Home Distiller

Okay. I’ve been doing this for a while, and I thought I’d put this up in order to get some opinions on what I’m doing and how I might improve it. Thanks in advance for your comments.

UJSSM is my go-to thing. I do a run or two every year, and generally go for about five ferments each. I’ve sorta added some ideas from Ian Smiley’s book about Making Corn Whiskey to the basic recipe – specifically using the feints in the next run and omitting the stripping run.

The equipment:
I’m running a 13 gallon milk can boiler with a 2” copper column, packed with 48 inches of stainless steel wire SPP.
I have a new head on the top of the column that uses the condenser height in a 2” stainless tee to control my reflux ratio. I’m working through my first UJ run with this new head, and I’ve found that it’s stupid easy to run, compared with the old Boka head that I used for years.
Power is supplied to the milk can’s 5500 watt electric hot water heater element with a 220v SCR, built long ago from plans on the Brewhaus site. I have a meter that allows for pretty tight power control with a potentiometer.
There is a K thermocouple in the product vapor elbow that runs through an old Omega indicator that sends RS-232 data to a laptop, which allows me to set alarms and graph data, if I wish.
Cooling is supplied by an unlimited supply of unmetered municipal irrigation water through the 3/8 copper reflux coil that I built for the Boka. It now lives in the top of my new vapor-controlled head. I have a 36” Liebig product cooler (3/4 over ½) that has a ¼” nozzle on the end (necessary to stop vapors.) The cooling is in series through the product cooler and then the reflux cooler.
I generally collect distillate in numbered pint Mason jars, shooting for about 300 ml each. There are 24 available.

The process:
Basic UJSSM to start. I use Tractor Supply cracked corn and double Uncle Jesse’s recipe, which works well for the Brute trash can fermenter and my boiler size. 10 gallons of water, 14 pounds of sugar and I pitch two spoons of Red Star yeast on the first ferment only. Initial SG about 1.05.

Depending on the time of year, this takes four to six days to ferment down to about a 0.992 SG, where it stops bubbling. I siphon off the beer through a doubled tee shirt into my boiler and move that into the still room from the garage. I toss about seven and a half gallons of water into the fermenter to keep the yeast alive while the stillin’ is going on.

I assemble the reflux still – no pot stilling involved, get the cooling water flow going and then put the power to the boiler. I generally start at 15 amps indicated (which is about 3700 watts at 250v). This heats up the boiler and column in about 45 minutes. I have a 100F alarm set on the top thermocouple which alerts me when everything’s hot. At that point, I drop the boiler to 10 amps (2500 watts) and let things settle for 30-45 minutes. I also set the alarm for about 185F, just in case something goes wrong. I am always in the still room while it is running, but sometimes my attention could be focused on something else. I log the time, the liquid amount, vapor temp and ABV of each jar as the still is running.

The reflux coil is jammed down past the outlet at the start. I have a Sharpie mark on the coil lines that indicates this position. There is a second mark that indicates where the coil has just started to clear the tee. The condenser is always at one point (full reflux) or the other (vapor to the Liebig.) I haven’t done much experimenting with different coil heights. Not yet, anyway.
After 45 minutes or so, I increase the reflux coil height to the second mark, and I can immediately see the vapor temp increase and product start flowing from the Liebig outlet. It’s a broken stream , and stays like that until the end of the run, where it drops off to a drip.

I start Jar#1, which takes about ten minutes to get to 300ml, and then switch to Jar #2, and so on. On the first run, where I’m not running any feints, I’ll get about 9 or 10 jars at 300ml each. As things slow down, I’ll add 2 amps more power to speed things up. I’ll do that twice as the run ends. When the output slows to a drip, the vapor temp is climbing and the ABV of the output hits about 80% (measured with a hydrometer when each jar is filled), I shut down the still. With my new head, it takes about 4 hours for this first run. This is easily three times as fast as my Boka did it. This first run product is generally used to make apple pie, panty dropper and such. About half of this run – the second and third jars and perhaps the last two get tossed into the feints jar. The first one always gets tossed.

I then break down the still and drain about 2 ½ gallons of backset into a bucket. I put the reflux cooler in the bucket in order to cool the backset down while I’m cleaning and putting the equipment away.
The cooled backset is tossed into the fermenter, the sugar is added and I stir the fermenter briskly to dissolve the sugar. I can usually see bubbling in an hour or so. Starting SG is usually 1.05.

The numbered jars sit open overnight, and the next day I use my nose and taste to make cuts. The hearts are labeled and put away. The feints are transferred, labeled and wait for the next boiler charge.

Run Number 2-5
Once the second wash has stopped bubbling (I don’t generally wait for it to clear) and the SG is 0.99-something, I load the boiler up the same way as the first time, move the milk can into the still room and then dump the feints from the last run into the boiler, running it the same way as the first time. Due to the feints, I get more product and have more jars, but things end up the same way.

I don’t generally go past 80% ABV or so because in my rig that’s icky, oily stuff that smells like wet cardboard and takes a long time to wash out of my column’s packing.

