The Alchemy Brothers

[Grimster]

Hi everyone,

I have just joined the membership along side my ''distilling'' mate Wil, who joined not long back. We both reside in the Hunter Valley and work in similar industries, and are partners in a little setup called the ''Çhernobyl'' (see pictures). We have been enjoying some fantastic stories and information posted on this website and look forward to maybe one day adding to that information as we too travel down that tree lined road called experience. We have designed a little heater control unit and have teamed that up with a previously made fractional reflux unit, so as the say in Latin..."It's Gauisus Hora".... (It's always happy hour !)

Cheers to all.

Wil and Grimster, The Alchemy Brothers

[Urrazeb]

Hi there! Welcome!

[Zak Griffin]

Welcome mate... Interesting looking setup, I'm intrigued as to how you go about running your still based on temperature?

[TheMechwarrior]

Welcome Alchemy Brothers!

Zak,

My best guess would be it's a dual purpose controller; in auto mode it's use is as a controller for maintaining boiler temps for mashing. Alchemy Brothers...care to elaborate?

Cheers,

Mech.

[Grimster]

Hi guys, thanks for welcome call in. Happy to let you in on the info.

A good question Zac, and one which I will be able to fully answer in about 2 weeks ! But in the meantime, a background as to why we went this way.

After reading lots of forum posts (on temp control) here in past months a common theme we found was that having easy, but good and reliable control of your temps was important, either through heater element temps, condensor flow or reflux control. Given my background is in electronics engineering I found this was the first and easiest place to start.

We have a manual / auto selection on the control box for times we want to run the element full on, say during a vinegar run for cleaning, but also for when we want to control the temp during a wash run... with greater ease. The box provides us with the best of both worlds here. So spot on Mech.

Another common theme found in the forums was that there are so many variables in producing a fine drop, and given this problem, we felt having control over some of those variables was key to producing the same fine drop, every time. The PID and SSR combination will provide us with better 'temp' control in part during the main run, and then allow us to vary anything with some ease during the later tricky times when ABV's start changing all over the place.

Wil is nursing two 60L washes as we speak which will be ready for a run in the next 5-10 days so I'll look forward to giving some feedback on how it went, and how we managed.

Grimster.

[Zak Griffin]

Have you read this one? - viewtopic.php?f=57&t=3541

If you've been reading about temperature control for months you'd know that it's not really how it works...

You've also missed Mech's point, mate... He's talking about using the controller for MASHING, not running the still :)

[Grimster]

Thanks Zak, Sorry, I did miss his point. Busy day at work.

And yes, i did see that post some time ago regarding temp control.

[Zak Griffin]

You can throw electronic engineering at a still until the cows come home, it won't change the boiling point of your wash ;-)

[MacStill]

You can throw electronic engineering at a still until the cows come home, it won't change the boiling point of your wash ;-)

even worse in NZ as they only have sheep :shifty:

[bt1]

You can throw electronic engineering at a still until the cows come home, it won't change the boiling point of your wash

True.

But what it may do is give you repeatable, consistent inputs giving you a better opportunity to target settings. There's a lot of other variables that need to be considered, ambient temp, wash type are examples but lets not discourage those that pursue excellence in the area of controls.

bt1

[wil]

hey Zak Griffin,I don't think Grimster means that we will be setting the pid at a temp & expecting only hearts to come off or to automate distilling we know it doesn't work that way even as dumb arse newbies, but rather using it as another point of reference, as we will be adjusting the temp as needed to maintain a constant reflux as others do with the voltage to the element.same difference in the end. :handgestures-thumbupleft: I hope.
cheers
Wil

[BIG D]

Sweet looking still bro :happy-partydance:

[wil]

:)) :)) Don't U know it Big D, at least I got that right & a pretty good starting point I recon. I'm told by a reliable source it should put out some good neutrals :handgestures-thumbupleft:
cheer
Wil

[Woodsy71]

Welcome Brethren,

May the Gods of Distillation shine on your endeavours :handgestures-thumbupleft: