Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Re-wired the power lead, removed all other equipment from the circuit, wired in the $19.00 power controller and, bingo - It Verks!
This is the cleaning run.

Well done :dance:

happy days! do you have a bit of copper in the vapour path? you dont need much but a bit of copper mesh in the column will remove sulphides (nasty taste in your end product)

Doubleuj wrote:Well done :dance:

happy days! do you have a bit of copper in the vapour path? you dont need much but a bit of copper mesh in the column will remove sulphides (nasty taste in your end product)

I got a 0.1k roll with the 5S basic still. I read the KIWI cleaning run thread and it said you didn't need to bother with copper on the vinegar run.
I did do the 2 cans of engine degreaser and nappysan clean on the copper mesh. I'll run the mesh when I do my sacrificial.

Is one roll ok on my product run if I'm doing Rum and Whisky? And how far up the column?

ppruss wrote:

Doubleuj wrote:Well done :dance:

happy days! do you have a bit of copper in the vapour path? you dont need much but a bit of copper mesh in the column will remove sulphides (nasty taste in your end product)

I got a 0.1k roll with the 5S basic still. I read the KIWI cleaning run thread and it said you didn't need to bother with copper on the vinegar run.
I did do the 2 cans of engine degreaser and nappysan clean on the copper mesh. I'll run the mesh when I do my sacrificial.

Is one roll ok on my product run if I'm doing Rum and Whisky? And how far up the column?

nice, i dont exactly know but im thinking as high as possible, if its too low it could aid in puking, and not too densely packed either.

Cheers Doubleuj! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Nice looking pot :handgestures-thumbupleft:

bluc wrote:Nice looking pot :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cheers Bluc!
Early days. Seems to be a lot more to this than all grain brewing :D

Well, I managed my first stripping run. It was the sacrificial .
I had about 20l of TPW that came out at 14.8% ABV.

I charged the boiler at 3:14 pm and by 3:51 I was getting my first drop out of the condenser.
I turned on the cooling water and by 3:54 I was getting a pencil stream, by 4:09 the wash was at a rolling boil. At this point the rate of collection was 100ml / 1.09 min.

My first 300ml I discarded and the first 200ml came in at 70% but that’s not temp corrected. The cooling water was fresh so I’m assuming that it would be around +/- 2%

By 4:10 I was down to 66%
By 4:22 I was at 60%
4:36 50% with a distillate temp of 43C
At this point I was collecting 150ml in 2min 35sec
At 4:48 = 42%
5pm I stopped: 32% @ 40C (24% corrected)
I probably had about 3.8cm of wash above the heating element.

Minus the fores I collected around 4.5L of product.
I didn’t measure my cooling water temp at the start but I’ll take a stab at 18C. By the end it was 30C
This was a bit over 122L.

So, I’ll read, read and read some more to see if my results are in the ball park of normal but if any of you seasoned stillers want to chime in and save me a week, I won’t discourage you.

Sounds like a pretty standard stripping/ sac run on a pot BUT you need to have your pc water on from the start, even if it's only a trickle. If something happened or you forgot to turn it on then you've got highly flammable and explosive ethanol vapour in the air :handgestures-thumbdown:

Other than that, I reckon your on the right track.
When you do a spirit run though you want to slow it down though, strip/sac run 6L/hr is great, but for a spirit run you only want an unbroken stream.

Thanks Doubleuj - good to know I'm not far off the mark.
Point taken with the cooling water. It was only a couple of minutes but I clearly see the safety aspect.
EDIT: Just checked my notes - NOT "just a few minutes" :o Point seriously taken. :text-thankyoublue:
I blew up my controller last weekend but have another on order from fleabay. That coupled with a digital power meter and I only need a Parrot and I'm all set.
I hope to run a Macwhisky as my first serious attempt. :dance:

Hi, Those digital power meters from ebay don't work for voltage if it is not clean sine wave AC. I found that out when I read the fine print on the instructions. The controller chops up the power so you need to get an analogue meter to measure voltage. Read the Electrical Hardware section.

PeterC wrote:Hi, Those digital power meters from ebay don't work for voltage if it is not clean sine wave AC. I found that out when I read the fine print on the instructions. The controller chops up the power so you need to get an analogue meter to measure voltage. Read the Electrical Hardware section.

Thanks for the heads-up Peter
I'll have a read.

Got my controller and meter all wired up.
Having had a thought about PeterC's comment, is occured to me that having a meter is just a digital form of a label around the dial, 0-240v. Given other threads on AD it seems that the experienced stillers judge their output by flow rate (lph) or stream (drips, thin stream, pencil thick stream, etc) and or taste/smell.

Until I get the experience to judge my output like the old hands, I'd like some indication that I can reference my output to, a bit like training wheels.
If I keep records it may well help in reproducing cuts or at least make for interesting reading to demonstrate that you can't reproduce cuts by measurement :-D

Controller at zero


Controller at "8amps"


Controller at max

That looks the same as one I bought, glad its working for you :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I need to get me one of them lol

Azza76 wrote:I need to get me one of them lol

Early days on my experience with this meter but for $25.00 ...

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/282020605670 ... EBIDX%3AIT

Finally got around to stripping my first full-fledged wash. A Mac Whisky at around 15%
Upgraded the 5SD pot with a parrot and let her rip at full throttle, collecting about 250ml every 4 min down to 20% ABV.
Finished up with around 4.75l of low wines. Very pleased with the set-up.

Forgot this.

Actually - I got 4l of heads, hearts and tails that when combined came out at 40% ABV.