Home Distiller

I've been running my head to the numbers especially for All grain, and I can't understand why the number of 30 gallons was chosen.
When I do the math a 30 gallon wash at 6% will only net me 1.17 gallons at 62% which I'm assuming is my total collection after cuts and efficiency.

That is a lot of work to make five bottles of booze. And with all the issues we have with short-term aging with carboys and oak sticks, filling a barrel of any reasonable size to get a complex product is effectively darn near ridiculous with the amount of time and effort it would take.

I mean you're talking 30 runs just to fill a 30 gallon barrel! who the heck is going to do that on that size still?!

I run the numbers up and down left and right all over the place and I don't understand why something as large as 50 gallons wouldn't still be considered hobby sized when you figure what it would take, and considering many guys like me don't have a lot of time in the offseason so we have to make enough drinking booze for the year as quickly as possible, I'm just struggling here trying to figure out what's with the arbitrary number of 30?

Also I haven't even seen a still over 26 gallons until it hits 50, I searched high and low for a 30 gallon I couldn't find a single one, so for all I can tell 26 gallons is effectively as big as anyone's going to go.

Can maybe one of the OG's of the site explain to me why 50 is considered too large for hobby scale, because you really can't make that much if you're making a high quality product

For large batches I do 50 gallon (45'ish) ferments (to approx 10%'ish abv) that provide three strip runs on my 16g pot still. Three strips yields enough low wines @ about 25%abv to fill the 16g boiler for a spirit run which then yields about 2.5-3 gallons after cuts @ approx 125 proof...

With my 16 gallon pot still that comes to about 20x 750ml bottles of spirits give or take... Double that if you're using a 30g boiler...

It is a lot of work but for personal hobby use it's more that I can (or would want) to drink... I've done a large batch mash/ferment/strip/spirit in about two weeks...

Do what you want in your shed but don't post here about boilers over 30g as per the rules we live by.

Cheers,
j

30 gallons is the limit for boiler size, not wash size. Feel free to do 100 gallon ferments and tell us all about it.

What jonny said. Even with a 15g still will produce more than a person can drink, 25g is plenty overkill, hence the rule.

30g barrels are similarly too large for hobby which is why your math runs you into problems.

Okay I guess that makes sense I must be doing my math wrong.

I googled up this specific gravity = potential ABV table and show some math below to estimate yield.
----
1.070 = 8.9
1.075 = 9.4
1.080 = 10.2
1.085 = 10.9
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I generally shoot for around 1.070 SG and use 10% abv to estimate because it makes the math easy.

45 gallons @ 10%abv = 4.5 gallons of 100%abv = 7.2 gallons @ 62.5%abv

After stripping runs and cuts guesstimate 1/3 hearts cut = approximately 2.4 gallons @ 62.5%abv...

Give or take depending on what you ferment/run, how you run it, and how you cut it but go by taste and smell and you get what you get - approx 2.5-3 gallons for a large 50g batch.

Cheers!
-j

EDIT:
2.4g of 62.5% = 3.75g @ 40% (bottle proof) = 18.75 fifths...