StillDragon® Community Forum

Welcome!

Be part of our community & join our international next generation forum now!

In this Discussion

Charlie's of Darwin Gin House

Good afternoon gentlemen,

I want to express my gratitude to both @punkin and @crozdog for their ongoing assistance with the supply of our 500L be all system and other SD parts at Darwin's (and the NT) first ever licensed distillery.

I have just fired up the big girl for its vinegar clean. It's a very exciting and long over due moment. If all goes well with the cooling system I plan on doing a sacrificial wash run tomorrow. The ethanol produced will be used for hand sanitizer.

Thanks again gentlemen!! And I look forward to your ongoing support.

Heath

image

Comments

  • @Heef71, Congratulations! That's looking even better than it did before! Super excited for you, Bec and Charlies of Darwin. I'm sure you'll be soon producing some amazing products. i can't wait to try some.

    It's been a pleasure helping you out with this project. BTW, that spout is on it's way, I'll get it to you as soon as I get it.

  • Looks great Heath, will look better tomorrow when Moonshine fixes the pic.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • :-bd

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • Incredible and congratulations

  • Congrats, looks great

  • That's an awesome looking set up

  • @heef71. I thought you guys in the top end only every drank beer. Looks like that is about to change. Great looking rig and congratulations on your hard work and perseverance. And great rig from SD. Very jealous.

  • That is a beautiful machine! I wish you many happy years of distilling success!

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • Thanks guys, The stills are on display in the bar for patrons to view. They make excellent talking points!! Unfortunately I can not run it during trading hours. Not only is a WHS thing but also these 6k elements suck up more power than this building can supply! LOL. Oh well, just longer to get to boil. Come in and visit when in Darwin!! I guessing that won't be for a while now. haha cough cough corona. LOL

  • Good looking outfit.

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • @Heef71 I know of a member of distilleries that use preheat timers. They charge the night before then set the still start preheating to a set temp from a set time. Say fir example you're coming in at 9am, you can set it to turn on at 5am, heat to 50oC and hold until you get in and progress the distillation into run mode.

    You can even have it charge and do the entire thing from your phone, as I've seen others do.

    It goes without saying that any level of automaton must include multiple levels of safety, all complying with the state and federal laws.

    Enjoy your still, she's a beauty.

    PS, Stay Home, Save Lives

  • edited April 2020

    That is how my still is set up.

    A mock sample of the two heat up screens is shown below.

    image

    image

    heat_up.gif
    779 x 586 - 57K
    heat_up_settings.gif
    767 x 571 - 27K
  • edited April 2020

    @TheMechWarrior said: I know of a member of distilleries that use preheat timers. They charge the night before then set the still start preheating to a set temp from a set time. Say fir example you're coming in at 9am, you can set it to turn on at 5am, heat to 50oC and hold until you get in and progress the distillation into run mode.

    Once, an emergency came up and I needed to shut down the still on heat-up, and ended up needing to continue the next day.

    It was one of the worst distillation batches in what is near 1000 still runs.

    We split distill, so our 500g fermenters distill in 250g batches. The next day we distilled the other half of the batch, it was it's usual beautiful self.

    Lesson learned, extended time under temperature can be very, very bad.

  • @grim interesting comment. Do you see / anticipate a difference in quality of a slow heat up to a certain temperature and held, followed by normal prodcution parameters a while later vs. normal production parameters from start. ..... here I am referring to power settings.

    I can't remember where I read it but it was advocated that a slow heat up was qualitatively the best soloution.

  • edited April 2020

    Yeah we had a dark rum batch once that stalled with lots of residual sugar. We tried to strip it hard and fast and it was clearly “burnt”. The kettle walls were nearly black. We aim for about an hour from start to first heads now - and always under agitation. The lower the final gravity the more comfortable we are with heat up.

Sign In or Register to comment.