G'day

[Astro]

Hello everyone, wow i'm glad i found this site.

A bit about myself, i live in Sydney and have always wanted to distill my own spirits to fill my 20lt oak barrels with what i hop will be something very similar to Bundaberg rum :oops: after reading a few threads i see its not the most popular brew here but hell, i love the stuff. The wife never wanted me to make it as she thought i would go blind or blow the shed up. :))

I'm in the Navy currently 2 months into a 6 month deployment so have not much else to do in down time but research the equiptment i want to buy and all the gear ill need. I had planned on buying the turbo 500 but am now having doubts after reading a few threads so ill throw the question out to everyone here that if you new what you do now when you started what equiptment would you buy?

I'll continue reading and learning as much as i can before i get home so i can jump straight into it and see how much fun this distilling caper can be. I'll no doubt ask a few questions from time to time and try to give some input and pictures once i get home and get the still up and running. While im on a roll, can anyone recommend a decent HBS in sydney, I do like that brewcraft.com store but would rather have a local bloke i can go to and have a chin wag about gear aswell. Thats enough for my first post, looking forward to it...

Cheers

[MacStill]

Hi there & welcome

You should check this out

http://www.aussiedistiller.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1275

:handgestures-thumbupleft:

[SBB]

G'day Astro...nice intro.
Time seems to be on your side...you have plenty of it to do more research, Ive only been in this game a short time myself.....but i read constantly on more than one forum and learn something everyday. Mind you some of what I read is wayyyyy over my head, but I still learn.

I had planned on buying the turbo 500 but am now having doubts after reading a few threads

I started off with one of these..and still have it...........it taught me a lot about cuts amoungst other things. Having said that, if i had my time over Id buy a much better still for less by getting someone here to build me one.
If its Rum your really serious about making your not going to want a reflux still anyway (which is what a T500 is) your going to need a pot still or a bubbler,
Spend some time snooping around in the "pot still" section and the "Plated Column Still" section to get an idea of what you might need.

[R-sole]

Welcome mate.

You need to contact someone from the commercial section here to build you a pot still or a bubbler. You need to aquire yourself a beer keg to base it on. You need to aquire some raw oak sticks for toasting, these can be sourced cheaply from Roll Out The Barrell (google it).
And you need a source of mollasses. Feed mollasses usually from a feed store.

Everything else you need is avaliable from the commercial section here including hydrometers,yeast and neutrient etc at a fraction of the price of a hbs and varieties/products much better suited to craft distilling than anything on offer in the stores.


That's the hard sell done :))

The rest is just reading up. There are very few HBS owners or employees who are into the artisanal side of distillation. Most of the knowledge base there consists of product knowledge on materials and products that are used to pump out a base spirit as quick as possible, try to clean it up as best as they can with filtering processes and then tip cordial in the bottle to make it taste something like what you can buy.
The advice you will need is already here on the forums, available through posting or get into the chat either here or at artisan distiller.


Our process is driven by using raw ingredients to make a wash that has all the flavours inherent in it. Then careful distillation with tight cuts aimed at getting only the best portions from the distillation. Carefully blending the portions we choose and then using selected wood to finish the spirit with age.


It's the difference tween a servo pie and one from a flash restaurant.

Folowing the artisan process the goal is not to equal the commercial drinks, that is achieved very early on. The goal is to make a spirit substantially better, with cleaner taste, more flavour, smoother characteritics and no hangover.
This goal is very attainable and you will get better again as you start to branch out and discover some of the ingredients around you that you can play with and experiment with subtle changes to your equipment.

[Cane Toad]

Very well said 5Star :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft: Welcome to the forum Astro,everything has been said,enjoy your stay

[Kimbo]

Gday Astrto,
welcome to the forum mate ;-)

[BackyardBrewer]

As a newbie myself I lurked here and other forums for ages and I looked at the T500 but ended up going with the Pure Distilling Reflux rig.

They also do a pot still but I wanted more practice and I think I'll look at one our fine board members building a pot still head for me.
:-D
I just didn't like all the plastic tubing and trying to monitor two temperatures. I know the t500 are pretty common and popular but I couldn't be happier with this rig which I bought from a homebrew shop that I have only been back to for some Frangelico flavouring essence because as 5Star says above - "they ain't got nuthin' you need!".

I'm churning out neutral that is pretty high quality compared to some of the cheap vodkas I've drunk and I'm sure that's because the commercial muck is full of heads and tails. LIke others have said: make brutal cuts - 200ml splits and you can chuck anything that doesn't come up to scratch and you end up with a super clean run of hearts.

I ran my 9th tomato paste wash on Sunday (total cost about $11 for sugar,yeast and tomato paste) and I ended up with 7.5L of 40% alc after diluting it back down from ~95% pure. That's say 10 bottles of spirits give or take. In a bottle-o @ $35 a bottle that's more than $350 worth in that run alone. :dance: :dance:

[MacStill]

Plenty of good whiskey and rum can be made through a detuned bok, also having the advantage of being able to do vodka through the same still.

