Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

xcvator wrote:Bundaboy, get that MacBoka out of the packaging and set it up ffs, do your cleaning/vinegar/sacrificial runs. Then take the packing out, fill the boiler with wash,open the needle valve and fire up the heat. This will give you a "stripping run", (read how to strip with a pot still), try this and then you can throw the airstill away.
While the boka may not be the fastest distilling system around, it's pretty versatile :handgestures-thumbupleft: If I just use it as is I find it very slow, but I do stripping runs with a pot still head 1st then run it through the reflux @ 78.8c collects @90% @ about 2.5 litres an hour :-D
cheers Keith :greetings-waveyellow:

Thanks Keith, I had the MacBoka unpacked within an hour of receiving it. Alas, as I am sure you know, it is not a plug-and-play system. This is not the thread to go into details, but there is a lot more to getting it up and going than I expected.

Suffice it to say my local (100 kms away there and back) Bunnings is a HUGE but country store that has EVERYTHING that you don't want and NOTHING that you do, on top of that it is staffed by congenital idiots who complain it's their time to go home so why are you hassling me?, every time I find I need something I don't have in stock it's a weeks delay and another $15-$20 in petrol etc. Just connecting up the water has been a nightmare, they just don't stock the (standard available everywhere) fittings. Oh God, and if I told you the number of times I have driven that 100ks only to find the bin of the item I wanted empty - you would cry like I have. It really is like pulling teeth. It's an STD call to contact them by phone. They didn't have the $2.40 a metre cable I needed in stock so it cost me $5 a metre to buy it from Home Hardware who didn't have the price on the cable and only made it known after they had processed my credit card (yes I am a trusting soul), and that just screw you into the ground on price because they know you have no choice. I could go on but it's boring, so I won't go into how I found out how 90% of my home (and garage) has been wired onto ONE of THREE 20 amp circuits and how all the power points local to where I can set up the boka is on that circuit, or how the refrigerator is also on that circuit, or how an electrician who has 1/10th of my electrical qualifications, .1% of my experience, but HAS recent knowledge of the SAA wiring rules compared to my extensive knowledge of 1974 SAA wiring rules AND has paid the ridiculously high licensing fee, wants to charge me about 3 times the hourly rate that I received as a Senior Executive of a major broadcasting organisation to rejig the wiring... but I rant and am tired and emotional... and one must keep one's sense of humour... mustn't one? Where's my Air Still? I need a drink.

xcvator wrote:.. and one must keep one's sense of humour... mustn't one? Where's my Air Still? I need a drink.

gold ! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

rumdidlydum wrote:

Darwin award wrote:sorry mate, my post was meant to be whistling on the sidelines....
I have 2 packets of turbo in my fridge that I'll post to you for free by way of apology ;-)

Good on you mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:laughing-rolling: it's only postage, it's not like I'm ever gonna use it.....

Darwin award wrote:

rumdidlydum wrote:

Darwin award wrote:sorry mate, my post was meant to be whistling on the sidelines....
I have 2 packets of turbo in my fridge that I'll post to you for free by way of apology ;-)

Good on you mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:laughing-rolling: it's only postage, it's not like I'm ever gonna use it.....

Well it would be rude of me not to accept - and I have a still to break in... ;-)

Bundaboy wrote:

xcvator wrote:Bundaboy, get that MacBoka out of the packaging and set it up ffs, do your cleaning/vinegar/sacrificial runs. Then take the packing out, fill the boiler with wash,open the needle valve and fire up the heat. This will give you a "stripping run", (read how to strip with a pot still), try this and then you can throw the airstill away.
While the boka may not be the fastest distilling system around, it's pretty versatile :handgestures-thumbupleft: If I just use it as is I find it very slow, but I do stripping runs with a pot still head 1st then run it through the reflux @ 78.8c collects @90% @ about 2.5 litres an hour :-D
cheers Keith :greetings-waveyellow:

Thanks Keith, I had the MacBoka unpacked within an hour of receiving it. Alas, as I am sure you know, it is not a plug-and-play system. This is not the thread to go into details, but there is a lot more to getting it up and going than I expected.

