Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Spoils from the maiden voyage on the good ship Mac Boka.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

And here's the rig in full swing.



2" Mac Boka, extra 300mm packed section with stainless scrubbers sitting on a t500 boiler with alembic dome.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Nice work looks great :handgestures-thumbupleft: Hoping to have my madien run on my 2 inch pot in the next day or two cant wait :D

Had a few teething issues with cooling though Couldn't get it to fully reflux for some reason and had vapor pouring out the vent at the top. Switched it off and swapped from the pump in the pool to mains water and it didn't change anything. After a lot of tweaking of the take off valve and backing the water flow off it suddenly settled into equilibrium and ran like a dream. Can't figure out what I did wrong though. I would have though that backing the water off would have had the opposite effect. Is it possible to out too much water through a condenser?

Too much , or too cold water can mess with equilibrium, but it won't allow vapour bypass out the top vent and generally need extreme cold water and flow.
Sounds more like an air bubble in the condensor ??

Awesome mate!!

What was the wash?

Meatheadinc wrote:Too much , or too cold water can mess with equilibrium, but it won't allow vapour bypass out the top vent and generally need extreme cold water and flow.
Sounds more like an air bubble in the condensor ??

I ended up doing a second run and the same thing happend but I noticed that the escaping vapour only occurred at the very start of the run once the column came up to temperature then it stopped maybe 3 minutes later and never happened again. Quite strange. It could be an air bubble I suppose but I don't know how to stop that from happening.

I will say that the cooling water only seems to trickle out of the othe end of the condenser even though the tap is on full; I might check if there is a blockage in it tomorrow.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Could be the fores pushing through as they have the lowest boiling point :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Woodsy71 wrote:Awesome mate!!

What was the wash?

This was a cleaning run so it was a stripped TPW from a previous cleaning run. Having seen what was left in the boiler after the run I now understand the need to do them. Quite an oil slick in there.

The next run was about 22 litres of old wine I had hanging about. Alcoholometer read 98% @30 deg for most of the run; according to the correction chart supplied with the meter, that works out at 95%. Collected 11x200ml cuts excluding fores. One happy camper (cooling issues aside).

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Sam. wrote:Could be the fores pushing through as they have the lowest boiling point :handgestures-thumbupleft:

That would explain why it stops shortly after it starts.

I'll check the condenser for blockages and if it's all clear I'll keep an eye on it on the next run but it might just be that this just the way this rig rolls.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Professor Green wrote:And here's the rig in full swing.

MacBoka.jpg

2" Mac Boka, extra 300mm packed section with stainless scrubbers sitting on a t500 boiler with alembic dome.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

How does the alembic dome hold up with all that weight? I am using the standard lid that came with my T500 with a adapter, how does the alembic dome compare? stronger?

Its not too bad, it wobbles about ever so slightly but it is rather stable. I haven't tried with the normal lid so can't really compare. I don't even know if there is any advantage with using the dome over the normal lid to be honest - I only used the dome as I will also be using it for pot stilling of small batches of absinthe and only have one tr-iclamp adapter and don't want to buggerise about swapping it around!

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

Try wrapping the condensor in some of the copper mesh. Apparently this helps heat transfer and cooling the vapour. I didn't do a run without copper meshh so can't comment on your problem. I only need a quarter turn on the tap to get reflux. Only time I had vapour escape was when I forgot to turn the water on :/

Otherwise ring Mac.

Thanks for the tip Hawkeye. I'll have to order some copper mesh but I will give that a go.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

I think I've seen people elsewhere use stainless as well, but copper does have better heat transfer... I just had some left over from my roll :)

Hawkeye wrote:Try wrapping the condensor in some of the copper mesh. Apparently this helps heat transfer and cooling the vapour. I didn't do a run without copper meshh so can't comment on your problem. I only need a quarter turn on the tap to get reflux. Only time I had vapour escape was when I forgot to turn the water on :/

Otherwise ring Mac.

Doing another run today, have put some copper mesh in and around the condenser. Problem solved. Now running like a dream.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.