What I get is some really nice stuff by the fifth run, which I dilute to aging strength and put up with toasted, charred oak sticks for about three months. After that, the oak gets removed, it’s diluted with distilled water to 40% ABV and set up in bottles until I can drink it or give it away.

I really like the taste of the finished product. It’s pretty smooth but does lack that bite that whiskey connoisseurs (not me) seek after.

What I’m looking for is some constructive criticism. I’m satisfied with my product, but always looking to improve. Am I missing something? Is there something that I can do better? If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Thank you for commenting.

I run a pot still, so the differences I see between your methods and mine may not be relevant. However...I might try the following. These improved my product.

Racking off wash into carboys letting things settle running only very clean wash.
Taking out the top layer of spent corn and adding some fresh back in for each subsequent run.
When tasting for cuts, go towards tails first from the middle jar and from middle to heads second. Heads will ruin my taste buds for making wise tight cuts.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Hi Jstroke!
Thanks for your input. I generally swap out some corn after I siphon off the beer - I guess I left that part out.
I've considered clearing the wash, but the mechanics of the UJSSM process seem to make that difficult.

Specifically, I siphon off the beer, swap out some corn and then add water while I'm running the still. If I wait a few days for the beer to clear before running the still, will my yeast survive the wait just sitting there on corn and water, waiting for the backset from the still run?
I may try this, but I'm wondering if anyone else has done this successfully......

The advice on tasting cuts makes a lot of sense. I'm going to do it that way next time.

I don’t rack the beer off of my grain…seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Especially when you’re waiting on the backset…

I also run a 13 gallon milk can and 2 inch still. What surprises me is that you stop running at 80% with little to no reflux and only one run. I'm probably missing something, but I feel like you are leaving a lot of viable ethanol in the boiler.
I've never run my still the way you describe though.
What I do, is 25 to 30 gallon ferments, strip two boiler charges of around 11.5 gallons with the pot still. Strip until the resulting low wines in the collection vessel are around 35% ABV, then if I'm making high proof, I set up the CCVM and run the resulting low wines. otherwise I run thim again through the pot still head.

Seems to me you would get better flavor and a higher yield from your fermenter if you ran it as a pot still for flavored aging stock.

Im curious what proof your pulling off that CCVM with SPP packing and very little reflux, as I have been wanting to try doing this with mine. I can set up for 35 inches of packed column using double weaved copper mesh, and can consistently get 95% off it to make neutral, but I've never ran the packed column to compress heads in high reflux, then opened it wide (raised the coil all the way up) to collect good flavored hearts.

Hi Deplorable!
Thanks for your reply and your thoughtful questions.
Yes, I am leaving some amount of ethanol in the boiler, stopping at 80%. However, on my still, the ABV drops off at the end of the run rapidly, and I'm not likely to even get one 300ml jar full of stuff heavier than that. That last jar measures at 80% ABV, but that's the whole 300ml jar. It's likely lower than that at the end. When I was running the Boka head, I would often try to take it lower, but was never happy with the last bit - that wet cardboard smell isn't what I want in my drink. This CCVM head is new to me, and this is the first time I've used it on an UJSSM run. I'm amazed at how the output just goes down to a drip as the alcohol is running out. It's completely different from the way the Boka worked. My last two to three jars have a bit lower ABV and a flavorful corny odor. I like that.

I check the ABV of each jar and it is consistently 97-98% indicated, which drops a couple of points when corrected for temperature. My CCVM product output is warmer (90F) than when using the Boka head (65F) with the old Liebig product cooler.

At 2500 watts of input to my 2" still, I am still running a significant amount of reflux - even pulling off the broken stream. My condensing coil is almost all the way into the tee, and I don't move it once the run has started. I may change that in the future - I still have a lot to learn about this new head.

My still was originally constructed with copper mesh, and after changing to the SPP, it made the same ABV with much less heat input. I'm not sure that you can compare the two packing methods. In the future, I will likely drill some holes and stick a couple more t-couples into the packing to keep a closer eye on what's going on. If there's no temperature gradient, that inducates a flooding condition. I've tried running more heat input (3500 watts) with the SPP and the ABV actually went down, which indicates flooding somewhere in the packing. My monitoring equipment limits me to four K-couples, so I'll likely have to revise something to get that done.

UJSSM is an interesting thing. I don't do one run. I do five, mixing backset and feints back into the boiler for each run - that's where the flavor comes from. You can use a reflux still to get the job done. If I was working with an all grain bill, I'd likely do something different.

I used ideas from Ian Smiley's book (he uses all-grain) and merged it with the Uncle Jesse thread here to get my procedure.

Thanks again for your input.

Im intrigued by your ABV numbers, enough so to get a bag of cracked corn and finally try a UJSSM, or maybe just try it on one of the gumball head ferments from my AG bourbon mashes.
I've only done a couple of runs on the CCVM, and it was to make neutral, not flavored spirits. I may just have to try detuning the column a bit and see if I can get it to run a good flavored output at around 75%.
My problem is that work gets in the way of my hobby time. I don't want to wish my life away, but retirement can't come soon enough.