A great starting point IMHO :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[Astro]

Cheers for the welcome guys.....
The t500 idea is no more after your comments and further reading.. That bok might be just what i need to start off.

A couple of questions though, i coundn't find if a bok is the same as a bubbler or a pot still :? i assume its something else all together.
and detuned means nothing to me :think:
I appreciate all the insight thus far it has helped greatly not to mention saved me alot of money not going the still i thought was the bees knees :clap:
Could someone explain in lamens turms the difference between the bubbler and pot? and a bok for that matter, after abit of reading its still clear as mud lol, i have no idea what half the terms mean lol but im slowly getting there

[crow]

Hi mate others can answer this alot better but I can give you the short answer your right Its type of refux still detuning it would make it work like a pot still

[crow]

Inside it has packing of some sort that causes some of the ethanol vapor to condense more vapor will be moving through this condensation the vapor will end up at a product condenser at the top , I'd imagine a coil with water flowing though it from there it goes to an outlet and is collected . Its a reflux as in distilled over and over and over again . Detuning it would involve removing the packing so the vapor would go straight to the condenser unmolested and unpurified which for some products that what you want hope that helps a bit , PS A basic pot still evaporates and then condensers the ethanol along with a bunch of other stuff and thats why they are good for producing flavors its due to their inefficient behavior . the limitations are that they are inefficient so most things will need to be rerun through them 2 or 3 times and producing a neutral alcohol would take some considerable skill I'd think . IMO I reckon the boka still they recommended to you is the way to go and fucking good value :twocents-mytwocents: and if ya get the shits after awhile with detuning it for say whiskey or what ever down the track ya wont go broke getting a pot still they cost fuck all to make . others can tell ya about plated stills (peferated , bublers , fractional ect) and I hope they do , and I'll read it :D
EDIT for the few bucks involved in getting a pot still I'd say get both as well , detuning and repacking , well I wouldn't be bothered with mine

[R-sole]

A bokakob is designed for making nuetral alcohol, a vodka still if you will. It can be fucked with to make it run more like a potstill.

You will probably want a vodka still eventually, but right now you need a potstill. The bokakob that's in the for sale section is less than the cost of it's parts and a very good buy, but as i said, you need a potstill head as well.

The potstill would probably be less than or not much more than $100, so i'd be buying both if it was me, for the price of a HBS still you'll get the ducks nuts.

[Astro]

Top advice guys, thanks..

Better start looking for some pot designs to play with. :drool:

[Sam.]

There's also a thread here somewhere with definitions of a lot of terms that may help you. Can someone please provide the link I'm not sure if I can do it through tapatalk

[Kimbo]

There's also a thread here somewhere with definitions of a lot of terms that may help you. Can someone please provide the link I'm not sure if I can do it through tapatalk

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=361

[Astro]

Well Popes boka should find it's way into my shed by next week, :handgestures-thumbupleft: thanks again mate. I'm going to leave it as is and try my hand at making a 2" pot and Liebig condensor to fit the keg boiler off the boka when i make it home.. got the plans printed and cant wait to give it a crack. Just trying to track down where to source the Blackstrap for Hooks rum :think:
Still trying to comprehend all the details of the recepie but hoping it falls into place when i have all the gear in front of me :laughing-rolling:

Plan of attack is to have rolling washes happening with the dundes so i can try to fill a 50ltr oak barrell ( changed my mind about the 20ltr lol ) with a decent molasses brew.

Thanks for everyones help thus far :clap:

[Cane Toad]

Congratulations Astro,your gunna have a great time,any decent stock feed joint should have molasses,either by the kg or 20l drum,just follow the recepie and you won't go wrong,I haven't and I tend to fuck things up without even trying :handgestures-thumbupleft: :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:

[Brendan]

G'Day Astro,

I got out of the Army last year after 7 years, and did quite similar to you while on one of my deployments...spent the whole time reading about all this stuff :smile:

After going through the newbie thinking of buying one of these or one of those, I followed the advice of 99.9% of people (they all say it for a reason), and built my own.

With the help of a condenser from McStill (My coiling attempts weren't great), I built my own 3 inch VM reflux still and 3inch pot still for stripping/whiskey/rum...

Best decision ever...I have a much better still than anything you could buy from a HBS...although you can buy some masterpieces from the guys around here at times!

My tip: Although you want to rush into everything straight away, as soon as you jump in or buy something, you read about something different/better the next day, so just take your time and read, read, read...research on here and HD (if I can say that...just dont ask questions there :naughty: )...

I think for what you're after, it wouldn't take much more than a $100 pot still head for a keg boiler so that you can learn the basics and learn to make cuts, and get some rum in your barrels. (Something I am still yet to do, but not long now).

Cheers,

Brendan

[Astro]

Well havn't been on for so long due to this site being blocked on the work computers :handgestures-thumbdown:

But i have my pot still, olive barrells and 40 litres of mollasses ready to go :happy-partydance:

Will try to convert the measurements for a big wash in the olive barrels ( they are about 200l i think ), take some pictures and try to get some rum going 8-)

[Kimbo]

Good to have ya back Astro :handgestures-thumbupleft: