Whats the highest proof you get??

Thomasedwin

I make corn and sugar sour mash whiskey. If I run it though my still one time I get 70% ABV. If I run it a second time I get 85% or 90% ABV but if I run it a third time I only get about 92% to 94% ABV. I have a 30 inch column with 9 water cooled copper plates inside for reflux. Before when I just had the 30 inch column with rashing chips and copper scrubbers inside the column and no cooling plates I would have to run my product 3 times to get 90% ABV or 180 proof. The copper cooling plates makes it so that I only have to run it twice to get up there. So why is it that if I run it 3 times I only get about a few Percent increase in alcohol? I'm thinking that my stills max output is only about 94% ABV, I know the most you can get from distillation is like 96. something ABV So I guess that my still tops out at 90 or 93% ABV. How much do you guys get at the top end???

Kapea

Running a 48" stainless steel pot scrubber packed section on a 2" VM column I get azeotrope. Running either wash or low wines. It's slower than Christmas though.

fadge

If your making whiskey, then I'd suggest perhaps only a fast strip as the first run then a spirit run for the second run only. In my experience the third run would taking a fair bit of the taste and flavor away unless your looking for a neutral perhaps?

Most of us tend to aim for the 96/azeo only for neutral and you can achieve that with various configurations including VM and CM, plates systems but common is generally using or adding a tallish packed sections as @kapea mentioned

Some runs I struggle at times to keep my output lower to retain enough taste on my whiskey runs, it can be a problem either way.

But every neutral run my still is reconfigured with 4 bubble plates plus a 500mm packed section above and 96/azeo each and every time.

So I guess it will depend on what your looking to produce, would be helpful to perhaps post some pics or diagram's of your rig, so we can advise or suggest some alternatives for you to reach your goal. Include your setup details, boiler size, heat source/control, cooling water setup etc and I'm sure many on here will step in to help.

And finally, yep some rigs can only produce to a certain level, home brew shop bought stills often are 90% max.

cheers

fadge

grim

Assuming you are running an 18% wash (from your other posts) - your still is running with the equivalent of about 1 plate/tray (maybe a touch less - better than a pot still though).

With 9 trays, you should be able to hit 90+ in a single pass.

Guessing when you talk about 9 water cooled copper plates you aren't talking about traditional trays/plates and a reflux condenser/dephlegmator.

grim

@Thomasedwin said: So why is it that if I run it 3 times I only get about a few Percent increase in alcohol?

Rad's Alcohol/Temperature relationship chart is key to understanding this. As your purity increases, it becomes more difficult to further increase purity. The first distillation always yields the greatest increase in proof, second distillation less, third less yet. As you get near azeo, you can see from the shape of the graph that you need more and more distillations to get there. Find your starting point on the bottom (starting with 18%), move straight up until you hit the blue line, move right until you hit the red line, and go straight down, that's approximately 1 theoretical distillations/stages/trays. Since you are getting 70% out on the first pass, you are doing a bit better than 1 (which is the equivalent of the pot itself), but not quite as good as 2. But if you work through your numbers for your second and third passes, you'll see they start to map more closely.

Unsensibel

@grim do you have the chart in excel?

Smaug

The distance between 84 and 85% ABV is much closer than the distance between 94 and 95%

punkin

As stated if neutral is your only goal then a VM is the best tool. If you want something more versatile then a modular system like Fadge was talking about cannot be beaten.

As the others said, the higher the abv, the smaller the increase per plate. Their is a difference in 1200 and 1500mm of packing in a VM column for sure.

Thomasedwin

I would like to see how that VM column is set up. I made my still with copper plumbing parts and a heat exchanger for a condenser, I'm currently using a cheap made Chinese 15 gallon SS stock pot that I fitted a silicone gasket on the lid with stainless sink drains, T clamps and small brackets I made with wing nuts, It works but I had to replace the pot with a new one because the old one warped and cracked after 20 months of use. I'm waiting for my 15 gallon beer keg boiler to get done at the metal fab shop to replace the stock pot. I just looked at different stills and columns and over a period of about 2 years I collected a piece here and there and bought some parts and pieces on flebay and a few ferrule fittings. It's nothing fancy but it works. I got the 3 inch copper pipe for the column from an old man that had it in his crawl space left over from a roof vent. Before I had copper scrubbers and rashing chips in the column but I replaced that with the copper plate set up and it increased the proof output but I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I would like to have something that fit into the 1.5" ferrule on the boiler connection. It's probably very primitive compared to what some of you guys have.

punkin

I built stacks of them for people before StillDragon in 2", 2.5" and 3". All the same, 1500 mm of structured copper packing (except for the height restricted customers who got 1200mm, a tee with a 3/4 brach for the 2" and a 1" branch for the 3", thermoport, stainless gate valve and a liebig. On the top part of the tee is a 230mm double wound copper coil.

