Hello From SE Melbourne

[czedd]

Hi All.
I’m from the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
I'm new to distilling and looking forward to starting this new hobby and learning the craft of making some great beverages. I have been lurking around the distilling forums and reading a lot. It’s great that there is so much local knowledge and support available.
I have been given two 50 ltr Kegs and each is fitted with a 2200 watt element and tri clamp (no still). I have checked the elements by heating up water and they both work. I’m looking at purchasing a still and can’t decide on which type of still yet alone on the material ( stainless or copper). What would be your suggestions?
At this stage my preference would be to start with a reflux still as it’s the best for unflavoured alcohol (vodka). I would also like to try my hand at a pot still for rum.
Thanks

[MacStill]

Welcome CZ,

There's plenty of stills to choose from in the commercial section of our forums ;)

Welcome aboard mate, it's good to see someone researching "before" they buy a still.... good move :mrgreen:

Cheers.

[R-sole]

Welcome mate.

If you like to drink vodka then a reflux still is what you need. You need a pot still head as well for stripping at least, but can be used for making rum etc as well.

So buy both together, and have them fit on one boiler (at different times) and sell/swap the other one for something, or if it's got the element on a threaded fitting, you can take the element out and put a ball valve in and use it for storage.

[czedd]

Thanks McStill and 5Star,

Im still reading a lot but not so sure its a good idea as I've got so much information that im procrastinating a bit about which type and style to get. I will start with a reflux still and then a pot still. Going by my research I will need at least a 1 Mtr high colum if its 50mm in diameter. Packing will need to be pure copper to remove sulphates. Next question will be which design. Internal reflux or valved? Both seem to produce comparable distillate quality but the valved reflux designs seem to be easier to control/manage. Am I on the right track? Any other considerations that I should be reaseaching.

I like Punkins idea of using one of the kegs as storage but there is no threaded fitting. Will look at having one welded in if I go down that path.

I will look through the commercial section of this forum and ask some more questions.

Thanks Guys.

[MacStill]

If you go for a still made from copper you can just use Stainless Steel scrubbers for packing, if you go for an SS column you will need to pack it with copper mesh.

Seeing you're after a reflux first up I'd look at either a VM (vapor management) or LM (liquid management) They are both reasonably easy to operate and give good consistent results, once you get it dialed in.

For a 50mm column 1m of packing is a good starting point, but dont go any shorter if you want 95% ABV ;)

Can you point us towards the valved reflux design your thinking about?

Cheers.

[Kimbo]

hi CZedd and welcome to the forum,
i have a double reducer bok with a removable column (65mm dia), this gives me a pretty good all-rounder.
with the column i can get 95% ABV, without the column it works as a reasonable pot still.
something to think about any way ;)

[maheel]

+1 for a bok and a pot when starting off
it's what i use and have always been pretty happy

you could also consider a condenser controlled model as they are easy to build
simple easy and effective

pot for stripping then bok for spirit run
gives you very clean neutral

[grehund]

Welcome aboard Czedd,

We're from the same part of town. ;)

I've just built myself a Bokakob still. I too was originally looking at purchasing a ready-made solution, but after doing my research & reading the comments on here, I chose to go all-in and build my own. I'm glad I did, though there were some frustrating times. I still need to replace a few of my brass parts for SS and copper ones, but it's got me moving in the right direction.

Copper is suprisingly easy to work with. I can't comment on SS as I haven't had to do anything with it as yet. I screwed up my first attempt at the plate cut-outs on the Bok, so my column is 300mm shorter than originally intended. :(

My #1 tip for building a Bok: Make sure you read this excellent post http://distillapedia.org/index.php?title=Bokakob before you start, and make sure you use this cut-out template http://homedistiller.org/forum/download/file.php?id=7005. There are a few templates around, but this is by far the easiest to work with. I found scaling the pdf & printing at 94% was perfect for my 50mm copper pipe. :idea:

Let me know if you want any more insight from a newb who's come out the other side.