alcoengine digi boil

[drinkandibuildthings]

hi everone,

first post for me iv got an alcoengine refux running on a 65 litre digiboil im not sure what im doing wrong but my temp keeps running away on me before i have collected what i would expect is the correct amount of alcohol it was still coming out at 96 percent then withing a minute my head temp ran up from 77.5 " normal run temp up to 90 deg any advise?

[bluc]

what recipe what volumes :-B

[drinkandibuildthings]

iv had the same issue with three different recipes this one was a double batch of 6kg table sugar and bakers yeast with added citric acid starting SG 1.1 final 1.015 after two weeks its been cold here and i dont have a heat belt yet

[VirtualT]

Sounds like a cooling issue if your head temps are rising this fast

[Lesgold]

Any chance that the water stopped flowing through the RC? Did you check water output temp? If the RC doesn’t have water circulating through it, temp will rise quickly. (Perhaps a blockage or a pump that stopped working)

[drinkandibuildthings]

that's what I'm worried about as I have very little experience it just seems strange that it runs up so quick im still getting 2.5 to 3 litres of 94-96 % off but from the people i have spoken to they say i should be getting closer to 4 litres per 25 litre wash

[drinkandibuildthings]

Any chance that the water stopped flowing through the RC? Did you check water output temp? If the RC doesn’t have water circulating through it, temp will rise quickly. (Perhaps a blockage or a pump that stopped working)

hi les,

im just running straight off the tap and the same issue has occurred on three different runs at the end of the run

[RC Al]

How are you controlling your power?

Are the people saying your not getting enough product 8kg/turbo users?

[The Stig]

I’m with RC
How are you running the power ? These digiboil things run multiple elements that will give more power than you need so you need to control the power one way or another.
They are cheap for a reason

[scythe]

You might be running out of alcohol in your wash...
6kg sugar in 65L isn't much, that's if your filling the boiler.
If your only doing a 50L wash then it's still not enough.

Good rule of thumb is 1kg sugar for 5L wash, so 10kg sugar for 50L wash.

It would be about right for a 30-35L wash,
If that is the case assuming you started with a 10%ABV wash you've got all the ethanol your going to get easily at those percentages.

[drinkandibuildthings]

How are you controlling your power?

Are the people saying your not getting enough product 8kg/turbo users?

I don’t have a pis just three element switched on the side 500w 1000w and 2000w

[drinkandibuildthings]

You might be running out of alcohol in your wash...
6kg sugar in 65L isn't much, that's if your filling the boiler.
If your only doing a 50L wash then it's still not enough.

Good rule of thumb is 1kg sugar for 5L wash, so 10kg sugar for 50L wash.

It would be about right for a 30-35L wash,
If that is the case assuming you started with a 10%ABV wash you've got all the ethanol your going to get easily at those percentages.

Sorry I misled you there I’m running 6 kg per 25 litre wash 12 kg total

[RC Al]

I don’t have a pis just three element switched on the side 500w 1000w and 2000w

Ok, skip and forget the pid, the problem is that you already have a built in one that you shouldn't be using, sorry, should have searched your boiler first. These boilers are not suited to running a still for anything except a stripping run on a pot still without some modifications by a qualified person and a power controller

Have a read of this http://aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic ... 872d00ca7e

We did cover this type of boiler in a post somewhere i think for a grainfather, but i cant find it right now,
I believe in the end it became easier to fit out a keg for the user

[drinkandibuildthings]

I don’t have a pis just three element switched on the side 500w 1000w and 2000w

Ok, skip and forget the pid, the problem is that you already have a built in one that you shouldn't be using, sorry, should have searched your boiler first. These boilers are not suited to running a still for anything except a stripping run on a pot still without some modifications by a qualified person and a power controller

Have a read of this http://aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic ... 872d00ca7e

We did cover this type of boiler in a post somewhere i think for a grainfather, but i cant find it right now,
I believe in the end it became easier to fit out a keg for the user

I'm a sparkie by trade, so I plan to pull it to bits and work out how I can ad a voltage control. The beer keg is where I'm heading just finished a shotgun condenser. I just wish I found this sight sooner I would have stared with a real set up.

[drinkandibuildthings]

just planning to use it as an hot water pot and mash pot later on

[RC Al]

Sweet, from memory it was pretty basic under the cover and not super hard to mod with a multi pole relay

[drinkandibuildthings]

thanks for all the advise sounds like I'm sort of on the right track just need a bit more practice

[VirtualT]

You don't need to add voltage control with an alcoengine reflux head on a Digiboil. Your regulation should be the tap and/or hole size. The only thing that governs the input is how much cooling you can supply, which is not much. Turn down your element(s) to 1500W and run slow a output and you will get a nice product.

[dist]

^^^^^ THAT!

[RC Al]

Its a basic Boka, there's lots of versatility to be gained with the addition of a power controller
Can do and do well are two different things

1500w in relation to the potential boiler charge means there's not much reflux happening and a very slow take off rate
20l of low wines would take an insane amount of time, let alone the 50 or so that the boiler could handle comfortably

If you add 1-1.5m of column to it, the amount of reflux required would go down significantly and you would be able to use more power