New bloke

[Stephen]

Gday all! New to the site and thought I'd say hi. I hail from Perth and am fairly new to distilling and am keen to learn. My experience with distilling is somewhat limited and have made a couple of basic stills in the past from pressure cookers and copper pipe from bunnings. After checking out a mates setup and seeing the enjoyment he gets out of a decent setup I thought I would have another but decent crack myself, and while looking up info came across this forum.
More of a rum drinker than anything and would like to set myself up with a well designed pot still and produce my own rather than paying 40 bucks plus per bottle.
I also like to tinker with things and like the idea of changing things to get or make a better product.
Anyway, looking forward to reading through and learning from this forum.

Cheers

[Panda]

welcome,

what you got in mind for your design?

[Cane Toad]

$40+/ bottle.....fuck me swinging.....sounds to me like you've got a taste for the good stuff Stevo,you could always downgrade and drink stuff called Bundy :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:
All shit aside mate,welcome to the forum :handgestures-thumbupleft: Heaps of good blokes and ladies on here to help you with your journey,even a few bogans from WA :D AND before everyone gets up me,that wasn't a blanket statement :D
I'm sure you're gunna have a great time here,but be warned :o :o :o it's very addictive :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Cheers
Cupcake

[MacStill]

Finally! a rum drinker in Perth :dance:

Welcome aboard :D

[Stephen]

welcome,

what you got in mind for your design?

honestly? Not to sure. Am picking up a couple of 50 ltr kegs tomorrow. Like I said I'm only fairly new to distilling and the stills I made in the past were only simple pressure cooker to a worm in a pot of water type setups. Nothing fancy.

I like the look of these 2" and 4" stills with the straight condensors. They look easy enough to make. I'm a boily by trade, so fabing it up not a drama. Some questions I do have.
Does the diameter of the head affect the quality of the final product?
Are larger diameters used to strip the wash and smaller more suited to finishing runs? (I'm happy to build both if that's the case)
If anyone has any suggestions on what is best I am willing to listen (I work a 2 and 1 roster, plenty of time to listen) and any advice would be greatly appreciated .

[Kimbo]

Some questions I do have.
Does the diameter of the head affect the quality of the final product?No
Are larger diameters used to strip the wash and smaller more suited to finishing runs? (I'm happy to build both if that's the case)No, you can do both with either diameter.
If anyone has any suggestions on what is best I am willing to listen (I work a 2 and 1 roster, plenty of time to listen) and any advice would be greatly appreciated .

here is no "best" still, just different types, for different uses and preferences. If you want to make Rum, then a simple pot still will work just fine. It all comes down to budget and patients. Please feel free to browse the forum, look at the pics and ask Q's ;-)

[bt1]

Welcome bloke,

you realise being from perth the earth's axis has finally tilted toward WA?

A pot head would be the go for rums i reckon. Being a sameless single runner consider a pot head with a coil and get the best of both worlds...well suited to rums where you want to pull flavour into your final product....end single run promotion lol

Diameter past say 1" not a factor for quality...the smaller diameters making it harder to seperate the parts of a distilling run out into seperate factions. We need to do this to"balance" flavour and quality.

2' to 4" is more about speed of production avoiding the techo behind this but nothing wrong with a well built 2" system especially a pot they fair belt the gear out. A 4" is well plain nice and fast but it does require a fair amount of heat.
The vast majority of experience is in 2" ...costs, fittings availablity, balanced heating solns, simplicity of keg join are some good reasons.

You might consider it a process rather than finding the final solution, start with a 2" at lower build cost and time, get some runs on the board and progress to a more specialist 4" plate or flute or larger pot at some point in the future.

Most guys use the same still for both strip and spirit runs it just run differntly is the simple answer. Those with a bit of savvy and you being a tradey use a pot to strip and a column still or plate still to spirit run....again it may just be a progression once you truly know your product and where you want to end up.

cheers
bt1

[Stephen]

Cheers for the info bt1. Cleared up my questions great. Will have a good read through the forum and ask everyone a few questions over the next couple weeks (back to work Monday) and should hopefully start building soon!