Pics of my super new still, what ya think?

[nosregor]

Hey everyone,

Thanks again for all the help, I now have a fully functioning and beautiful looking (in my eyes anyway) still

Am still not sure what to call it, I guess it is a pot still that has a lot of internal reflux, the distillate comes out at around 80% so I guess there must be quite a bit going on in the column.

oooh am so excited where do I start, ok here is a pic of my brew's two of them are apple cider, coz its the season here and the other two are molasses and sugar for making a rum.

brew's copy.jpg (13.08 KiB) Viewed 1524 times

I used champagne yeast for one and a turbo for the other, I know turbos are supposed to be bad but I had a pack so shame to waste it. is a new one supposed to be cleaner but I guess they all say that. not ready yet but counting down the days.
The rum is basically 50/50 brown sugar and molasses, anyone made a rum like this before, any advice?

Ok now the exciting bit,

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This is the boiler, it is an old hot water heater I "found" at work 2000W element which is a bit too powerful for the size but I have developed my own controller which regulates the power to the element without cycling on and off. What I do is run the boiler on full power until the temp begins to rise, I then unplug the boiler and plug it into an adapter I have made that connects the element in series with a small kitchen kettle, this seems to put just enough load on to reduce the power in the boiler to a perfect level for slow runs

The column is attached with a brass fitting the internal diameter of the connection is only 1/2 inch, not a huge hole I know bus was the only thing I could find to fit and hey it works fine.

Next is a side view of the main section,

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The cooling round the column does not do much on a stripping run but seems to help on the slow spirit runs, the thermometer in the top is a cheap digital one and am not too confident about the reading but at least it gives me an idea of what is going on up there.

I have created a simple cooling loop with a washing machine pump and a 25l reservoir which i bung a load of ice in at the start of a run.

cooling.jpg (19 KiB) Viewed 1519 times

The cooling is a simple coil in a bucket, not rocket science I know but is simple and works very well. The distillate comes out at room temp if not lower and is collected in small 250ml glass bottles.

ok final pick, my new spirits.

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So far this is all I have managed to collect, have been super over cautious with the cuts but have all the rest of the low wines for another day when I am a bit more experienced with cuts.

the three bottles each have a piece of charcoal I made from a pear tree, thought that this would create quite a nice flavor, smells good already and tastes not bad too even after only 3 days.

so there you have it, hope I did not bore you too much, as usual any comment or suggestions much appreciated and hope this helps some of you new guys out there too.

[seravitae]

Nice, good work.

Instead of using an adapter and a second heating element to increase resistance (which means you'll just be boiling the poor kettle dry and waste power all the time), try this:

If you can verify that your main urn element is totally AC, with no circuitry junk in front, (can connect it straight to mains) then placing a diode will block half of the AC waveform, limiting the power to half. Here, that reduces my 2000/2400W elements to 1000/1200W.

An electrician could make you this 'half-wave rectified adapter" in about 2 minutes...

[tracker0945]

Nothing wrong with that set-up.
Main things are.
1 Does it work --- yes
2 Are you happy --- yes
3 Can you make improvements --- yes --- but later on, I'm busy right now


Cheers.

[nosregor]

Nice, good work.

Instead of using an adapter and a second heating element to increase resistance (which means you'll just be boiling the poor kettle dry and waste power all the time), try this:

If you can verify that your main urn element is totally AC, with no circuitry junk in front, (can connect it straight to mains) then placing a diode will block half of the AC waveform, limiting the power to half. Here, that reduces my 2000/2400W elements to 1000/1200W.

An electrician could make you this 'half-wave rectified adapter" in about 2 minutes...

Cheers, sounds like a plan, except i always tell my girlfriend i am going to run her a bath, (with the extra water i boil) just take two hours to fill.

[seravitae]

Heh.

Alternatively there's lots of kit-modules using solid state relays (try ebay or sparkfun or something) that can handle up to 50A, with screw terminals and stuff, so you can use something like that to digitally control heating. I've seen some with a low current 3-12v DC source which means you can trigger them from a 50 cent 555 timer from radio shack.

For some inspiration, here's my 2000W adjustable heating controller

[Hack]

Nice, good work.

Instead of using an adapter and a second heating element to increase resistance (which means you'll just be boiling the poor kettle dry and waste power all the time), try this:

If you can verify that your main urn element is totally AC, with no circuitry junk in front, (can connect it straight to mains) then placing a diode will block half of the AC waveform, limiting the power to half. Here, that reduces my 2000/2400W elements to 1000/1200W.

An electrician could make you this 'half-wave rectified adapter" in about 2 minutes...

With just the diode wouldn't the power blink off and on to the element? Althoough it would be for a short enough time that it probably wouldn't matter.

[seravitae]

Yes, and no.

It will block one half of the AC signal, so instead of having a full sine wave you will only have two peaks. So yes, current will only flow during those the halfwaves, but fortunately the timescale is so quick it doesnt matter, as you say.

My heating controller has even more lag then that, and even that doesnt effect the wash. What *does* effect the wash substantially is the rate of stirring it. With no stirring localised hotspots and natural convections of fluid and vapour cause literally 10 centimeters of condensation-point drift in my 40cm glass condensor.

anyway, i dont wanna thread hijack... i like the still. maybe later on you can upgrade the condensor a bit, since you seem to be working in copper, a leibig style water jacket condensor would make your rig a lot easier to handle. Just make sure to use a recirculation pump and a small radiator to save water also maybe instead of boiling a jug of water in series, install another element into the container in series, that way you're not wasting heat, but the resistance is increased, so the current is less.