Keg pot build

[30xs]

Ok, I have read endless hours, and still reading, great site!!! I’ve started my project using two kegs. One is a 15.5 gallon and one is a 7.5, iirc. My plan for the two is that I can have the smaller one for the ability to make runs on a smaller scale. The 7.5 is getting nothing more than a bung for a 2000w heating element and running off of the sanke with 2” copper. The 15.5 is getting a few more treatments. It’s getting the same element bung, 5500w element, 6” sanitary welded to the top (already started the hole before reading flipping the keg), and a side drain using a heavy wall 1” sanitary bored with a 1” bit to receive a section of keg spear as a dip tube. I do have a few questions on column. I was planning on running 2” on both, I already have a 6 X 2 bowl for the 15.5. I wanted to run 36”, sight glass, tee, then use either a 90 into shotgun, or run a 2 X 1 1/2 reducing 90 leading into a Liebig. I have 2” ferrules to be able to swap to either condenser option. My question is would I be able to run 36” off of the 7.5, or would I be better served shortening it up? Shortening it was the reason for the Liebig anyways. I built a 3/4” over 1/2” with 24” jacket over a 14 gauge spiral. I will be using it mostly as pot, with capped tee, but leaving the option open for a CCVM using the tee. Any insight would be greatly appreciated, as I know this is the correct place to find wisdom. I will post pictures as I go along to help others who learn from visuals, such as myself. Kegs currently at the welder, so it may be a bit before I can do anything.

[OtisT]

Hi 30xs. Welcome to the never ending world of builds.

My opinion is you can certainly run a 36” unpacked column on the 7.5 just the same as on your 15.5. The volume of boiler is irrelevant. Running as a pot with a big riser means you will get more natural reflux, but that’s not a real problem unless you are short on power. Insulating the 36” column section will minimize/eliminate that issue and you will get you the most out of your 2000 watts. Also, the 36” riser may actually help you tame any puking you would see during stripping or first runs.

One negative is that I find attaching anything to a factory sanke ferrule is a challenge to get plumbed vertical properly. Since your running as a pot, it’s less of an issue but when fractioning it is something to pay more attention too. A longer column just exaggerates the issue a bit. Using a solid PTFE gasket with the ridge shaved off of one side helps, vs a silicone gasket, because there is less give in the solid gasket. Just pay attention that as you tighten that tri-clamp the fitting stays centered. It’s easier if you don’t try to overtighten it.

I wish you good fortune in the cuts to come. Otis

[30xs]

Otis, thanks for the reply. Many of the later threads that I have read you have been a part of. Many of the older threads that I have read have posters that are no longer with us, or don’t post any longer due to a culture change, or other reason that I haven’t read yet. Back to topic.

So I would be correct in my thing that I would be better served using an ~18-24” riser on the 2000w in the 7.5 feeding the Liebig that I built? A couple feet of extra pipe and since I’m modular swapping risers between pots wouldn’t be an issue. I doubt that I’d ever be stripping in the 7.5. I’d be more likely to strip in the 15.5 and slow run a smaller low wine in the 7.5 if I didn’t have the volume,(or patience to wait for enough), to run wines in the 15.

Would I be better served to shorten the column for the 15? I have built the Liebig, although questionable on length for stripping. I wanted to try a shotgun and 24” seemed the common size. Keeping it from running back into the keg before I could 45* it out to a collection point. I have the fittings and copper to go longer Liebig and shorter on the column, if that is a better option? I apologize for so many newbie questions.

Great tip on the Teflon when making a connection to the sanke. I played with a little 5 gallon once and already have one modified with a cut ring on one side and a 400 grit leveling block sand.

[corene1]

Here is a thought since you are still designing. I like to make the top of all my pots the same that way I can use any one of them for a still. I would make your 15 gallon a boiler and use the 7.5 as a thumper or a boiler. Having a thumper can be a plus when you are stripping all grain recipes since you can charge it with some of the uncleared mash that you would not run in your boiler for fear of scorching. Modular is the way to go , being able to swap any head or setup with any boiler.

[Truckinbutch]

Here is a thought since you are still designing. I like to make the top of all my pots the same that way I can use any one of them for a still. I would make your 15 gallon a boiler and use the 7.5 as a thumper or a boiler. Having a thumper can be a plus when you are stripping all grain recipes since you can charge it with some of the uncleared mash that you would not run in your boiler for fear of scorching. Modular is the way to go , being able to swap any head or setup with any boiler.

