Hi everyone,
I've been reading posts on here for quite some time and thought I better go official.
I've been brewing for over 30 years and started distilling about 25 years ago with a one gallon CM still from NZ. After a few Turbo batches with this still and messing around re-distilling and filtering with the kit z-filter over a period of a few years, I built my first upgrade.
I thought I needed to improve the refluxing so I introduced a column extension using 900mm long section of 32mm copper pipe filled with stainless steel pot scrubbers. This improved the end product massively and I used this configuration for about 15 years but there is a lot of skill required to manage the CM process. In that time I added a cooling water storage tank and a small pond pump to recirculate the cooling water and try maintain stability during the product run. Blocks of 1litre ice frozen in milk cartons being dropped into the tank to keep the temperature fairly constant.
My last upgrade last year was to start from scratch and build my own complete VM still. Using a 30 litre boiler with 1250w element, 1m of 50mm copper pipe as the fractionating column filled with copper pot scrubbers, a 300mm x 50mm copper open graham condenser with scrubbers for the refluxing head and a 600mm x 13mm copper pipe inside a 19mm copper sleeve liebitz condenser for the product. VM using a 25mm brass gate valve at the tee. I have a digital thermometer probe at the top of the fractionating column.
Now I can get 96% first run! I still do a stripping run. I'm doing my last Turbo batch before moving to the tomato past rescipe but I must say that my family on consumers is pretty happy with the latest quality. I bring the still up to equilibrium for about 2 hrs before opening the product valve a small amount to begin taking cuts. Then I use the nose to pick the cuts but I notice the thermometer confirms what the nose has always told me pretty well! Whole run takes about 8 hrs.
My aim has always been to produce the best neutral spirit that I could so I can blend using the big range of flavours available. My Scotch made using the still spirits whiskey kit is probably my favourite end product.