Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

The only thing I can think of is the height difference between the top of the downcomer and where it overflows/drains. Just like syphoning, if you don't have much of a height difference it syphons slowly but with a bigger height difference it goes faster. I don't think the heat will have anything to do with it.

Yeah i would have thought that it was flooding because of the "large" amount of liquid in the vapour lock.
Ie normally there is only a 19/25mm high cap on the bottom, where you had increased it to say 40/50mm, meaning that there is a natural pressure drop.

Or something.

Venturi effect ifn the dowmcomer is in the riser,plus its a higher pressure and temp in the riser, the returning liquid from the plate above is a higher ABV with a lower boiling point moveing to a higher temp area esspecially on the bottom plate were the boiler could be close to 95-100'c and the returning liquid may boil up stopping the flow and flooding ya plates,anyhooo just my thoughts and observations ,as with my thumper I fitted a sight glass over the downcomer as Mac advised so as you can prime the downcomer befor a run and keep an eye on it during a run,and with the sight glass in the boiler I could observe the downcomer cap during a run ,at first I ran the down comer up the riser but it failed badly ,and after several changes validated with test runs ended up with what I have now,I did observe boiling up in the downcomer were the downcomer met and went thru the bubble cap and slowly increased the pipe size until it worked very well ,4inch single cap 1 1/2inch upper downcomer and 1inch lower downcomer with a drop of about 180mm and a 2inch cap that is 70mm long,running a bath depth of 100mm,I think the deeper plate bath depth the harder it is ta get it to work,wich increases the pressure slightly makeing it harder to get your downcomer working well .cheers hillzabilly ;-)

Now that is a contraption and a half Hillz, glad it works for you.

That looks like the F1 equivalent of bubble caps

EziTasting wrote:As for the cooling line, why not see if you can't shorten the copper and put on some elbows...?!? Our cooling lines are on a 90 degree bend..

Took your advice

Next to get braided cooling lines shortened.

She's pretty fer sure Mr. B.

when are you ending over my still! :mrgreen:

I will be glad when its all done so i can concentrate on more important things. Like making rum.... and gin....and whiskey :D

Top notch stuff bluc. Is that some kind of meter on that valve or is it just a label? I can't quite tell.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Just a label. I have not tidied up my soldering yet. I want to get everything done permanant how I want it then I plan to re shine and clear coat it all..

Can't wait to see it once it's polished, it's going to look superb.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Nice one Bluc, coming along nicely mate. I was gonna ask the same question as the Prof as that flow valve looks pretty fancy. FYI, I have flow valves but since I bought a plastic tap connection from Bunnos I don't use them anymore (live and learn hey) as I get good flow control from it. What's the cable running up the left hand side of the still> Are you running a temperature probe somewhere?

Yes temp probe. For an eparrot but have not got that sussed yet. One of the open source ones not the sd one..

Interesting. Why do you care about the parrot output temp? Are you intending to control the water flow of your RC to get the perfect ABV reading?

My guess would be to correct the %ABV as temp changes at the output.
Then it wont matter if the output is 19°c or 35°c tou will still get the actual %ABV.

Nice work Bluc. You'll find you'll always be trying to improve ya bubbler. Nothing wrong with trying to get the best out of her :handgestures-thumbupleft:

You fellas that do neutral reakon there is enough difference between a single 2" cap and perf or multiple cap plate to warrant a second set of plates for neutral? :think:

Someone will be able to tell you from experience but from what I've read, there isn't much difference between the different types of plates. The number of plates used in a run has a bigger impact on flavour.

More packed section for the win, how much height you got spare?
Perf can run up to 20% faster than a bubbler, but not cleaner

Struggling to get 5 plates and 500mm maybe 4 plates and 600mm. How about zero flavour wise?