All good advice , that .

[OtisT]

+1 to what corena said. It sounds like your design for the tee on top with connection to either condenser is perfect and will work for pot stilling or fractioning on either boiler. If you had one 36” spool and one 12” spool you can run either boiler as a pot or as a CCVM.

Pot mode would use the 12” spool on the boiler, sight glass on that, then the Tee with a cap on top of the sight glass and either condenser on the side.

Fractioning would use the 36” packed column on either boiler, sight glass on that spool, tee on top of the sight glass, and 12” spool on top of the Tee. Either product condenser on the side.

Otis

[corene1]

Here is a little top I made to convert any boiler with a tri clamp fitting on top to be a thumper. Vapor comes in through the top and down then up and out through the larger outer tube. Use unions to join it to the boiler and product condenser and there you have it

[30xs]

Nice adapter, Corene. I think I’ve seen similar built using a 1x2x3/4 reducer similar to ones used on a Liebig, only larger. I understand about the not so clear as you approach the bottom of the barrel. I racked off a third generation UJSSM last night and drained the barrel. The last bucket I dropped the corn into a strainer and let most of the liquid fall into the bucket. I have everything resting hoping that it will clear settling out in a couple days. I’m hoping there is some salvaging it. I screwed up the first two by adding a bread yeast the the mix after starting it with a champagne yeast and it made all my wines undrinkable. Live and learn.

I’ve not given much thought to the idea of a thumper, but knew it was an option. I’ve just never seen one in operation first hand. When stripping through a thumper is there still a need for a second distillation of the low wines? I agree with keeping everything compatible. That is why I went with the 6x2 bowl reducer. Figured for my intents and purposes 2” would be all that I would need.

Agreed, Truckin. Our lady of the copper knows her stuff and always gives solid info.

[Truckinbutch]

Nice adapter, Corene. I think I’ve seen similar built using a 1x2x3/4 reducer similar to ones used on a Liebig, only larger. I understand about the not so clear as you approach the bottom of the barrel. I racked off a third generation UJSSM last night and drained the barrel. The last bucket I dropped the corn into a strainer and let most of the liquid fall into the bucket. I have everything resting hoping that it will clear settling out in a couple days. I’m hoping there is some salvaging it. I screwed up the first two by adding a bread yeast the the mix after starting it with a champagne yeast and it made all my wines undrinkable. Live and learn.

I’ve not given much thought to the idea of a thumper, but knew it was an option. I’ve just never seen one in operation first hand. When stripping through a thumper is there still a need for a second distillation of the low wines? I agree with keeping everything compatible. That is why I went with the 6x2 bowl reducer. Figured for my intents and purposes 2” would be all that I would need.

Agreed, Truckin. Our lady of the copper knows her stuff and always gives solid info.

Jury's not in on second run using a thumper . Personally , I do a second spirit run after stripping my ferment . Nobody has disparaged my drop at 4 S3 meetings .
And , yes ; our Stillin Goddess is just that . If she tells you something about stillin or fabricating ,you can take it to the bank .

[30xs]

Nice adapter, Corene. I think I’ve seen similar built using a 1x2x3/4 reducer similar to ones used on a Liebig, only larger. I understand about the not so clear as you approach the bottom of the barrel. I racked off a third generation UJSSM last night and drained the barrel. The last bucket I dropped the corn into a strainer and let most of the liquid fall into the bucket. I have everything resting hoping that it will clear settling out in a couple days. I’m hoping there is some salvaging it. I screwed up the first two by adding a bread yeast the the mix after starting it with a champagne yeast and it made all my wines undrinkable. Live and learn.

I’ve not given much thought to the idea of a thumper, but knew it was an option. I’ve just never seen one in operation first hand. When stripping through a thumper is there still a need for a second distillation of the low wines? I agree with keeping everything compatible. That is why I went with the 6x2 bowl reducer. Figured for my intents and purposes 2” would be all that I would need.

Agreed, Truckin. Our lady of the copper knows her stuff and always gives solid info.

Jury's not in on second run using a thumper . Personally , I do a second spirit run after stripping my ferment . Nobody has disparaged my drop at 4 S3 meetings .
And , yes ; our Stillin Goddess is just that . If she tells you something about stillin or fabricating ,you can take it to the bank .

