Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

I've got a couple stainless steel 44s that I want to use as stripping boilers.. Due to an incident when I first started the wife doesnt want me using gas so it going to have to be electricity. Whats the minimum amount of electricity that I can run on this thing to get it stripping? I dont mind if it takes a long time, just so long as it works.

I plant to insulate the boiler with a few yoga mats.

It depends on a variety of factors. There's a calculator in the Newbies section that will help you. It allows you to input certain variables to determine heat up time.

Cheers

I would say the minimum you would want to put into it would be 2x 3600w elements so that you can actually strip a wash in a day.

Through the heat up calc it will take about 1.5hrs to warm up from 25*c, after that it all depends on the size of your column for your output rate.

But if you only wanted to run 1x 2400w element it would take about 4.7hrs to warm up to operating temp.

2 x 3.6kW would do the trick.

7.2kW and 2.6hrs for heat up and 6kW and 4hrs for the run.
Giving you a total run time from power off to power on of 6.6hrs.
Throw another 3.6kW at the heat up if you like to bring the heat up to less than 2hrs.

TheMechwarrior wrote:2 x 3.6kW would do the trick.

wouldn't that be nice! i think i'd dim the street light out the front of my house if i tried to pull that amount of power! :handgestures-thumbdown:
200l with 7.2kw is one kick ass boiler though!

Good point, I forget 15A is not normal sometimes.

Given you'd put no more than 160L in a 200L drum:

3 x 2.4kW elements = 7.2kW for heat-up and strips
2 x 2.4kW elements = 4.8kW for spirit runs (4 hour collection time and 2.1hr heat up)

I'd say good insulation of the boiler will greatly help with your ramp times as well
44gal drums are made of fairly thin steel

Do you reckon it would strip with only 2 (2x 2400W) elements? It doesnt matter if it takes a long time. The still is in the man cave so i can be doing a million other things while its running. Theres two power points down stairs so the max I can probably get away with is 4 elements but I *think* they are on the same circuit. I could probably run a power cord upstairs if need be but i'd prefer it to be all contained in the one area.

160L heat up with 2 x 2.4kW is 3.1hrs followed by a further 4hrs for spirit collection = 7.1hours
Plus any additional time you add due to running reflux.
So a stripping run day sees you power up and power down inside 8hours.

A spirit run day could easily be 3 times that length depending on your still charge and reflux ratio.
I'd suggest you test this out for yourself with a 1/4-1/3 fill charge for your first spirit run, ie do a 160L strip run and then do a spirit run from what you collect.

Its actually a shorter day using the 200L drum than using my 80L boiler 3 times because theres no stopping and starting. The big boiler will strip straight into the 80L boiler which Ill do a the spirit run in. This is going to make brew weekends so much easier.