@draw57 said: I have 13 gal. milk can still. I run 10 gal. mash about 15 % abv. My thumper is half gal. mason jar. It fills up in about half of run. Is there some rule on how big my thumper needs to be.

With gear that small, some of your problem is with heat loss. Once the thumper is up to boiling, in an ideal system, each gram of steam from the boiler condensing will vaporize about (actual number depending on the heats of vaporization for both the boiler liquid and the thumper liquid) a gram of the thumper liquid, so the liquid level in the thumper won't change much.

On the other hand, if all the heat derived from condensing that gram of boiler liquid is radiated, convected, and/or conducted away from the thumper, you're just added a gram of liquid to your thumper. Your situation is somewhere between those 2 extremes, but you're gaining liquid after the thumper boil.

Insulate the thumper and all the vapor tubes, for a start.

MBC's Mosaic Mo'Betta IPA - $7.65/4-pack 12oz (355mL) cans at Costco. With GET they were just under $2/can.

I bought a case. Thirsty surfers demolished the case. 2 left (I hid them).
Sold out at Costco now. :(

Pirate Life is one of the best breweries in Australia in my opinion. They also do a Mosaic IPA that is a cracker of a beer. Unfortunately the only place i can get it here is the craft beer bar where it goes for $16 a can.

Pirate Life Mosaic IPA

MBC's Big Swell IPA is really good.
Mosaic Mo Betta WAY mo bettah kine!

One day Pe'ahi was really going off and Bruddah Iz wrote a song, Men Who Ride Mountains:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1bBMcKtOik

I just put a fresh cucumber slice in my glass when in the mood for cucumber.

GB4 volume limitation has two potential solutions:

Put a deflegmator upstream of the basket. Run it in 100% reflux while doing a botanicals changeout (I call this the "stepping on the clutch" method).

Run two GB4s in parallel with a 3-way valve upstream. Run vapor through one basket at a time. When the first basket is exhausted, valve over to the second basket and recharge the spent botanicals in the first.

Specific gravity hydrometer - when it gets to 1.000 or lower.

If you used glucoamylase, you should have no problem going below 1.000

@GD50 yes as a "professional" I have other priorities and quantity is one of them, never worried I might make to many bottles, only too few... Didn't realize the limit on the amount of botanicals you can put into the GB4, I put the botanicals (app. 14 kilo) directly into the boiler so don't have that limitation.

35' - 40' faces:

Pe'ahi is going off (Videos @ World Surf League)

aka "Jaws"

@squeakyclean - not disagreeing or agreeing . More product requires more herbs and the GB4 cant handle that. I already put more juniper in the riser. Being hobby all i am after is a great "rosie " product so to be able to say "Straight from still " with no added extras is great. So 45l at 20 % and a full GB4 plus a bit extra in column just about peaks it out and right final % . To start at 30% is going to give me more product but where am i going to put the botanicals - then i most likely am going to have to dilute. The bit that does tickle my interest is the "better extraction" and does better extraction mean better final product or just more cost effective. If cost effective was the criteria then i would buy great gins from around the world and not have bought all my still gear.

In an ideal world we all could afford a big boiler and punkins new ground mounted gin basket - but I have not got that many friends to give it too. If you knew where i lived you could say there is plenty of alcohol restrictions on a certain group of people and i would have a "ready" black market . That aint going to happen.

@richard will definitely read that. My processes are not fixed in concrete and always open.

Final thought - A family member sent me a Christmas present suggestion . Someone is doing a Gin Taster Calendar of Gins from around the world $177 A . 24 gins . Just search "The Gin Calendar " - all reviews are 5 star.

I in honesty have as of recent become an avid fan of Odin and his distillation ideoligy. Simply put it's quite different. Have a read to his GIN post on ADI forum....

I helped make up an essential oil still for a mate. The picture shows the basic setup with variations on the product condenser. He went for the Leibig version because of height constraints.

The other thing you need is a glass oil separator. That goes under the output of the product condenser. It has an outlet a bit above halfway down where you take of the oil. At the bottom is a tap where you bleed off the water components. You need to adjust the taps so that the water component is always lower than the oil take off. The rate of oil flow reduces as the run goes on, so a constant adjustment is necessary.

@GD50 : not only you do you get better extraction by using 30% you also get more product after dilution so you can use a smaller boiler. Mixing tanks are a lot cheaper than boilers, got a new 800L stainless steel one for 416 euro. Try getting a big boiler with all the electric equipment for that price... And if needed I can use the mixing tank as a fermentor as well.

I just finished my first two gin Runs with my StillDragon Gin Basket on my 150l boiler, Only doing 50 litre runs with 20% pure alcohol. They turned out very nicely actually. The first was a classic london dry gin copy, like a Bombay sapphire, and the second one was spicy with, clove, cinamon ginger and cassia with some lavender. The second one came out a very close copy to an Ophir Gin.

Thanks to everyone on the board and the Gin masters out there. Now comes the hard part, trying to sell it.

I use about 10-15% in future batches.

We put a stainless drum on a scale that is located under the spout of the molasses container, add filtered water that went through the product condenser and came out at at 165, then add molasses, both by weight... We seal the drum(s), roll them off the scale and set them near the still. As soon as a stripping run stops, we pump 212 backset into the drum and whirlpool and settle for 24-72 hours. you have to have a regular schedule, but heat and water usage are reduced significantly...

we also cool a container to add to the dunder pit...

I should get @FloridaCracker to come get my remaining backset for fertilizer for his blueberries ;-) ....

I started off my working life in sugar refineries workshops and Demerara, light brown and dark brown sugar all started life as centrifuged basically white sugar and they were browned back with molasses of varying amounts. This is not necessarily the case in all sugar refineries. Next to us was the CSR Inner Circle rum plant at Pyrmont ,Sydney. My belief it was all molasses but can't remember much about that place. I know we used to get a bottle of Inner Circle Directors Special op rum at Christmas which was good especially at 18 for an apprentice.

Yes panella etc generally costs as it is mostly made in small artisan factories. I quite agree with using it but can't see the $ benefit if is going to be drowned in molasses and white would do the same job.

Found some wet scallops cheap in a 2kg bag.

I seared some in chilli butter and sesame oil and seared some asparagus from the garden with bacon, capers and sundried tomatos.

They came up a treat.

Looking for an unrefined sugar product mostly - as close to evaporated cane as possible (no sugar removal).

Given my proximity to Port Newark - it means purchasing sugar with minimal direct freight costs to me. Shipping a skid of sugar costs roughly 1/2 the price of the sugar. If someone is bringing in container loads locally, that works out for me.

Same deal going with International Molasses. I don’t need to pay freight charges since I can just pick up myself.

Gotta watch those pennies.

have not done a complete 100% spirit run on molasses.. soon we will compare to our normal 1/3panela - 2/3molasses