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In this Discussion
- Bolverk January 20
- Bomber1004 May 2022
- captainshooch October 2022
- CothermanDistilling January 2023
- crozdog November 2022
- DonMateo January 20
- Drywall_Dan July 2022
- grim September 2023
- jbierling January 2023
- lowball July 2022
- Moonshine September 2023
- MotherOfDragon November 2022
- punkin January 20
- richard April 2022
- Smaug January 2023
- Unsensibel April 2022
Comments
Big step today. First control panel energised. Tomorrow is the load test.
300bm finally in the shed.
The sight glass section that I have below the main copper helmet is infact made up of two components, the first is a filter/strainer section and the other is a 6" sight glass section with a 4" sight glass on it. What I have been doing is putting copper mesh on the strainer section as a sacrifical element and to provide additional distillation surface area. And its actually been working. The copper mesh gets eaten up, the product has really good flavor, the mesh stops grain particles if I get foaming and with the sight section I can see whats happening and if foaming is happening. About once every week I take out the mesh and clean it with citric acid. When I am distilling hard I have to replace it every month, but its cheaper than replacing a helmet. I apologise this isnt SD gear. Everyone knows my situation.
Not to worry.
Thanks for sharing your journey.
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
Use whatever gear you can get or suits mate. It's only when people try to promote other brands here rather than ours.
Enjoying your updates.
StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand
Cooling water tank slabs going in being finished by the one legged concreter.
Looking good!
Security cameras going in.
First full load test of control panel. And it didn't go bang . Water systems next week.
Strainer section with copper mesh in place.
Two cooling water tanks in the bus.
Load test of panel balancing phases.
Cooling water tanks connected in series.
Sorry. Better photo.
I have enjoyed reading about your journey. Looks like you have done your homework and is finally coming together. Nice job. Looking forward to more updates.
Hoochy
First 1300L fermenter delivered. Mash tun is two weeks away. Note high tech system for unloading the pickup.
The latest is i was doing a spirit run while cooling two washes using cooling coils in 200l tanks. The cooling coils were upstream of the still and the still wasnt getting enough cooling water flow and started to steam. I put a small inline pressurising pump on the cooling system but it was only 1800lper hour. So it was not enough i just upgraded the pump to one that will push 4500l per hour. I will post a foto next week.
Inline booster pump for cooling water. The lines are slowly being painted for eye candy.
1300L fermenter cooling pipes connected
Looking good!
Thanks @grim. I should get my Mashtun this week, and my big still in a couple of weeks. The second fermenter a week or so after that. We opened up the 1" cooling pipes in this fermenter and it chilled down the walls just nicely. Water temperature is about 16 deg from the water tanks. Its gone up a couple of degrees as the weather warms up.
One more comment for the future people doing a shed is you can not have enough valves for the various bits of gear on the different water lines. I put in 80 different 1" valves on 4 lines and with 30% of my gear I am already using about 25 % of them.
Your hard work is coming together mate.
Thanks @crozdog mate. I should get my 1300l boiler and mash tun and second fermenter soon. Nothing is easy here. I have been waiting on my big still for almost three and a half years now. Anyway. Thanks for the words of encouragment.
Latest development is i bought some 9kw 2" clamp heating elements and cabled them up and tested them. They work fantastically. At about 90% they were all pumping out 8kw at about 31 amps. I didnt push it more than that as that was the limit of my breakers. So the advice for other people is go for the biggest elements you can if your going electric bai marie.
Nice progress! I am so jealous of your space.
Thanks MOD. I was thinking about you the other day and wondering how your going. I really like my shed although it turns out I am going to have to replace half of my electrical system. The whole thing was sized for 5kw elements and Now I have 9kw elements i am going to have to upgrade some parts of it. How is your distilling going ??
Hello @DonMateo and all!
I am doing fine now. But the last two years has been tough because my rum was not matured enough to be sold. The pandemic strike hard on my company because I was too dependent on customers investing in barrels of rum and with no fairs and events it was hard to do any marketing. We have very strict rules here in Sweden when it comes to marketing alcoholic beverages. But I survived and now I have decided to sell white unaged rum, which was not my intention before. I have received a lot of good criticism! I call it Frost. (Maybe Disney will come after me, ha ha)
I also make a Rum Cream. Think Baileys with rum instead. Next autumn I expect myself spending more time in the distillery than in the classrooms :)
Don't get discouraged @MotherOfDragon. White rums are gaining popularity for proper cocktail fixings.
StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America
@MotherOfDragon. Your my heroine. Teaching kids and also running a distillery. That is really hard. Actually my twin brother in Australia just got a Swedish girlfriend. Anyway I think I am going to be making a lot more Gin than I want to. Its just a high volume high demand market. I made a coffee liquer from a recipe that I found off here and its a real winner.
Anyway hang in there @MotherOfDragon. Your fantastic.