Beer Brewing Slash Occassional Distilling

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

I can also profess that I know sh1tol about distilling.... but that is changing slowlyThe 'upgoer' and the 'acrossgoer' are both just plain 22 pipe. It then reduces to 15 just after the detachable elbow on the 'downcomer', and then gets a water jacket. I dont have the pump I thought I had and dont want to use tap water, so want to keep the coil option open as something more practical.Hence the detachable elbow. Also want to at some stage make a little extension arm that I can adjust the 'lyne arm' angle to horizontal/ ascending/ descending to change characteristics of distillate. Might work, might notYou had me worries a bit there Jannie wrt horizontal arm length. But the downcomer is on a swivel connection so can be swung forward or backward away from the pot

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

Kudos to you looks much better than some of the shite I've seen. The scr on the stove already gives you finer control.

Sent from my SM-N970F using Tapatalk

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

I was at builders, and a shiny distilling column revealed itself before me... I stepped closer...

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[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

.........................

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[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Not even drinking yet and the drink is already going to your head

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

Okay so finally made a bit of progress.

My pressure cooker finally arrived. Interesting concept brazilian made thing, but stainless, nice and big for a pressure cooker, and will do the job

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Due to grain being so scarce I want to keep what I have for beer brewing. I have a lot of older brewkit beers which are a bit blah, plus the blah first bakers yeast cider batch that I want to use for my first 'educational' distill. Yea I know the output will be low, but thats fine for now.

Any advice on how to learn as much as I can during this first batch about the process and the outputs?
Things such as collector jar sizes?, tasting along the way?, making cuts based on temp/ abv/ taste / other? How to keep it slow? How to know when its done?

In this case I am guessing I would probably want to distill pretty clean, maybe 2 or 3 times. I have made a little parrot (more of a bulldog-ravaged-parakeet, but it works), but with this relatively low output scenario its probably better to not use it?
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And in other news I managed to get me some small american oak staves to do some aging. Yayness.

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

I'd do a vinegar run on the first go to get all the solder and muck out before chucking fermented stuff in there, except if you've cleaned beforehand.

Cold crash, degass and rack off the yeast into the pot, a few drops of olive oil will help to not have your still puke (more of a thing in grain or overfill situations)

for first run, you can go full power and grab everything, subsequent run you should drop the temp when approaching your sweetspot, monitor the temp guage. I drop to 20-30% ouput power on the GF to run super slow. If youre doing neutrals, activated carbon filtering makes one helluva difference. My next sugarwash will be solely for liqeurs, so i'll distill,carbon filter twice and distill again through the t500. i want clean clean clean neutrals

you can run by temp or ravaged parakeet readings or both. do you have an handy temp gauge before the condenser? I tend to flick the water on at around 55c iirc (anything out here is methanol, foreshots, heads) then from 78C onwards keep whatever is coming out up to about 90C, you could easily place a new collection jar at each increasing degree under your spout and then smell/taste and blend as you please. smearing happens close to heads and tails, so keep those jars marked. from 90c to around 94c would be tails. and the ethanol content drops as you go down from heads (highest eth lots of crap in the mix dont use) hearts (best quality) tails (lowest eth and quality) I'd switch off at this point, the electricity spent is not worth the product. I use these temps on my alemic dome potstill, fot the t500 i generally hold the temp between 50c and 55c for the entire run, reading the output water temp. the still stops or slows down tremendously, potstill will keep going until it's empty and your distilling water

Do keep in mind that dependant on your temp probe location the above readings might or might not help. I'm also at sealevel and my boil point is lower, not that it matters greatly, ethanol boils at a the same temo, just gets there faster

i'm sure this rambling post is not coherent just like me most of the time

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

WTF is a ravaged parakeet

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

.....

I have made a little parrot (more of a bulldog-ravaged-parakeet, but it works).

Just a parrot ravaged by a bulldog and his parakeet

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

Stupid question guys, how important is it to do a vinegar run for a first run? Also, how much vinegar should I run, and for how long? What concentration of vinegar to water? I also got my pressure cooker lid's new seal this week and want to run it this weekend with some old crap I'm never going to drink. Will beg some oak staves from Langdon when I bring him some of my awesome Pilsners...

PS: I want to build a Liebig condenser in the future, or at the very least get a better coil. The one I have now is horrible. It works, but it's horrible

I ran some water through the still the other night, for an hour or so. There are some leaks, but luckily just at the compression fittings so I'm sorting that out as well. Still have to drill the hole in the top cap to sink the temp probe as well, now that I think of it.

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

Awesome, just the kind of kickstart I needed, Thanks Spook.

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

Awesome, just the kind of kickstart I needed, Thanks Spook.

no worries, when you're at the second run, remember to dilute your product down (i like to go to 20%) before running again or you could combine a bunch of stripping/first runs then dilute and go again. there's many calculators online to help you out, you'd need that alcometer and thermometer readings to correct before diluting

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

Stupid question guys, how important is it to do a vinegar run for a first run? Also, how much vinegar should I run, and for how long? What concentration of vinegar to water? I also got my pressure cooker lid's new seal this week and want to run it this weekend with some old crap I'm never going to drink. Will beg some oak staves from Langdon when I bring him some of my awesome Pilsners...

PS: I want to build a Liebig condenser in the future, or at the very least get a better coil. The one I have now is horrible. It works, but it's horrible

I ran some water through the still the other night, for an hour or so. There are some leaks, but luckily just at the compression fittings so I'm sorting that out as well. Still have to drill the hole in the top cap to sink the temp probe as well, now that I think of it.

If you see what vinegar does on the outside, you will want the same on the inside. Well worth the peace of mind. I think I mixed 1:1 vinegar and water. But now I see the vinegar is "5% vinegar". Bottom line, I think just some acidity goes a long way in cleanup

Liebig condenser.... easy and cheap

Some scrap wood for beers sounds a fair trade

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

no worries, when you're at the second run, remember to dilute your product down (i like to go to 20%) before running again or you could combine a bunch of stripping/first runs then dilute and go again. there's many calculators online to help you out, you'd need that alcometer and thermometer readings to correct before diluting

So...

Run 1: toss foreshots, keep the rest, measure ABV, dilute to 20%
Run 2: (toss foreshots again??), separate heads, hearts, and tails?


Why does one dilute? To make it slower and easier to separate heads/ hearts/ tails?

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

Run 1 : keep everything
Run 2 : toss foreshots, separate heads,hearts,tails

You're right the water helps with separating and slowing down and dilute for volume to not run high proof directly on the heatsource,