Here it is, 6 weeks in the making. Copper and stainless. What is it?
Spent 6 weeks building this thing off and on. Full blown valved reflux still. The coil in the head unit was upgraded from 1/4 inch tube to 3/8 tube. The hoses from the tank are 3/4 and the connections attached to the still are 1/2 inch.
They then hook into the 3/8 coil. Instead of 8 loops have increased to 14 and the head is 3" longer thus ensuring it will remain nice and cool with little restiction of flow or effort from the pump. The flow rate can be adjusted by a flow valve.
The test the other day had the head temp at a constant 10 degrees celcius on a 31 degree celcius day in the sun, so shouldnt be an issue. If I need it to get colder, Ill run the pipe work through a cool box.
The cooling is run by a submerisble pump from a 500 litre water tank.
Has two 2200 Watt stainless steel heating elements, has a stainless steel float valve which will shut off the element when the mash gets too low and will prevent element burning out.
There is one thermocouple in the column that monitors the head temp and one in the boiler that monitors the mash temp. This one is adjustable through the PID (automated Tempreture control unit) and SSR unit (Single State Relay). Also have a digital thermometer in the head to ensure there are no issues should the PIDS crap out.
Everything is either copper or stainless and the column is filled with Raschig Rings.
Will produce about 15 litres of 97% triple distilled extreme high quality pure alcohol per 50 litre mash in about 5 - 6 hours.
Break this into 40% proof equates to about 30 lires of clean, crisp, high grade, triple distilled, carbon filtered spirit. Add the mix of your choice, rum, burbon, whatever and you have the equivelent of say a Blue label scotch. The cost to make per bottle, less than "0.
Ya know its a still right korny? It don't make beer.
It's flat out illegal to distill any spirit and sell unless you have appropriate licenses etc from the government. So no, i doubt he will sell his booze.
Pumps out 250 ml of 97% pure triple distilled, carbon filtered alcohol every 2 minutes and 38 seconds. Takes 5 to 6 hours to do a 50 litre mash.
So there is 50l of mash in the boiler, produces about 15 litres of pure spirit out of this 50 litres that is the best quality. Add 1.3 litres of water per 1 litre of spirit to bring the alcohol content down to about 43%.
So by my math that equates to 34.5 litres of 43% alcohol which is roughly 49 x 700 ml bottles of rum / scotch / burbon / cognac / liquor whatever you like every run that is absolutley pure with no nasties or ethanols or other chemicals in the spirit.
Not bad, not bad at all.
Equates to about $8.00 per bottle including mixer, filtering etc
Saving of around $30 per bottle and the finish result is about the quality of a blue label scotch or a high grade spirit.
Now you just need to go buy some wine barrels from South Australia to age the stuff in. I'll accept the gift of a sherry cask whisky if you care to make some. ;)