Hey all,
Been snooping around a bit, thought I'd do the formal introduction of sorts.
While sitting around knocking back a scotch or 3, myself and 2 mates decided that we would get into this distilling caper. So onto the old intraweb I go to get some info etc and landed here. Joined up and did some reading, got all the info I needed and thought we are good to go! Located a 50L s/s keg for a boiler and we were off.......or so I thought. In the meantime, another mate was trying to sell 2 x turbo 500 stills (one reflux, one Cu alembic pot still) - we weren't really interested at his $1500 asking price and within 2 days he had said just come and take it, but give me a couple of bottles of whatever you produce that's not "shit" :laughing-rolling: - so we inherited 2 stills and the keg took a back seat.
So since then we have jumped in way to deep, put down 2 x 150L washes (rum and corn whiskey) in 190L olive barrels we picked up cheap ($15ea) and a 25L TPW in the fermenter we got with the 2 stills and we have spent the best part of 2 weekends chugging our way through stripping the rum (20 - 25L @ 40%) and we did the TPW also which came out with a decent 1.75L @ 93% so no complaints. At this stage we are covering a basic corn whiskey for one of us who wants "moonshine", the neutral will be made into gin at some point for 2nd mate and I'm keen to bash out a rum or 3 and keep running the corn whiskey for a sour mash bourbon.
But now we are thinking that as cool as the 2 stills have been to learn from etc, our initial plan of building or buying a 4" bubbler to put on the 50L keg is a better way to go. I'm really intrigued by the glassers and also have access to a decent array of scrap copper through a mates scrapyard so not exactly sure what we are going to do yet.
So for all the "bubbler converts" - do you bother using any other type of still anymore or is it bubbler all the way? Undecided whether I keep the 2 Turbo 500's or flog them off to recoup some coin when we get the bubbler up and going?!?
Anyways, that's us/me!