"First of all, hello and thank you all for the countless posts that have kept this short by answering many questions already. Many of you will balk at the length here, but I assure you, I will write extensively about my methods and answer many a future newbie's questions.

This mere forum and the volume of intelligent discussion contained within (not to mention the rest of the internet and books) speaks to the interest in home brewing of hooch. Of course, the ATF and the little old lady neighbor would have a thing or two about anyone setting up a still in their front yard. I can't imagine this forums 4,000+ members hiking out into the deep woods every so often to stir the mash or make a run.

I'm getting into a grain mash for whiskey now and have some general questions on what comes next.

1. As the seasons turn and the cold makes backyards or sheds uncomfortable, where does everyone do their distilling? Specifically, propane burner fired stills. Garages? Basements? Crack a window in a living room?

2. How can you tell when you're getting low on liquid in the still? Obviously one would not want to dry out. Is it a sound? I'm going to build a parrot sometime this week which will allow a general reading on ABV, so stop at 20% or so?

3. Backset for a sour mash whiskey. I know this has been covered extensively. I've read the posts. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Ferment the mash. Strain out the grains (5 gallon paint strainer bags sound awesome for this). Save a handful or two and reserve for later, feed the rest to the pigs or the annoying kid down the street. Distill the liquid (wash? beer? wort?) in a stripping run. Dilute down to 30% ABV. Re-distill on slow careful to make the cuts, or at least separating into small jars so you can smell/taste/feel/take nudie pics etc. MEANWHILE (and this is the confusing part to me), one should be brewing another mash and pour a gallon or so of the leftovers and those reserved grains into the mash? Before or after fermentation?

4. After distilling, one has multiple little jars. Taste them all, (obviously after tossing the first 2-4oz.) Mix the goodness, save the unwanted stuff and add it into the next wash/beer/wort? or to the mash after fermentation? Or just wait until one has enough of those heads and feints to do a whole run? Wouldn't that just produce a more refined batch of heads and feints?

5. Have you ever walked in somewhere and felt the unmistakable sensation of being home? Thank you. Anyone in PA?"

Hello, Good Folks!
I'll start by embarrassing myself because I don't even know how to post.
"This is a test."

"If your wash isn't ready/settled, you can run it with the yeast in it. You may not get as much finished product as you would when it is finished and there's is a chance of scorching the bottom of your boiler. If you run it dirty throw a bunch of marbles in the bottom of your boiler, that may prevent scorching.

If your wash is left airlocked it should last 2 weeks."

Good luck, let us know how things go. I agree with you about your sock , it may not last :)

Awsome background Max. Do you do all the maths as well? If so,,,,,,,I hate you.

Can you talk a little bit about the design of a "draw tray" compared to a dephlegmator?

Sounds like you are looking for a neutral drop more than the flavored drink by a long shot.

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]I know chemicals and industrial distillation of hydrocarbons, but nothing of all the ppm's little yeasties make the seem to find their way into all temperatures of the column. [/COLOR]

Thats the stuff the whiskey and rum guys are trying to exploit,,,,,and the neutral crew is trying to eradicate:)

Could you comment on my still design?
Shoot entire image didn't load. .....lemme try and shrink it down

"I can see it! Very nice, sir!
If you can put up a bigger/clearer one that would be nice. That's a work of art.

Yes, I can do the math. I hate MYSELF.

Draw-tray, sieve-deck, riser-pan... all about the same. Different words for same or similar things. You folks call it likker, I call it booze. ""Dephlegmator"" ! I love that word!

Looks like you've got holding up the yellow condensate is what I know as a riser-pan: vapor goes up unimpeded through a riser and what condenses back is trapped by a solid pan and the ""draw"" is taken off that pan (or tray).

A sieve-deck (or bubble-cap) tray is similar, but instead of a solid tray with a pipe through the middle, the tray is full of tiny (relative to the diameter of the column) holes through which the vapor goes up at a velocity which prevents the liquid from going down. Picture looking down the column at it: Instead of a full circle full of little holes imagine a little bite taken out of it like a few nights after a full moon. That's where the liquid that can't flow down the little holes goes. Below the tray, that crescent chute has a well sealed so vapor can't come up. The well is deep enough to retain enough condensate for a reliable draw. The advantage of the sieve-deck over the riser is that it provides a great interface with reflux and at the same time allows the height of your yellow area for vapor/condensate tango.

All that having been said, it is completely unnecessary unless you're separating i-butane from n-butane on an industrial scale or just wanna have a bunch of fun brazing little things together that you'll never be able to clean unless you cut 'em apart."

"Tonight I am going to commit mass-murder.

Call it yeasticide.

After only 52 hours I'm gonna siphon the Yeastie's swimming pool into the kettle and cook 'em to death. I figure getting 'em up to about 180* ought to stop their little orgy. Then I'm gonna put 'em back in the bucket and send in Agent Clear to round up all their carcasses and take them to the bottom in the cool of the night.

I should be ready for my first run in the morning, right?

Any advice on Sparkolloid ?"

"LWTCS,

Well, sir, I kinda lied to you. When I was having all that fun I was doing the math, but, I had a program at work, ""Hi-Sim"", that corrected my mistakes. It was fun tweaking the software to get it to work with sections two to three inches wide instead of 15 to 25 feet, and 12' tall instead of 100 to 200'. It was a DOS-based program and I still have a copy and maybe my third new hobby will be trying to get a computer to run it on. I'll take a stab at it, but I cannot guarantee anything.

When I was doing all that I was working for real on getting better results from an overloaded hydrofluoric acid stripper column. Of all the processes in refining it is one of only few that is a batch operation (like what this site is about) and distilling an azeotrope (like water and ethyl-alcohol). I built my ""still"" not for booze but for experimentation.

This ought to break your heart:
I'd mix pure lab-grade 100% ethanol with water! And then ethylene glycol!
Then I'd separate them as best as I could."

A thumper is a parasitic boiler......who's first task is to condense incoming vapor and then initiate yet another phase change by using the heat from the primary boiler........My rig is a set of boilers,,,,,,,a Fred Flinstone precursor to the plated bubblers. You see it yes?

My rig is similar in concept/design to the continuous outfits but my plates hold more liquid volumes than the more modern bubblers. I am set up for batches rather than continuous operation....

The distilling apparatus (when using the deefleg) will stack the plates from the top down. But an ancillary amount of condensing/phase change does occur as the rig begins to come to temp.

I will often run the thing in 100% mode till all the plates are stacked. The bottom thumper has the volume capacity to hold nearly an entire boiler (20 liter in this case) charge worth of etho. My assertion is that as long as I do not return previously distilled liquid to the primary boiler,,,my abv will be improved by 1 or 2,,,,maybe 3 percentage points. Small hobby sized stills really do not have the ability to insure that previously distilled abv does not return to the primary boiler where there is a bulk amount of water.

So as long as I collect prior to the larger thumper draining back to the primary,,,,,my discharge pisses at a stream the size of a tooth pic/ pencil lead at 95% and remains quite stable for the duration of the run. Also need to insure that I collect product before the boiler runs out of alcohol or the cycling process will reverse it's self.

Max,
Where are you doing your experiments?,,,,,,,If you tell me you have a shop at home that is capable of accommodating your experiments,,,,,you should know that I will continue to hate,hate, hate.:):):)

Will your program approximate run times and yield based on RR and heat input values and so forth?

Sounds like you could use some tri-clamps

Flour paste will seal any leaks under normal operating conditions....Dunno about while running under a vac?