Who’s using their distillation skills to make booze?

@Mrs_Heisenberg and I decided to play a bit and we are gonna use some excess distillation equipment and distill some mash I’m making. Running a barley malt with peat for a nice Scottish whiskey.

Anyone else ever try this using vac?

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I’ve got a home built reflux still I make 96%neutral ethanol. I don’t drink anymore so it’s not used much.

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Have any pictures?

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I wanna run a 20l still I have with vac. Pretty sure it should keep most of the malted flavors and be able to 1 pass it.

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Will y’all be running secondary laminar path with cold thermal transfer then collection?

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I’ve made well into the tens of thousands of litres of spirits :slight_smile: it’s partly how I got into cannabis. Making gin is just solvent extraction of the aromatics. Lots of crossover :stuck_out_tongue:

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Actually go peep the future compounds head they collabed with @goldleaf_scientific i think that might be a perfect route

https://www.instagram.com/p/COwSouYBpbo/?igshid=rzmtpe37ohz9

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I checked and they must be on my old phone.
It’s a beer keg with a triclamp fitting and a 5ft long 2" reflux column I would fill with copper scrubbers.

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That’s what I was thinking… I have a lot of that shit just layin around.

Did you try vac or just straight heat?

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Vigreux Style stainless column with copper sheathing covering the vigs.

I’m really anxious to see vac assist with this.

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I think that may be dependent upon how fast you’d like to run it through & especially if there are additional co solvent in the starting solvent. If I’m wrong & thinking about it a still runs off heat only internal condensing & flow path. No assist unless the cold water running through the thump keg in theory create enough pull by its dynamic. Which in turn supports just heat in full. It would likely be worth while running a tall reflux condenser with as much vig as possible, run scrubber up top( depending on how full of flavor body you’d like that will be which you choose to pack with, could probably even set up a gin basket with a bubbler setup to capture a finish note real well.

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I was actually thinking the same thing. The flavors are endless. That additives (distilled terps) could add a lot of benefits as well.

Once again, a hobby. But, may turn into something more.

Every old man needs a hobby :rofl:

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My father-in-law has a 150g mash in tank. Working up to something eventually, but yes, all hobby’s eventually take on a life of their own within us. Lol

Shit man, you got me wanting to draw up something

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Yeah, man.

I can see this consuming the rest of my free time

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Just straight heat, I think the type of column I built they call it a bokabob.
I can’t find the link of the build instructions but here’s a great link for operating instructions.
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13265

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I’m wondering how much a vac a dephlagmater can handle?

I know shotgun styles would be fine, but the dephlagmater looks really cool and I LOVE to watch reflux :sunglasses:

Plus, the ability to add glass beads to each bench is intriguing and probably cheaper then paying someone to design my head.

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I would personally avoid the vacuum. Maybe it would assist it but it would also lower the boiling points of everything and could potentially cause your heads to mix. There will be methanol in your heads and you want to make sure you have a known boiling point and as big of a difference between those boiling points as possible to achieve complete separation.

Methanol 64.7 deg C
Ethanol 78.37 deg C

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I figured using my digivacs with a blank off valve, dialing in the vac depth should be fairly easy.

The point of running no heat assist vac is to preserve the full body flavors. No heat, a lot less degradation.

Only issue I see is if there is any bacterial infections, not having heat could be a problem.
Have to mash in in an OR type condition for sure.

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I don’t and can’t drink but brewing has always interested me!

I actually watched multiple brewing channels in order to set up my PID

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Maybe do an initial distillation without vac, and then do a secondary distillation with vac to preserve the notes. Maybe pass the second distillation through a (I forget what it’s called but a secondary chamber to pass the vapor through to add flavor) whatever the hell the thing is called. I haven’t watched Moonshiners in a bit, so my terminology is a bit off!

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