what the hell am I doing wrong?

[millert85]

I purchased a still from a friend withoutdoing any research (hey cheap booze sounded good)

Its the pos that only has a single marble in the column.
Since I got it I have run 5 washes using turbos. 1 of them has been drinkable. Not sounding very cheap so far is it? the others have all been bitter or had a very yeasty aroma and taste.
Now I have been lurking for a couple of weeks and yesterday tried some things I've seen and some things the LHBS suggested.
1. Was taking upto 12hrs to run (2.5ish to get up to temp and start getting product). It was connected through a long extension cord. I moved everything (a 44 of cooling water is heavy) and connected straight to the wall. Btw original element swapped for 2400w.
2. Previous runs involved taking first 60ml (100ml in later runs) as fores. Temp would settle @ 86-88c and I would run until 92-94c. This gave from 76abv to 71abv at end of run. This was with thermometer bulb @ bottom of offtake. HBS suggested raising thermo to top of offtake.
3. Cooling water is a 44gal drum and a water fountain pump from bunnings. Was previously running pump full speed (prob only 4-5lpm) HBS suggested dropping to 1-1.5lpm.

Now yesterdays run was 5l of 72abv from previous runs with 2l of 40abv shit that had been flavoured and was undrinkable, topped up to 20 something litres with tap water.
in addition to my magic marble i added as much stainless scrubber as i could fit into the column (could still blow through quite easy)
Brought up to 50c and turned on water @ 1.5lpm, thermometer bulb at top of offtake. temp settled at 78.
takeoff was a much faster toothpick sized stream compared to the usual 2-3 drips per sec. (took only 1.5hrs to get product so the move to the power point has helped)
discarded first 100ml as fores. collected in 250-300ml lots in jars. towards the end of every jar i would get a couple of drops on a spoon and mix a few drops of water, all except the middle 3 jars had vicious biting kick to them. first jars came out @ 60abv (?) down to 40abv for the last collected. was getting very frustrated by now so killed power and water, rerouted water to cut out RC and turned everything back on and try salvage some of the alcohol lost in the boiler. pulled that till was only getting 30abv and decided fuck it. entire run time was down to 4hrs maybe.
left all jars to air over night covered with paper towel. spent a good 45min this morning mixing samples on my spoon, spitting them out. there was maybe 5 jars that didnt taste like the back of a monkeys nut sack, the 3 in the middle and the jars 2 out from those:
ie bad bad good bad good good good bad good bad bad
tossed everything back into a demi to rerun.

can anyone help me get something i can drink out of this piece of molded dog turd while i save to build a boka or a bubbler (undecided yet). i currently have a TPW down that i will run during the week if possible.

Thanks

Tim

[Stevem109r]

I have the same item and have not had any problems with it. Did you get the instructions with it?


Sent via electronic carrier pigeon :)

[db1979]

My brother has the exact same still and I currently have it at my place. I ran 15L of TPW through it a couple of weeks ago and collected enough decent tasting product to make about 1 L of 40%. I also replaced the marble with copper scrubbers (2 of them) and replaced the plastic outlet tube with some 3/8 inch copper that I annealed, shaped and crimped on. I also used a small bunnings fountain pump (7 Watt rated at max flow of about 9 L/min and head height of 60cm - which would have been pretty close on maximum height) with about 30 L of water and the run took me about 1 1/2 hours all up. I shut it down after collecting about 3 jars that smelt of tails. I collected in pasta sauce jars (volumes in the range of 300 to 400 ml), but I only collected between 50 to 100 ml in each. Also the boiler was insulated with a quilt wrapped around it a couple of times.

I also ran 7 litres of the same wash through my 2 inch bubbler and got a bit less than half of what I got from my brother's super reflux still but it tastes and smells better (and I used a bit less than half the amount of wash in my bubbler).

So it sounds as if you've done pretty similar to what I did but you collected larger volumes in each jar and you haven't said anything about insulating your boiler. I reckon if you tried collecting in smaller volumes you'd have a better chance of avoiding bad flavours and maximise the good stuff that you make. Also try insulating the boiler so more of the elements heat goes into getting the wash to boil and come through the RC jacket and get collected, that should help your run time.

[db1979]

Also, don't give up hope till you've tried the TPW through it, you'll get less product but it should be well worth it (and cheaper).

[crow]

you are never likely to get any thing to flash from turbo shit, take a look in tried and proven for good neutral washes and have a good read through the newbies corner for some real helpful imfo on how to do cuts ect :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[db1979]

And if you're not sure which way to go between boka or bubbler, go for a bubbler with a rock section, you'll then be able to do whatever you want.