California based engineer.
I like to know how everything works. My interest now is distillation. I plan on making a complete home made Manhattan.
In the mean time,I have to learn the basics. One step at a time.
So I have built a little 4 quart teapot still. all copper. Learned a lot about soldering using a torch. It is a two foot high column still using 1/2 inch (13mm) ID copper tubing, 18 inch lyne arm dropping to a 5 inch 1/4 (6mm)ID copper coil (6 coils) mounted inside an empty never used paint can, exit out the bottom. The can has a 1/2 inch outlet on top to be connected to a old piece of lawn hose to shuttle excess cooling water into a pail. I will get a cooler filled with ice water and use this as the cooling for my PC.
Anyhow, I have the makings for a larger reflux still. I want to get this one running first. I plan on doing a cleaning run, a water wash run, then run some cheap 40% commercial vodka through it to see if it comes out tasting better. After that, I have a couple of gallons of TPW fermenting. We will go from there to rye and corn. FA