any acid clean . If you can physically clean while rinsing with a bottle brush ( on a long wire ) as well then this will pretty much eliminate any possibility of buildup .
Actually I use a flap disc on an extension rod in my battery drill ..... gets it all back to shiny pink :

Personally I have never cleaned my condensers and maybe once a year clean my 2" reflux column with the above method .

So if you're still worried , run it again ...tripple distilled :. ..... LOL and seriously piss off the cotton wool , Christ I hate to imagine what chemicals they process that in

Thanks for your input. I ran the still full blast with nothing but water and no cooling fluid for about 20 minutes. It smells nicer now. I'll be rerunning it to be absolutley sure.

DWelsh wrote:Thanks for your input. I ran the still full blast with nothing but water and no cooling fluid for about 20 minutes.

Arrrh ... well my version of rinsing is to stick the hose over the end of the condenser and blast gallons of of water up it .
Don' t piss about with boiling steam through it .

Same as an acid clean to me means soak it in acid for a few hours then hose the shit out of it and stick a cleaning brush , flap disc what ever and give it a final blast with the hose .

Never found all this vinegar staeming shit does anything useful other than show potential leaks ..... but it does cause patches of green shit if you don't hose it out immediately .

Anyways sounds like you're good to go bro

Found no bad advice here . Don't worry about it . Continue your mission .

If I find the need to clean my all copper still I use star San I fill my boiler with it let it sit over night and bingo all nice and clean. Do what others have said above fill with water and run it. It'll clean fine that way too. Using vinegar cause it to patina. As long as your product isn't green you're fine.