New to the craft but not exactly new to distillation, did a fair bit of it in college using glassware, though that was a long time ago and on a much smaller scale. A long time lurker here and found the information shared invaluable.
Currently I am mostly interested in neutral spirit however I would like to make fruit brandies and rum as well.
Current set up:
I collaborated with a SS fabricator and had him build a 3" diameter 130cm / 51.18 inch long column of the CCVM design. It is a takedown design with tri clamp ferrules (can be run either as packed column or pot still) + Double wound dimroth type reflux condenser made of 8mm copper tubing. The product condenser is of the shotgun type, 60cm long with 7x 16mm tubes. The boiler was built from a 48lt SS food storage/cooking vessel with a clamp-down lid and food grade silicone gasket.
The entire assembly except for the RC is 304 SS, TIG welded together. The column packing consist of SS scrubbies and the lower part of the column is packed with copper 15mm "raschig rings" (from a failed project)
For heat I use a 6kw propane burner, with a 27cm / 5mm thick aluminum diffuser plate to avoid hotspots.
I tried Ted's FFV recipe both for the sac. run and two more runs after that and am able to consistently get around 2.6lt of azeo per run. Makes for some tasty Vodka indeed!
I need to further fine tune my set up and reduce inefficiencies. I am also considering having my fabricator build a parrot for me, so I will further explore parrot designs on the site.
Happy distilling!
Hello everyone
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