There's not much to a VM.

This was the most popular package, the liebig undoes and fits the pot still as well. Circa 2008.

TheMechWarrior

A little off topic, but does anyone know where I can get that alcohol vapour vs temp in an Excel file?

Kapea

You could always do the data entry and graphing yourself. Excel is pretty powerful and easy to use once you learn what it can do. Time consuming, but the ultimate in customization.

I love my VM column. I use it for making the base spirit for my infused gins. But it is as boring to run as watching paint dry.

I really love my SD bubbler. Talk about a gozillion ways to tweak your run. It is a blast to drive. I can be as hands-on as I want. I can stack nine plates if I want too, but I haven't tried that yet. Controling the reflux via the deflegmator I can get into the mid 90s% with five plates. Dial it back a bit an plenty of flavor comes right on through.

jacksonbrown

I'd be interested if it's around too. I asked in the past and was told it was lost to time. Rad had no idea about it he just cut and paste some else work from what I gathered perhaps adding a bit of scaling. If you plot the two equations at the bottom of this page you should get there.

I did a heap of work in he R&D sticky on HD too that might help.

jacksonbrown

@Kapea said: You could always do the data entry and graphing yourself. Excel is pretty powerful and easy to use once you learn what it can do. Time consuming, but the ultimate in customization.

Been there, done that.
Maybe I was doing it wrong but the curve fitting function in excel is shit house and the data set in the link isn't great either.

Kapea

I think you may be able to find that data set as a CSV file download somewhere on the US TTB website.

grim

Excel? Nah. I draw lines on it with Paint.

grim

@Thomasedwin - Beautiful worksmanship. It's a nice rig, and nice mods/improvements over time, but I think this is your problem:

Doing your clothes washing on hot is terrible for the environment...

No, your reflux piping appears to go all the way down to the bottom of the column, through the packing, and back up again. An interesting approach, but it's very likely that this is short-circuiting your efficiency, and likely the reason you are not seeing better results.

If you try to push higher levels of reflux (necessary for getting a higher output % in a short column, you'll probably find that the more you increase the water flow, you probably start to generate your reflux lower in the column, and aren't getting sufficient contact time because of it. Or, alternatively, you may be sub cooling the reflux as it falls through the packing, short-circuiting the mass-transfer.

I bet you if you modified your reflux plumbing so that it was restricted to the top of that column, and left the remainder packed, you'd see a pretty good improvement.

jacksonbrown

Here you go.

It's not that accurate.
Fine for doing plate counts and crap like that but no good for much else.

Kapea

That's a washing machine? I thought it was a mash tun/centrifuge.

punkin

Also doesn't look to be fuck all packing. I roll the structured mesh into tightish cylinders as seen in those photos and sometimes i would put two or three of the reflux centerers you can see in spread out, but sometimes not. Either way, the cylinders are pushed into the column with a coke can on a broomstick until the column is fully packed. It's ten times as much packing as you are showing there.

Thomasedwin

When I first hooked up the cooling to the reflux I didn't have a way to limit the water flow and it was just full on flow from the pump and it stopped vapor from coming over altogether so I got the needle valve to slow down the water flow and found that the needle valve wide open has just enough restriction to let vapor come over to the condenser. To give you an idea what's happening, If I do a run with 70% ABV in the boiler without water flowing to the copper plates the column starts getting hot and I can feel it clime to the top and the temp at the top of the column will jump to about 173 degrees F and I get a good stream coming out of the condenser, Then when I open the needle valve and let water flow through the copper plates the temp at the top of the column drops to 160 degrees F and the output stream slows down a good bit so I'm thinking I'm getting some kind of reflux happening in the column. I know it's doing something because with this plate setup I only have to run my product 2 times to get around 90% ABV when before with just copper scrubbers and rashing chips I had to run the product 3 times to get 90% ABV. I changed it to the plate setup because one time the column flooded and barfed through the condenser. Another thing you should know is that my cooling setup is just a 15 gallon laundry wash tub with a flotec sump pump recycling the water, the cooling water starts out cold and gradually gets hot and I constantly check the temp and when it gets a little hot I turn on the cold tap water to refill the tub and everything cools back down again. I know this effects the reflux but the 7 tube counter flow condenser has always worked fine, it has reached 140 degrees F and still not let any vapor escape. In the winter it's a little different, sometimes we get -20 degrees F here and I run the cooling lines outside with the pump and an outside water tank and about once an hour I go outside and put a few shovels full of snow in the tank and I pretty much get a constant flow of 40 degree F cooling water. What I want is a setup that I can get pretty much azo 96% with one run. + or - 1 or 2% doesn't mater all that much as long as it's just one run. I said I'm making corn and sugar sour mash but I have been using sweet corn for the sweet taste and cane or corn sugar for the alcohol. There are to many differences to use a temp Vs reflux x %. I have to admit I made my still from pretty much junk but I made 100% sure the only thing that comes in contact with my product is 99.5% copper or stainless steel. What I would really like is a single SD glass plate that I could add my setup to do single runs.