Suffice it to say my local (100 kms away there and back) Bunnings is a HUGE but country store that has EVERYTHING that you don't want and NOTHING that you do, on top of that it is staffed by congenital idiots who complain it's their time to go home so why are you hassling me?, every time I find I need something I don't have in stock it's a weeks delay and another $15-$20 in petrol etc. Just connecting up the water has been a nightmare, they just don't stock the (standard available everywhere) fittings. Oh God, and if I told you the number of times I have driven that 100ks only to find the bin of the item I wanted empty - you would cry like I have. It really is like pulling teeth. It's an STD call to contact them by phone. They didn't have the $2.40 a metre cable I needed in stock so it cost me $5 a metre to buy it from Home Hardware who didn't have the price on the cable and only made it known after they had processed my credit card (yes I am a trusting soul), and that just screw you into the ground on price because they know you have no choice. I could go on but it's boring, so I won't go into how I found out how 90% of my home (and garage) has been wired onto ONE of THREE 20 amp circuits and how all the power points local to where I can set up the boka is on that circuit, or how the refrigerator is also on that circuit, or how an electrician who has 1/10th of my electrical qualifications, .1% of my experience, but HAS recent knowledge of the SAA wiring rules compared to my extensive knowledge of 1974 SAA wiring rules AND has paid the ridiculously high licensing fee, wants to charge me about 3 times the hourly rate that I received as a Senior Executive of a major broadcasting organisation to rejig the wiring... but I rant and am tired and emotional... and one must keep one's sense of humour... mustn't one? Where's my Air Still? I need a drink.

And that's why I use lpg and a 4 ring burner :teasing-neener: :-D

Bundaboy wrote:

Darwin award wrote:

rumdidlydum wrote:

Darwin award wrote:sorry mate, my post was meant to be whistling on the sidelines....
I have 2 packets of turbo in my fridge that I'll post to you for free by way of apology ;-)

Good on you mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:laughing-rolling: it's only postage, it's not like I'm ever gonna use it.....

Well it would be rude of me not to accept - and I have a still to break in... ;-)

pm me your postal adress and i'll send em through :handgestures-thumbupleft:

xcvator wrote: And that's why I use lpg and a 4 ring burner :teasing-neener: :-D

And that's still an option for me Keith...

I think I can confirm now that at least *some* if not all of my low yield was due to the distillate being too warm - same turbo same amount of wash and I have ~7L versus ~2.4L - a big difference.

I have a theory as to why the first alcotec 48 batch seemed to take so long. I was going on the airlock and I think it was dissolved CO2 gassing out rather than actual fermentation taking place - the same thing happened this time but I took hydrometer readings to determine when fermentation was over - when I degassed it was as fizzy as all get out - must be a characteristic of this turbo.

Lessoned learned? USE a hydrometer.

Something I learned with turbos with a lot of sugar is to put the water in the fermenter first, all of it, then add the sugar. Otherwise, if you're only adding up to 25 liters with the sugar already in the tub you're really only adding about 15 to 20 liters of water and not the full amount required.

warramungas wrote:Something I learned with turbos with a lot of sugar is to put the water in the fermenter first, all of it, then add the sugar. Otherwise, if you're only adding up to 25 liters with the sugar already in the tub you're really only adding about 15 to 20 liters of water and not the full amount required.

Oh? In a sense I do do that but I dissolve the sugar on the stove top in a 5L ss pot - I started do that because I find it easier to determine when all the sugar is dissolved, I then add that to the fermenter and add water to that.

But I thought it was about the amount of sugar not the amount of water. I can't actually do a 25L wash as I only have 25L fermenters and, of course, you need at least some head room for an aggressive ferment. I am just bringing it up to 21L.

Would that result in the SG being too high perhaps?

From memory,and can't be naffed googling it, turbos can do normally about 330 grams per liter (but don't quote me) before the high specific gravity of the sugar does something to the cell walls and damages the yeast. It can go up to 400 I think but only if you're only using dextrose.
So 8 kgs sucrose in 25 kgs of water is 320 grams per liter. However, 8kgs in 20 kgs h2o is already 400 grams per liter. Pushing the limit. If you get to 15 liters you're well over the limits of what yeast can do.
If you've got two tubs you could split the sugar and water between them.12.5 liters h20 and 4kgs of sugar in each with half the turbo pack in each.

I'll add that if you do use 2 fermenters and you have stacks of room left in them you can add 1kilo of sugar to 3 liters of water to top them up but each extra kg of sugar uses about 4 liters of space total. The turbo packs will happily do a few extra kilos. I used to use 1 packet to 100 liters at 300 grams per liter but I did throw a good half a cup of molasses in there for extra nutrients.
Good luck mate.

Thanks mate, that sounds like at least some of my problem then. I was at least 1kg prob 2kg over.