Another lurker from Adelaide

[Permaclutter]

Having lurked about for ages i thought it time to say thank you for all the wonderful stuff that has been shared. Running a 1300mm x 3" cm reflux blockhead with gin basket on a horizontal 80l keg soon to be converted to 6Kw electric from lpg, thanks to today's order from 5Star. Now i have to read the bits about photos. The Great Gin recipe in tried and proven has to be my favorite thing ever.

[The Stig]

Welcome mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Professor Green]

Welcome to AD Permaclutter

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

[Sam.]

Welcome here mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[woodduck]

G'day mate and welcome aboard :greetings-waveyellow:

[spiltdrink]

Welcome,
Can I ask, how do you find the horizontal keg? It has been something I've considered many times in my persute for taller columns to shave some height off the boiler. But for some reason I can't put my finger on I just never jumped in and did it.
Are there any quirks/ disadvantages/benifits you've experienced that you could shine a light on for me?
If you got another boiler (say some freaky custom 110 litre keg) would you turn it on it's side??
Cheers

[Lowie]

:greetings-waveyellow:
6kw. is a lot of power, sure it gets you up to up to temp quick smart (and ETSA loves you for it), are you controlling the power output once up to temp or are you just throwing more water at it? I use a controller to balance my power (4kw) and water use. Just something else to consider :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Permaclutter]

Spiltdrink Hi, i have really enjoyed how stable the keg is, it has 4 legs of 2" 316 ss that extend to the outside dimension of it. I started off with a squat i think cub keg back in about 2000 on gas wrapped in corro and then lagged with rockwool with no drain port. i had a kitchen sink with hot and cold water and ale and stout taps back then. Had a batch of beer go shitty and built the "apparatus for home distilling" type thing to deal with it. Poor mature age uni students with an oxy set and lots of scrap metal couldn't afford to chuck out a keg of beer. That was fairly shit but soon led to a Nixon Stone LM sort of thing. Beer kept being produced by the 50L keg full, turbo tasted shit compared to off beer and as it was all 50L batches a 50L keg was too small as a boiler, Built the next still got divorced got a real job spent money on piss at the pub lived in a shed etc. 15 years later ive still got the 18Gall keg we used for stout and talking to an old mate it turns out he has the column and head of the last still in his shed and now we have a wine maker mate over the road, distilling just had to happen again but no way was i ever going to not have a drain or a fill port. the keg had a maybe 2" hygienic fitting on its side so that got an adapter to 3" easy flange and some legs glued on. Send before i get timed out.

[Permaclutter]

This was gas fired as i didn't like the shonky power supply to the shed it was to live in. RC and PC both 3/16 double wound coils PC with a cold finger as well. The long rave is a result of enjoying my gin. So, to your question would i go horizontal again a simple certainly is the answer. Shorter and more stable.

[Permaclutter]

Lowie, Hi. Yes 6kw is a lot. Got the shits up with buying lpg but liked the thing about paying for it and THEN getting gin, as it was i spent 1.5 hours watching it come up to temp maybe 1/2 or more to be happy with eq. 2 1/2 hrs till tails. In a tin shed in Adelaide.Lots of corro and rock wool lagging but by necessity convection chimneys formed by the corro so the gas flame could do it's thing. This summer has done me in. Last winter it was nice and warm in the shed but my risk assessment caused me to put the gas bottles out side so the sods would freeze up. When the old original 3/16" coils of PC and RC proved to be shit as condensers run from all manner of pumps from a pool i then made 2 new heads and another still for the mate that kept drinking all my piss, 16 x 1/2" by about 6" RC and 7x1/2" x 18" PC.

[Permaclutter]

His has a 2000w electric element and lives in a tall huge cupboard in the air conditioned laundry, 50L squat keg boiler with fill and drain ports. cooled by a pond. We had 46 degree days and he kept distilling. i couldn't go in my shed, let alone light a gas fire in it. He couldn't reach eq. or maintain it or azeo either dicking around with RC flow was constant, whereas mine on gas almost and some times behaved like the descriptions of VMs and just stopped producing at tail's.

[Permaclutter]

We mucked around a bit with a kettle on an old 10 A variac he took it home and did a run. flat out to boil and the then variac to get to eq. He was like a new born christian with 4 dicks. We then spent heaps with Andrew

[Permaclutter]

Heaps in our terms, 3 elements and 2 controllers. YMMV.

[spiltdrink]

Fantastic, thank you for letting me know.
I'll see you round the traps