Thomasedwin

I should change my user name to Lasiedistiller

Thomasedwin

@punkin said: Also doesn't look to be fuck all packing. I roll the structured mesh into tightish cylinders as seen in those photos and sometimes i would put two or three of the reflux centerers you can see in spread out, but sometimes not. Either way, the cylinders are pushed into the column with a coke can on a broomstick until the column is fully packed. It's ten times as much packing as you are showing there.

Yes. you are right, the copper plates with the copper scrubbers is light packing because I didn't want it to barf again, Maybe my column is too short for a 15 gallon boiler, the last run I did I remove all the copper scrubbers and just had the copper plates with water flowing. It seems to run better like that, when I ran it with more packed copper scrubbers that's when it flooded the column and barfed. In one of the photos you can see where I used the copper plates with copper wire and copper scrubbers and made a sort of cartridge so I could pull it out and clean it easier. You know what? It's too hard to describe the set up in words so I will make some crude drawings and try to scan them from my HP piece of sh*t printer to show what I did. I'm not the smartest guy in the world but I do know something about thermal transfer. Give me some time.

jacksonbrown

I think the point you're missing is the water cooling bit needs to be at the top of the column, not all the way through it.
Easiest fix is to cut it off near your thermo and solder in a proper coil. Then you can pack it normally and you'll be amazed at the increass in performance.

Smaug

@jacksonbrown said: I think the point you're missing is the water cooling bit needs to be at the top of the column, not all the way through it.
Easiest fix is to cut it off near your thermo and solder in a proper coil. Then you can pack it normally and you'll be amazed at the increass in performance.

+1 the column can not establish a naturally occurring gradient. You are prematurely collapsing vapor. That is the smearing bit. With out a gradient, you'll get zero to no fractional behavior.

grim

@Thomasedwin said: the last run I did I remove all the copper scrubbers and just had the copper plates with water flowing. It seems to run better like that

Exactly why the performance increased when packing was removed. Short circuit.

FloridaCracker

@Thomasedwin said: If I do a run with 70% ABV in the boiler

Do you really run that high?

punkin

I just looked at different stills and columns and over a period of about 2 years I collected a piece here and there and bought some parts and pieces on flebay and a few ferrule fittings.

This is the bit i don't get. You spent two years researching columns before you built and then built something that no one has ever seen before and can't possibly work. If you stick to the standard designs they work almost everytime straight out of the box, they are simpler to build, cheaper and hit 95+%.

Smaug

On the other hand. At least you now know more about what will not work very well.

Thomasedwin

Ok, Here are some crude drawings of what I have done. My thinking is with the water cooled plates is that when the hot alcohol hits each plate I get some condensation and some alcohol drips down to the next lower plate again and again causing a cascade effect but I'm not getting the results I expected. I need a design for this column that is 3 inches x 30 inches so I only need to do a single run to get at least 180 proof, If I can get 180 proof in a single run that would be plenty good enough and if I wanted more I could do a second run. There are so many different designs out there, I'm looking to get 180 proof single runs without making the column any bigger cause I have limited space.

TheMechWarrior

What is the maximum available space (height) you have for your still not including the boiler, ie just the column and associated pipework?

I'd be putting a dephleg on top of that thing just like a standard Still Dragon still, there's a reason for that.
If the elbow at the top is causing you height issues installed another T-section and come off at right angles.
30inches is bloody small for a 3" column reflux column, it's half the height it should be! Fine for a pot still, too small for an neutral column of worth. You'd need to run it through twice at least. Best bet would be to run a second column to get you the extra height you need. It will save you a lot of time.

Cheers,

Mech.