My 3" DR Boka

[Spark]

Hey guys, After well over 6 months my project is nearly done :D So I thought I would make a good post with lots of piccies to show off my hard work 8-)

Anyway after getting some of the materials together in what little spare time I had I started putting together my 3" DR Boka. First off a had a go at winding my coil at first i had planned to have an 8" double helix 3/8" coil (I know 8" is a bit overkill but i had the copper spare) but my first attempt immediately flattened so i turned to using salt packing and the next two attempts failed aswell with the coil flattening somewhat and kinking at the end. :angry-banghead: . I then decided to pick up some 1/4" and have a go at that and what would you know a perfect double helix on my first go without packing or anything.

But then with the smaller size copper i guessed that it wouldn't be big enough for a 3" column so i wound it back down and put the end back up through the middle and the size worked out pretty perfect. :D

Over all i think it worked out really well i think :D I put a hose to it soon afterwards and got a good flow trough it. After i was happy with that I thought I would get the pieces of the head together so I cut a 400mm section of 3" and fitted the coil through the end cap then put the reducers in place where it would hold the correct amount of liquid in the cup(I forgot what that measurement was 100ml or something :? ) After it was all in place I thought I better get a bit of practice at soldering by making a parrot and my liebig condenser. I only had a bit over one meter of 1" copper to work with so i used 300mm for my parrot and put the rest towards the liebig.

This was my first go at soldering so i thought i did a fair job :D The plan with the liebig was to have it hanging off the water in pipe but i didn't want the water to by pass it so i soldered a stopper in the end of the connecting pipe

After i was happy with that i set to making the flanges to my tri-clovers. I decided to have a clamp at the top and the bottom column so i could have more flexibility in setups in the future. I followed McStills easy easy flange method and it did not quite work out for me :? when I attempted to flatten the ring onto the belled end the ring broke apart and of course expanded so after a lot of swearing, hammering, clamping, soldering, and grinding I ended up with some half decent flanges that were more or less square.

For the 2" to keg connection I had bought a 2" ss flange and I quickly soldered up the 2" to 3" connector and then tackled soldering up the head. The 3" fittings all went together easily but i had so much trouble fixing the off take line. Probably the odd connection and angle made it hard but I had so much trouble I ended up getting my brother to crack out his oxy to get it hot enough. By this time it was about march and i could start to see things coming together.

After this I decided to turn to the boiler. I had chosen to fit two 2200W electric elements and a 1 1/4" tap (Yes 1 1/4" is way over kill and was not worth the trouble but I can drain my keg in under 10 seconds now). I have little experience welding let alone stainless steel so weldless it was :angry-banghead: Needless to say this just led to trouble and it was about this time work took over my life and every time I went to do something something else went wrong and I had to get on new parts :( anyway while i was waiting on fittings for my tap I took advantage of an old TV cabinet and made a wheely bench for my still :D i also wrapped it in some silver wrap to insulate it and to cover my dodgy carpentry skills :D

After a while I got all the pieces together and put the element and taps in but as I should have known they leaked :sad: but I read somewhere that good gaskets could be made from a washer and thread tape. So i gave that ago with the tap and it worked :D I didn't have the right sized washers for the elements but i did wrap the rubber o-rings in thread tape and that helped and now only kinda drips now and then :D I then wrapped the keg in silver wrap as well.

I then put on a fast clip fitting and stole a good length of good pipe from my brother to complete the drainage solution :D

This week iv had some time off so i was able to put some time into finishing it off i started with packing the column. I had got some copper rodent mesh in from the states for cheap but i wasn't sure how to pack it in the column so I ended up rolling it into short tubes and sticking them down the column but then i thought this could just lead to channeling so i made a kinda centering ring out of a bit of 2" scrap and shoved it around halfway down the column.