I was planning on doing stripping and spirit runs. I know there isn’t much pressure in a thumper setup, but it is not a true open system either. For safety during my learning process I figured I’d avoid it at first. Combining an unknown and having nobody that I know personally using one I’ll err towards caution, and hopefully still produce a better drop than anything in the stores, with the help of the fine folks here.

I have to agree that her work is top notch. The images of some of her builds that I have seen have been true art. I’d love to be able to build the copper ferrules like the ones she did for the lawyer still. Smooth transitions at all the connections with no fertile lips inside.

[Truckinbutch]

30xs , I gradually worked my way up in the manner you are suggesting . Use caution and stay safe . Avoid complacency . It leads to disaster .

[30xs]

Ordered plates from Twisted Brick that will be arriving today!!! Looking for a little confirmation on my length, for the shotgun. I’m stuck between doing 18” or 20” tubes. I’m planning to allow 2” on each end of the 2” to be able to solder a ferrule in (prior to locking the end plates), advise if there is a flaw in going in that order. Also, should I leave a little excess tube hanging below the plate on the collection side, angled, to keep anything from trying to hang on the end plate itself?

[30xs]

First off I want to give props to an excellent product from Twisted Brick. I decided to go with 20” tubes inside of 24” of 2. Round one went smoothly until I realized I didn’t drill out the 1/2” buttweld water inlets and outlets. The bit grabbed and bit two of the internal tubes. After cutting and sweating that back apart I was able to salvage the plates and solder up a shotgun that from preliminary testing seems to be leak free. I had only soldered 4-5 fittings ever and the fit of the plates made this actually seem fairly easy, or beginners luck. I’m including a picture, or going to try to, of the finished shotgun. I couldn’t get a “pretty” solder joint on the ferrules, need a little more practice I guess. They are going into L tube and had to be driven with a rubber mallet the last 1/4-3/8”. I guess that would cause me to not see any flow through to the backside of the ferrule?

[30xs]

Ok, I could use a little help on execution. I stripped four charges of sweet feed, about 12 gallon per, starting around 9% tossing about 8-12oz per strip. I end up with about 11.5 gallon that looked to be about 35%, hard to get a perfect reading inside the keg. I pulled the first pint in about an hour, second pint about 40 minutes, and another pint about 30 minutes. I figured that should remove most fores and at least be in the heads. Bumped up the heat to about a pint every 15 minutes. Everything collected to that point was tossed. Three pints in there seemed to be change in what was coming off so the parrot put into place and collected at what was reading at 83%. Collected 14 pints and then there seemed to be a change getting a little flavor of the wash coming over and collected two more jars before shutting down, at 5:30am. My calculated volume seemed that there was quite a bit of alcohol left in the boiler. Fired back up the next evening to strip off what I was thinking was the tails. Ran the first bit off at what would have been about a pint every 15 minutes through the parrot, out of pure curiosity. Parrot filled at over 80% and leveled out to about 77% falling to about 70% in the next 4 jars. I hadn’t planned on running, time crunched, so cranked it to about 3,000 watts to strip down what was left and took two more gallon to get to 35%. I have everything that was pulled so it could be ran through again, or added to another was that should finish up in a couple days. My question is did I mistake the change at 3 quarts in was only the beginning of heads and the next 7 quarts were heads, and I stripped out my hearts? Being complete newbie to this I don’t know what to expect in flavor of cuts/transitions. The still is 2” column 36” tall, copper mesh through most of it, sight glass, capped T (CCVM in pot mode), maybe 3” of pipe and a 2” 90 leading to 4 barrel shotgun. What should I shoot for on takeoff speed and from this setup? I haven’t cut anything and tasted since airing, but would it be possible to have almost 3 gallon of fores and heads? Thanks for any insight. Tim

[OtisT]

Hi 30xs. A few observations for ya.

Don’t make cut decisions or thoughts of what is heads, hearts, tails by temp. Record temp for each jar you collect so you can analyze the data later, but don’t drive your still of make decisions by temp. With more experience you will understand temp correlations but you need to learn to still first.

