How To Use Bubble Plates In A Still (& How They Work)

i've got the bubble plates running right now and i thought this would be a good time to take some time out and give some advice on exactly how to drive these things how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week i'm jesse and this is still it the channel all about chasing the craft of home distillation and making it a legitimate hobby so yes i know george just made a video like this and it's not that i'm copying him it's that a patreon asked me to make this video three four weeks ago and i'm lazy by the way huge huge congratulations to george 100 000 subscribers anyway let's talk about how to drive these things i think it's kind of important that we have a look at the anatomy of them and then have a at least a cursory glance at the theory and how they work because if we understand them then you get a much better ability to manipulate them to do what you want them to do right so first of all uh what the hell do they do essentially all these things are doing is forcing the interaction of liquid and vapor inside your still that's that's it that's what they do this is a four inch plate which just literally means that it sits within a 4 inch column and this particular one has 5 bubble caps and 1 down comer now a bubble cap and a down comer are basically exactly the same thing they're just facing the other way let's look at the bubble cap first reminder on this plate here i've got five of them literally all it does is allow the gas to come up through here out through these little holes and then this cap forces the gas back down under the level of the liquid sitting on the plate which allows it to bubble up through it forcing that interaction between the two that means it's effectively a one-way valve allowing vapor to move up through the still and not allowing liquid to move back down this is also a one-way valve but now we're sending liquid down and stopping vapor from coming up so liquid as it gets above the level of this or as a bubble pops and throws a little bit of liquid in there obviously gravity will pull it back down and allow it to come out the little holes at the bottom but because we have this little cup sitting here at the bottom we're creating a little reservoir for the liquid to sit in so this cup itself fills up and then as more and more liquid comes through it starts spilling out through the holes and dripping back down onto the plate below it or back into the pot the very fact that this cup is full of liquid is what stops the gas getting back up through those the holes where the liquids coming out we just said that this cylinder is slightly elongated compared to the bubble plates and the reason for that is that it establishes the depth of liquid sitting on the plate so as you can see it is going to allow liquid to build up to the depth of that cylinder i don't know the name for this very specific part sitting above the plate actually but what it means is that it is setting the depth of the liquid on this plate under normal operating conditions we'll get to that later on ensuring that as the vapor comes up through the bubble caps it's going to interact with you know a a meaningful amount of liquid sitting on that plate so to summarize the bubble plate is made up of kind of two one-way valves i guess you can think of it as one allows the vapor to pass up through the middle it hits the cap on top forces the vapor back down and around forces it to go under the level of the water and bubble up around it the pressure itself of the vapor coming up through the middle stops the liquid sort of being able to encroach on that area as you can see actually from a really cool uh little clip of slow-mo footage i got in the video i did on the cleaning run check this out it's pretty cool you can see it happening in slow motion the other one-way valve allows liquid to spill back down to the plate below it or into the pot below it once it reaches a certain height the liquid goes down through the middle of that cylinder hits the cap in the bottom fills the cap up to the point where it starts to spill over and because we have this reservoir of water sitting underneath there's no direct path for the vapor to go up so like i said at the beginning all we're doing the only thing we're doing is forcing liquid and vapor to interact with each other sorry i was planning on recording this part standing in front of the still so i can point at things but it's raining so hard i can't hear myself think out in the tin shed instead we're gonna be in here and i'll put some pretty stuff on the screen all of that part at the beginning was just to say that a bubble plate literally helps us create the interaction of vapor and liquid within our still driving a plated still is literally all about just facilitating that so we want to ensure that we have enough liquid on each plate to make sure that that interaction is happening but we also want to make sure that we're not flooding the plate so flooding the plate is where we just start to get too much liquid on the plate and it builds up builds up builds up and floods funnily enough and that and this can actually turn into a little bit of a um it's almost like a runaway type thing once it starts happening it'll happen faster and faster the second thing we want to concern ourselves when running is still like any still is the amount of off take we're taking off the end of the still how much product is going over into the cut stars the collection jars on the other side that's really all we're worried about we have two levers that we can pull to push the still in the direction that we want number one is the vapor speed how much vapor are we sending up the column and we affect that by changing the amount of energy we put into the pot down the bottom number two is the knockdown potential that we're allowing the reflux condenser to have so how much vapor can that condenser knock back down most people control this by the volume of water that they let go into the condenser so you have a needle valve a tap something that restricts the flow of water