I then when to find some insulation but could not find anything for 3" I tried around four differnt plumbing and rubber stores :? so i ended up with a couple bits of 2" stuff and made do. I then connected up the water and off-take lines and connected the thermometers and the water fittings and things were pretty much compete.

So this afternoon I did a cleaning run with vinegar and it seemed to work perfectly the coil managed to knock down the steam extremely quickly. Later this week I'm planning to run another cleaning run with some wine and then run the washes I made up a couple weeks ago. So yea any if you want to see more just look at my gallery @ http://s1078.photobucket.com/albums/w481/Spark91x/ and any comments/criticism or suggestions are more than welcome :D

[Spark]

Right so I completed my first alcohol cleaning run the other day and things didnt really work out as I'd planned :? First off I lost the piece of paper where I wrote down the recipes and SG's of the washes that I made up a couple of weeks ago :angry-banghead: Anyway the wash I was going to use was going to be small 20L of TPW that had a starting SG of around 1070 and a ending SG of 1000 so that put it at around 9%

So i went about charging my still and only put one element on because of the small wash size and around an hour later the column temp starts rising and really didn't stop until 86degrees and at the time i had the off-take shut and water running through it at around 20 so I knew it couldn't be right. So I pulled that thermo out of its port and jammed a little digital water proof one that I used for my washes in there and it read 75degrees. So happy with that temp I turned down my water until the outlet temp was around 40 and let it run at 100% reflux for 30min then proceeded to collect foreshots/heads then 100% refluxed again for 15 the took a little more heads and then dove into some hearts. At this point I took an alcometer to it and it read around 95-96% which i was really happy with but the column temp still read 75-76 I thought it should have been closer to 78? But then again it could be my dodgy thermo/port??

Then after 10min dropped to around 90% but looking back now it seems that I probably ran it to fast and hence would have reduced the %. But either way it was just a cleaning/practice run so Im not worried about the alcohol (which i should probably throw out??) anyway for the next run i have two washes that i want to strip so hopefully i will get the thermos sorted by then.

[stilly_bugger]

Good work. Now for your first drink from the boka you built with your own hands. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I've had similar problems with those weldless elements leaking. Others haven't. The first one I ever bought was fine, but another two I bought later on both had silicone gaskets that were, well, too big. Tighten the nut hard enough to get a seal and the thing would pop out. A wrap of Teflon tape is a good solution.

And, again, well done. :clap:

Edit: after looking at the pics again, I realised I was wrong. I thought that the soldered in downflow centering thingy prevented you from removing your column packing. Not so, so my point about maybe needing to repack the column doesn't apply.

[MacStill]

What a top effort, you get 10 out of 10 from me :dance: :dance: :dance:

Thanks for sharing :D

[Spark]

Thanks for your feed back guys :D its very much appreciated.

I finished doing my stripping run yesterday I had combined two 25L WPOSW washes that turned out around 10-11% to fill up my boiler to around 47-8L . I Plugged in my second element this time and it came to boil in just under an hour which was great. Now i know your meant to open your off take right up when doing a stripping run but I found that would up the temperture to around 88Degrees and the product coming out would rage between 80-60% but if i was to back it off slightly the temp would drop back to normal and the ABV% would hang around the 90% mark so that's what I did and pulled out near 5L of alcohol which I'm pretty happy about. No sure what i did was right but i guess running it quicker would have saved some time but atm iv got time to burn :D anyway Im going to do a nice and slow reflux run this weekend and ill let you guys know how it went.

[Cane Toad]

Great job Spark :handgestures-thumbupleft: When doing a stripping run,it's hard and fast,BUT,as you are still learning to drive her it don't matter 2 shits,just combine both your stripping runs on the weekend,water down to 40%,and have a good time :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft: Collect in small jars,number and air for a day or 2,then do your smell/taste tests and whammo :handgestures-thumbupleft: :handgestures-thumbupleft: Keep the good stuff and save the heads and tails for the next run.Youll have it down pat in no time :D :D
Cheers
CC