You are doing the right thing by calculating what volume you expect to collect. To calculate this, you need to know the average ABV your still produces product at, for a given charge ABV. For example, I assume my pot still will produce an average product ABV of 75% from a spirit run with a charge of 30% ABV. Not exact, but it’s darn close. I use RAD’s calc page here on HD for this. Always do the volume math, double check your work, and use this data. If you are only at half the volume you expect to collect, you know you are not into tails yet. That’s a good “sanity check”. To learn about volume collected, you need to make sure you end your runs at the same place so comparing data run to run is meaningful. (Ex. On each spirit run, stop when output ABV is 20% (or pick a number).

Knowing the volume you expect to collect will help you more with jar planning. Total volume expected, divided by 20, and round down to the nearest 50 ml. will give you around 20-24 jars. Your 12 gallons at 30% ABV would require more than 40 pint jars. For that run, I’d collect full pints (800 ml) for a total of 20-24 jars. 20 equal sized jars will give you 5% total volume or less of the run per jar, so you have resolution to make cuts with. (See “Kiwi’s guide to cuts for beginners”). Also, doing the math will save you from collecting way too many jars. No need too collect in that many if you don’t have to. Less swaps, less cleanup, more sanity.

When you learn how to calculate expected collection volume and know by percentage of the run where you typically make cuts, you can reduce your 20+ jars to less. For example, if you learn that nothing in the first 15% collected ever makes a cut, you can collect the first 15% in one big jar before switching to you 5% sized jars. (I just picked 15%. You should stick to the small jars until you learn a number you are comfortable with. Same with hearts. When I know I’m into hearts I switch to big 1/2 gallon jars, then I switch back to small 5% jars just Before early tails start.

Next subject: stopping, starting a run.
Avoid this if you can. When you need to do this, the first jar (or portion of a jar) will likely smell of heads so be prepared to toss the first jar after you restart. Maybe make the first jar a small one, so you don’t loose too much of hearts.

Changing heat mid run.
Don’t do it. Again, from the standpoint of learning about cuts you want a nice progressive smelling/tasting set of jars. Changing temps mid run can really mess with this, and if you turn up heat too much you start smearing and ruin the later part of Heads (post heat increase.). When you have a lot more experience, then you can start messing with different temps during a run, and you will have the experience to understand what those changes do to your product.

Exception to this. It is OK to go really low heat for foreshots and early heads, but get up to production speed before you leave heads.

Tails:
The best indicator of tails on a run is a noticeable drop in production rate. Keep your heat constant the entire run, and only turn up once you know for sure you are in the tails. (Low rate, and Smell.). And you really only need to do this if you are saving tails. If you are not, you can simply shut down once you reach tails. I like to record my run rate, the time it takes to fill the jars I am using. Much of the run will come off at the same rate. In addition to giving me something to measure toward the end of a run, it allows me to set timers for when to check the next jar. “Alexa, set timer for 14 minutes” and I can do other things and still not miss a jar change.

Otis

PS. Ditch the parrot for now. Just causes smearing and you need to learn how to Still by smell/taste before trying to drive things by output ABV.

[30xs]

Thank you for some assist, Otis. I have no thermometer on the still whatsoever to record temps. The parrot was to try and see what was happening with the ABV during the run, but I have no problem ditching it, especially if it helps with the learning curve. Is the 15 minute per pint on track with where I should be collecting? I've reading elsewhere, possibly EG (pre flute) about getting a few extra jars of hearts on the heads side by bumping up the collection rate. The first half gallon I stripped at set rock solid in the 70% range coming off at close to a 15-20 minute half gallon jar. Next jar only dropped to around 60% ABV by the end. It took another gallon to get down to 35%. Judging by the volume that was produced maybe my setup produces hearts in a lower ABV, and I was still in late heads/early hearts when I actually shut down? I am more curious to the speed of the run requirements, pints per hour, and I can cipher out what I’m getting from there. If my rate is close to what I should be seeing then I need to allow close to 12 hours for a spirit run? What rate is considered slower for fores/early heads, running a 2” column all the way to the shotgun?

Also, I did not make cuts ideas based on temps or percentages. The first off the still felt very dry when rubbed between the fingers, actually squeaky when rubbed across the fingernail. It started feeling, and smelling, slightly different and I made my jar change there. That would have been about 3.5 quarts into the run, not counting the approximate one cumulative quart that was tossed in stripping runs.

Edited to say it was kiwi in his rookie guide to cuts post that spoke of speeding up the run gaining him a little extra hearts.