Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Man I wish I had your tig skills :mrgreen:
Great work mate, keep[ the build momentum up :handgestures-thumbupleft:

2/3 of an ebay order arrived not sure where the rest of it is. :sad:

Spent my saturday night making these.....


Into these.


5 tee sections and 1 longer blockhead section, 3" 90 degree bend with matching ferrule for blockhead and the 3" to 1" reducer for the end of the PC.

Just need to find an easy way to create the openings in the tee sections for the sight glass ferrules. Gonna do a test drill and see how she goes on an offcut of stainless tube I have laying around.

Forgot how time consuming stainless is to work with. Glad this is a make it once and make it right deal.



I'm thinking of putting some temp probes in,

1 in the top of the boiler to check boil temps, does it matter whether this is in the vapour mix or liquid mix>
1 in the blockhead to check temps after the RC

Will this be adequate for a little more visual feedback whilst stilling?

Stainless is a pain in the arse. Love the way yr build is looking though. I personally don't have a thermometer in the system but plenty of people do. The most important meter I have is a flow meter for the RC coolant.

Great build nuddy.
I'm "borrowing" your plans and putting together my cut list now! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Got these bad boys all together finally.


Was a bit of an expensive week (it was actually an afternoon with a lot of swearing), managed to break a brand new hole saw, then the hole saw arbor and finally the keyless chuck. They say bad things come in 3's right.

Got some parts ordered from 5 Star just awaiting their arrival along with the remaining 1/3 of my ebay order which is sitting in customs at the moment.

Soon my pretty, sooooon.

Bushy wrote:Stainless is a pain in the arse. Love the way yr build is looking though. I personally don't have a thermometer in the system but plenty of people do. The most important meter I have is a flow meter for the RC coolant.

Got myself 2 flow meters that I'm gonna plumb up for the condensers.

Lowie wrote:Great build nuddy.
I'm "borrowing" your plans and putting together my cut list now! :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Lowie go ahead mate, all my plans have come from peoples ideas and hard work on this site. The more the merrier :)

I'm keen to see How your blockhead turns out and how you plan to build your gin basket. That's the missing ingredient I haven't been able to find on this forum yet!

What do you need to know about building a gin basket, Lowie? Have a look at my Heart of Gold thread, I just built one for my 3" carter head :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Lowie wrote:I'm keen to see How your blockhead turns out and how you plan to build your gin basket. That's the missing ingredient I haven't been able to find on this forum yet!

easy, slice one down, take a few mm off the diameter, place it inside some 4" so its right size and braze it back up, file or grind smooth and hey presto a 4" pipe to the inside diameter of the 4' original one

As aussiebrewer said cut a piece of 4in length ways and trim some off till it will Fit inside 4in braze a perforated plate on one end and a handle on the other.

:handgestures-thumbupleft:

Thanks guys. Too easy! :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Does the blockhead have a removable lid then? Any pickiest to get my head around it would be great.

Have a look at this post - viewtopic.php?f=36&t=9681&start=240#p174266

It's for my carter head, but a blockhead is the same principle. I still need to solder a handle onto the top so I can easily remove it.

Been a lil busy as of late. The build has progressed however. Plumbed up the water lines to the condensers, given the plates a citric bath. Put 2 TPW down this evening and fingers crossed I'll be putting vinegar and sac runs through it this weekend.

More pics to come. Stay tuned.

Pic time.

Plates all soldered up, I've drilled 2 x 1.5mm weep holes into the plates and 1 x 1.5mm weep hole into the downslope side of the downcomer caps. I don't imagine this will impact the plates loaded and holding liquid. Someone please chime in if I need to plug these up.

Pre citric acid bath.



Test assembly for brown spirits configuration, will be 4 plates but had the 5th module to check out alignment.


Test assembly for neutral/vodkas configuration.


Excuse the rag taped onto the top of the blockhead, I'm one tri clamp short ha. Getting this sorted out this week.
Parrot missed the photo opportunity.

Test assembly on the boiler.


Water lines and flow meters installed


Rear view


Close up of the flow meters


I've pressure tested the cooling system and shes leak free. Fingers crossed I haven't jinked myself.

All that's left to do is:
- Attach the sight glasses and do a leak test on the column.
- Order a few more 4" tri clamp parts for the blockhead top section.
- Vinegar run, then sacrificial alco run.

Do I need to give everything a citric acid bath before the vinegar run? All copper parts have had a bath. Stainless parts not yet, though they have had pickling paste on em in places then thoroughly washed off.

Aiming to have everything build related sorted before this weekend.

Almost there mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:
The weep holes will work fine. I think mine are about the same size :think:
The stainless will need a good wash down with warm soapy water to get any grime off and the pickling paste.
It doesn't need to be an citric wash,m if it was copper definitely :D

Hey mate a couple questions
Did u just use a 3 inch hole saw for cutting your hole out on all your t piece modules
Did u use a dremmel to notch your sight glass piece or a normal grinder

Also does the 3 mm plate on your rc fit nicely butted up to a ferrule with gasket and tri clamped

Great looking still Bloke. You make me wanta tidy up my cooling system. Well done.

CyBaThUg wrote:Hey mate a couple questions
Did u just use a 3 inch hole saw for cutting your hole out on all your t piece modules
Did u use a dremmel to notch your sight glass piece or a normal grinder

I went with a slightly smaller size than 3" hole saw, think it was 2" 7/8 (73mm) hole saw in the drill press. This allowed the sight glass tube a little bit of lap to sit on, made squaring them up a lot easier. Then tigged em on.

Clamp the absolute jesus out of the piece in your drill press. I ended up making a custom jig to hold the 4" tube after destroying the first hole saw doing a test drill on some scrap that I thought I had pretty secure.

The notches were marked out with a permanent marker then cut with a 5" angle grinder and finished up on the linishing belt.

CyBaThUg wrote:Also does the 3 mm plate on your rc fit nicely butted up to a ferrule with gasket and tri clamped

Fits amazingly snug with one of Mac's seals in there.

Bushy wrote:Great looking still Bloke. You make me wanta tidy up my cooling system. Well done.

Cheers bushy, give it a go, makes everything much smoother to run with.

Hey nuddy cheers did u machine out a groove for the gasket to sit in or does it work fine with a flat surface