Hey guys. Been lurking off and on for some time. Now retired so time on my hands and I thought I'd get back into brewing and try my hand at distilling as well.
To that end, I've rumaged around in the basement and dug out an old 20 L stainless steel tea urn I've had for years (originally intended for brewing). Think it's about a 2.0kw heater. I had a 2.0m length of 40mm copper tube so I thought I could make a simple pot still.
So far I have made a simple copper flange for a 250mm length of the tube and fixed it to the lid. I've got a tee off that into 10mm copper pipe which will connect to a condenser coil (about ten coils) which fits into a 25L plastic bucket with cooling water inlet and outlet.
The 40mm pipe connection to the lid has a diy ptfe tape gasket. I'm thinking of doing the same type of gasket for the boiler lid (about 300mm dia). I'm going to fix 6 screw clamps to the lid to get a good seal there. The s/s steel bolts that fix the riser off the lid are using fibre washers. Not sure if I should change them for stainless.
All pretty simple and all I've spent so far was a few bucks for the 10mm tubing for the condenser and some for the soldering materials (I think the tea urn cost me a case when cases were about $25). The idea being to use this as a test rig, keeping costs to a minimum and see if I want to take this further. Then it'll be on to kegs and something a lot more substantial. I'll probably post some piccies tomorrow.
Any and all comments gratefully received...