Hi from a fruit brandy lover in Melbourne

[electricmonk]

Hi everyone, nice to meet you all. Long time lurker, first time poster.

I've got 40kg of plums starting to get mushy in a scrupulously cleaned and sanitised olive barrel. Just a little bit of water in there, no sugar added. Maybe ambitious for my very first mash, maybe not. Pretty primitive really, the old Slivovitz.

Early next week I'll buy some pectinase, stir it in and then mash up all the fruit a bit. Then I guess I'll leave it to ferment for a couple of months. Apparently it takes a while with wild yeast.

I got a Birko 35L urn off hard rubbish (thank you, O universe!) which will form part of the double boiler still I'm putting together. I'll get a 21L SS stockpot to use as the inner skin and soon (once they're back in stock - clearly people have been panic buying stills) I'll buy an off-the-shelf Alcoengine pot still condenser. Bit smaller than I would've liked but finding the urn clinched the deal. I'll leave my 55L keg in the shed for the time being and not bother with it for now. I have no interest in making bucketloads of neutral spirit except for a test run to clean all the manufacturing residue out of the still head. I'm only really interested in making traditional stuff like the Europeans do.

Dunno whether to use water or ethylene glycol in the outer boiler. Although the urn has a thermostat I'll probably just turn it up to max and use one of those cheap 4000w variable voltage regulators. When the time comes I'll definitely be stilling outside for safety, even though the rig will be all electric. Alcohol may be safer than petrol but it still makes a big whoomph under the right circumstances.

If you reckon I'm full of shit please let me know. Look forward to hopefully posting about my great success when the whole drawn-out process is said and done.

[RC Al]

Welcome mate

Sounds like a reasonable plan, If your going to the trouble of sealing 2 pots together for a double boiler, a simple column and liebig condenser shouldnt be an issue to construct?
How were you planning on sealing the lid of the smaller pot?

[The Stig]

Welcome monk, glad to have you here

[electricmonk]

Thanks for your replies. I'm always keen for suggestions and hints.

At this stage I wasn't planning on sealing the two pots together, I don't want to take the risk of making some kind of ghetto pressure cooker with totally unknown specs and tolerances which could lead to some kind of accident. This is one reason the glycol appealed because it wouldn't need to boil and give off lots of steam. Expensive though.

One advantage of the Birko is that it has a sight glass to view the level of the liquid in the boiler so I can keep an eye on evaporation. That said I wouldn't mind having a refill/expansion port but I haven't thought of a way of adding one yet. I could always just work out how much to fill it in order to accommodate the expanded liquid once it gets up to temp.

In order to get a more or less snug but not air-tight fit between the two pots to minimise heat loss and evaporation I thought perhaps I could use some kind of silicone gasket and maybe a ring made out of scrap aluminium. The riveted handle of the inner pot would press this down I expect. That said I haven't bought the inner pot yet as I'm still exploring options.

Do you reckon building a liebig condenser and buying a gas torch and the solder etc will work out less than the $150 the still head would cost me? If it would be significantly less I'd give it a crack.

I'm not a plumber and I don't have access to piles of scrap, someone's cousin Troy's mate's uncle who can get me cheap offcuts etc. I enjoy soldering electronics and I have a decent number of tools in my shed, and on one level I'd love to learn how to put together an awesome rustic looking alembic dome using rivets and a ball peen hammer or whatever but I don't want to create too many obstacles to getting this done as I don't have infinite time to tinker, much as I do love tinkering. That said I totally am open to all these ideas. I've been mulling it over a lot.

The pre-bought still head is set up to clamp into a 47mm hole without needing to solder or (god forbid) weld flanges onto everything which appealed to me. A keg already has a flange so that's half the work done for you but I'm just going to be attaching this still head to a pot lid or (if I feel like getting fancy and want to be able to fill the boiler a bit more) a mixing bowl at this stage unless I read about a better idea.

I do like the idea of being able to swap the still head onto a larger/better boiler some day if I get into this more.

[crow]

G'day EM ,love doing plums myself but this year was a crop fail. I got a recipe or two on here that will give you the maximum s for water and sugar but I don't really advise those " maximums" unless really required, that said you want some really sweet varieties to use no sugar. I don't have such plums but my partner's parents do have a white fleshed variety that are sickly sweet and perfect for no sugar but a fair bit lighter on flavour than mine (that are suited for preserving). I have only used wild yeast for quite a few years now and that is mainly because working interstate long slow ferments suited me better. My plums came into season early in summer so I would let it chug along and settle until mid winter, if you look you will find photos and instructions of various methods for straining the marc. If you have questions post in one of them threads and I'm sure to see it.