Home Distiller

Just wanted to see if anyone else uses one like this. It’s just and over sized shotgun condenser or something like a reflux condenser on a column. It’s 9” diameter but only 15” long tubes. Any other “Gatling gun” condensers out there?

Could you elaborate a little more please?
I think I've seen you post a picture of this a week ago but I forgot what the post was about. To me it looks like a jacketed condenser with a ridiculously large jacket.

Lots of us use shot gun condensers .... but really they probably should be called gattling gun condensers. Not that I know shit from clay when it comes to guns but all the shotty’s I’ve ever seen have more than two barrels .

Have to say , yours looks a beast

Have you run it yet ? Man that things probably capable of 50 liters an hour easy .
Wondering how many barrels you have in it ?
Looks like 2” going in . How much expansion room is there from the input to where the actual condenser starts ? ... an inch or two ?

Love to see a scale diagram of the internals .

Love to see a scale diagram of the internals .

+1, really would like more information.

I saw condenser once that the builder called a gatling gun but it was made up of multiple liebigs.

Looking through the google search apparently the name has been used frequently in reference to what is commonly called a shotgun condenser.

Odin is pushing the limits on this type of thing.

You'd probably find his thread interesting, see below.

viewtopic.php?f=75&t=63130&p=7556526#p7556306

Henry has been doing this for a good long while.

http://gatlingstillworks.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The internal aren’t complex at all, just a jacketed condenser. Has 16, 3/4” copper tubes inside. About 2 inches of expansion room on top with a 1 1/2” tri clamp inlet. It is wide open on the bottom and just sits on a funnel for collection. I’ll try to get a diagram draw up. The body and caps are 20oz copper sheet.

Yes I have run it but I haven’t really pushed it to see what it can do yet. 50 liters might be possible, sounds like a lot, but I’ll probably never find out. That would dry my boiler out pretty quickly.

Henry there at Gatling still works has some pretty cool stuff, looks like those reflux condensers are air cooled? Seems hard to control, I’m probably missing something. I’ll have to look into that a little more, I’m not very educated on column still design.

Here's a picture of one of the 12 inch gatling gun coolers we are building. These go on our iStills 5000.

Regards, Odin.

Wow Odin, looks great but must take a pretty big water flow to cool all those pipes? Are those 1/2” pipes?

RunRufusRun wrote:
Henry there at Gatling still works has some pretty cool stuff, looks like those reflux condensers are air cooled? Seems hard to control, I’m probably missing something. I’ll have to look into that a little more, I’m not very educated on column still design.

I'm intrigued by the performance of the smaller diameter gatling risers and how they are tuned to control reflux. I wonder if any other distilleries are running this configuration?

Twisted Brick wrote:

RunRufusRun wrote:
Henry there at Gatling still works has some pretty cool stuff, looks like those reflux condensers are air cooled? Seems hard to control, I’m probably missing something. I’ll have to look into that a little more, I’m not very educated on column still design.

I'm intrigued by the performance of the smaller diameter gatling risers and how they are tuned to control reflux. I wonder if any other distilleries are running this configuration?

Pretty sure Henry has the concept,,,or a specific iteration of the concept protected.
He is a commercial builder as well as a distillery owner. And so he does have a few of these out there.

The system design introduces and relies more on passive reflux.
Control says you? Its just power management is all. Simply tune input to let the still run much (if not exacatly) like a pot still.

Ive not seen specific numbers but gather that it holds proof better than a commensurate, generic pot still.

If its only power management, then I would love to make one of these. Damn, I should have picked up a couple of those 8" x 1/8" copper disks that showed up at the scrapyard a few months ago.

This pic made me think there might be some coolant management going on as well.

Well you could blow a fan across the tubes I suppose.

I've had whiskey out of one and was very good so no worries about that aspect. Henry really is a master distiller.

But yeah the pic does appear to utilize some reflux. He has made some adjustments since inception it appears. With out plates to promote multiple phase change cycles, it has limitations that could be characterized as less efficient,,,or less optimal separation.
On the other hand it uses ambient air temps to promote higher attenuation. So what it looses in one context of "efficient" it makes up for in another context.

Since I once read (I think by Zymurgy Bob?) the pot stiller tries to exploit inefficiencies,,,this system seems like a nice adaptation and looks pretty cool too.

Bushman wrote:Wow Odin, looks great but must take a pretty big water flow to cool all those pipes? Are those 1/2” pipes?

10 mm pipes only. Runs on normal tap water. One inlet, one outlet.

Regards, Odin.

Twisted Brick wrote:

RunRufusRun wrote:
Henry there at Gatling still works has some pretty cool stuff, looks like those reflux condensers are air cooled? Seems hard to control, I’m probably missing something. I’ll have to look into that a little more, I’m not very educated on column still design.

I'm intrigued by the performance of the smaller diameter gatling risers and how they are tuned to control reflux. I wonder if any other distilleries are running this configuration?

Looks like the pipes - instead of one pipe - create a bigger cooling area, so more reflux and slightly higher abv better separation at the cost of some efficiencies. Is that piece in the middle used to induce reflux? A sorta dephlag?

Odin.

Yes I think thats more or less spot on Odin.

Actually you have likely met Henry also Odin.
He is a regular at ADI

LWTCS wrote:
Since I once read (I think by Zymurgy Bob?) the pot stiller tries to exploit inefficiencies,,,this system seems like a nice adaptation and looks pretty cool too.

Sure does. Indeed, I think I it was ZBob who spoke of exploiting a pot's inherently inefficient design, something that's really stuck with me. I can't help but think that individual riser tubes could very possibly produce distillate with a different character than what I'm currently getting from a 3" riser.

LWTCS wrote:Yes I think thats more or less spot on Odin.

Actually you have likely met Henry also Odin.
He is a regular at ADI

Maybe I did, but I don't remember. I'll make sure to meet him if he is around, next time. I like the out of the box aspect of it. Must make for a nice potstill with benefits kinda thing. I guess that if you run her slow, you could get a 1.5 to 1.7 theoretical distillation cycle out of it. Just thinking it forward ... more pipes and longer pipes for slower vapor speeds and even more separation ...

Btw, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you LWTCS, on the ACSA tasting event, about rum, and loved your double doubler still set-up.

Regards, Odin.

I did one years back.