Just wanted to relay my experiences with my new-found hobby. I've been making wine and beer for over a year now, and finally decided it was time to polish my skills. I got the plans for a reflux column from http://www.moonshine-still.com, built the apparatus shown with the 16 gallon keg ,with slight modification - I had a stainless pipe nipple welded onto the keg instead of the mixing bowl idea,. I packed the column with copper scrubbers that I'd boiled, then washed in white vinegar. Okay, so I got my apparatus built and ready to go. I ordered some of the Turbo 24 yeast, mixed it up, put a submersible aquarium heater in the mix to keep the temp up, let it work, ,amazingly fast compared to wine yeast,, then mixed in some clarifiers to get rid of some solids. Finally the day came to cook it off, heating with a gas burner, and cooling with water circulated by a fountain pump from a 5 gallon bucket that got changed when the water temp ran up. My liquid temp ran up to 199 F, the top of the column rose to 174 F, and stayed there for like 3.5 - 4 hours. I got a steady fast drip of what tested to be 90%. Then the temp spiked up to 180, stayed there for awhile before rising, in steps, to 200 F. Everything from the point of temp rise above 175 was collected separately and tested somewhat less ,50% if I remember right,. All in all I collected a full gallon and about 2/3 of a half gallon of 90%, and a full 1/5th bottle of the latter 50%. All that from 10 gallons of wash ,my buckets are only 6 gallons so I used 10# sugar in 5 gallons of water,.

I must say I am impressed. No 'off' flavors a very faint citrus-like taste, and no foul odors. From my readings, it looks like I got it right.

That was my first run, since then I've cooked off a 5 gallon batch of bad wine, with proportional results; and a second batch of the turbo wash with similar results to the first.

I have to admit, this is impressive.

About the only thing I plan to change is to get some copper mesh and ditch the scrubbers, but that will wait till I break it down for cleaning before I make another batch.

Any comments, good or bad?

rick, did you make you siill of copper? if so how did you connect the still to ss collar on your boiler?
thanx [email="rigdiver
myexcel.com"]rigdiver
myexcel.com[/email]

Everything above the keg is copper. I took the keg ,stainless,, removed the guts from the bung ,I guess that's what it's called - the place where the tap goes,, cut the bung off with an abrasive wheel on an angle grinder, then cut away at the top of the keg with a metal cutting sabre saw, and sand paper until I had a hole that the 2' ss nipple would just fit into ,I kept tight tolerance,. I had a cousin weld the stainless nipple into that hole keeping as little protruding into the keg as possible ,maybe 1/16', so that it would still rinse out easily. Then the base of the column was fitted with a copper 2' female adapter. All I have to do is fill the boiler and screw on the column and it's ready to go. As an added plus, it breaks down nicely for storage, and with a little creativity I can make a fitting that will fit an airlock into another female adapter to use the keg for large batches of wine ,though I'm not sure I want my boiler out of service that long,.

I used 6 pads for the packing. 2 were rolled into like a fat hotdog shape and put in the bottom ,below the cooling water return line,. I put them in 1 at a time, kinda like ramming a cannon in the Civil War movies, and they do fit kinda snug. For the middle of the column I 'opened' the pads ,they unroll into a long tube,. I folded that over a yardstick and poked it down past the cooling water supply line into the body of the column. I packed 4 pads in there this way. The top of the column was packed the same as the bottom.

Hope this helps.

We have never made columns from copper. If you wish to attach a copper column to our kettle or a beer keg, the simplest option is by using one of our NPT Couplers, which can take you from a 2' NPT fitting to a Tri-Clamp fitting.