that you can adjust this might seem super simple until you realize that both of those controls that you have are going to affect both things so let's for example say that we increase the amount of vapor speed we're putting more energy into the pot now this is sending more vapor up the column so depending on how the condenser is set up it might actually send more reflex reflux back down the column but it's also going to help push more vapor past that condenser and increase the speed of offtake over the other side lowering the amount of energy we put into the pot is going to do the opposite let's look at the condenser next so if we increase the amount of liquid going into the condenser crank it up we're going to decrease the amount of liquid coming out of the the off-tank and if it's not coming out the off take it's going back down the still so we're decreasing the takeoff rate and we're increasing the amount of reflux landing on those plates so driving a plated still is all about the nuance the dance i like to think of it as a bit of a negotiation between myself and the still so it is finding balance and it is finding the sweet spot where you're getting the off-take you want but you're also loading the plates the way you want to load them thankfully the way these plates are designed gives us a fear about a fudge factor so we need to be precise we need to negotiate with that still to get in a sweet spot but the still lets that sweet spot be a little bit bigger than it could be and the reason for that is that this plate likes to have liquid on it there's natural reflux throughout the still and once liquid is sitting on this plate as long as there is you know some vapor coming up it's not all just going to disappear it will happen in certain situations it will happen so if you push it too far the plates will dry up but it likes to have liquid on it conversely it also doesn't like to flood because it literally has a drain plug yeah it literally once there's too much liquid on it will send liquid actively i mean it's doing it passively but you know what i mean once the liquid gets above this level it's going to send liquid back down to the plate below it faster the thing is the still can only do so much so you need to do your part too to make sure that you're sitting in that goldilocks zone all right let's talk about actual how i run the damn thing cool first of all starting the still what i like to do is put a pretty decent amount of power into my pot so with two two kilowatt elements i'm putting about 75 80 of that into the pot to start with and i have my condenser set at full blast so i'm sending a pretty decent amount of vapor up through the still but i'm sending it all straight back down again and i use that to load the plates as the vapor goes up through the still it's going to hit the condenser it's going to send it back down obviously and then it's going to cascade from plate to plate until all of the plates are well loaded and bubbling away the next thing you need to do is start to allow some products to get you know through that condenser uh and out through the line arm through the product condenser and into our cuts jars and i like to do that by slowly slowly reducing the amounts of water going into the condenser like i said before guys this is a negotiation and any input you put into the still so if you adjust the power or you adjust the water it may take a little while for that result to actually manifest itself so don't go making large changes and don't go making a change oh nothing happened make another change nothing happened make another change nothing happened because by the time you make the third change the first change is only just starting to affect the actual way the still is running so at this point i'll assess what's coming out off the end of the still uh with a four inch bubble plate i can actually take a a pretty quick off-take speed and i like to do so because you know me i tend to run it on the dirtier side for most things so let's say that your take speed is slightly slow and you're also not getting your plates aren't loading quite enough so to fix that what i would do is probably actually this this sounds bizarre because you want the off-take speed to be faster but i would leave the water in the condenser perhaps where it is or maybe even turn it up just to smidge so give it more knock down power power and instead crank the power and the still up so we're sending a lot more vapor up through the column there's more vapor to overpower the condenser and let vapor through but we're also condensing you know more vapor and sending it back down as reflux if you're making small changes slowly you're going to get to a point where things just you get it dialed in and they balance now a quick note guys this is different every time you run the damn thing it's not going to be a a specific setting that you set once and that's the way you use it every time you run it it will be different the more you run it the more you're going to get to know it and the quicker you're going to find that point of balance for the still and the speed that you want off the other side so i need to say a huge huge thank you to the patreons thank you patreons i'm struggling to get out of the way in this chair but you're the reason i get to do this stuff thank you so very much guys i really really really do appreciate it so i hope this video helped you out i hope that there's some people out there that now better understand how this works or are more likely to give it a nudge or that we're scared of a plate and now sort of uh are happy to go and try it themselves or to get that equipment that they were thinking about buying i really do hope that that's the case guys if it is if i've helped you out please please give me a thumbs up that would be awesome if you're not subscribed yet hit the subscribe button down below and i'll catch you next time guys keep on chasing the craft see ya

Channel: Still It

Views: 104,084

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Id: 6nfQoSgwuCQ

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020