Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

So just finished a 2" pelican style pot, give it a quick boil with water only for a leak check etc. All good on the leak front but as I started water flow to the Liebig it started huffing like an 1850's loco. There was only 8 or so litres in the boiler & I had it running pretty hard (3 ring burner full throttle), & I had it boiling for some time before I started flow to the condenser. Any ideas? General set-up is 2" column, 2"-3/4" reducer into a 800mm 1" over 3/4" Liebig.

It'll run very differently with alcohol in the boiler mate.

How fast were you running water to it? Was the entire condenser cold?

Ran the water initially at maybe 1-2litres/min, then increased it a bit which maybe slowed the huffing a little. Couldn't go any higher on the water flow because I was missing a hose clamp on the top hose. Not super worried at this stage, as I know alcohol vapour will behave differently & I can try backing the heat off etc, more just making sure I hadn't made some glaring error with column/Liebig relationship. :?

You want the top of your Liebig warm, so you're not crash coolinh the vapour... this is where you get huffing from. A bit of stainless scrubber in the bottom of the condenser will help too.

Zak, this will get me chastised, but 'crash cooling' any condenser is never a technical issue, as the col will equalise very quickly and the area where the vapour transitions into the condenser will VERY quickly adjust with insignificant impact to vapour motion/result. The 'space' within the col where the vap cools via the condenser and regains downward motion to reflux is a small area and will not take any real time or impact to stabilze.The main issue is, i feel, the large power/heat input...slow it down.usually too much heat equals surging.

I had a large issue with surging on fast stripping runs
And towards the end of a spirit run,
Rolled up some stainless steel wool and slid in in the end of the condenser and stoped all the huffing

Have a quick look thru viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9646&start=100 as Bosvelk said.cheers hillzabilly ;-)

Not going to chastise you Kenster, you obviously know what you're talking about.

But if you back the water off a bit so that the vapour isn't all condensing as soon as it hits the Liebig you will stop the huffing.

I used to strip washed at over 10L/hr, the bottom ring of the keg would glow red... if I had the water cranked up it would choof along, back it off a touch and it was fine.

No matter what I did with water flow through the condenser or heat in to the bottom I still had huffing

Got to thbe point that I assumed my still was a train so I shuved some stainless wool in its chimney haha