Is Buying A still Direct From China Worth It?

this is james and james has a large box where did that box come from dude the box come from china oh it wasn't expensive um a little bit not too bad how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week i'm jesse and this is still it this video is going to be about a whole lot of different things uh the experience of buying the still whether the still itself stacks up to expectations uh the experience of getting the still put together and operational and ultimately whether or not james has decided that buying the still in the way he did from the people he did was the best option for him let's get back to james's place where we're going to be pulling everything out of the big old box starting to get up put together and we have a very special very special guest that's uh going to help us decide whether or not these guys have made a quality still or not what is this this is my new still awesome sir where did you get it from i got it from china so you've been waiting for a very long time to see this thing and now i'm holding you up yep yeah how much did you spend on it sir um including getting it into the country about six thousand new zealand dollars we also have donna with us i always do this dana with us not donna i'm gonna say it a hundred times over i don't mean any disrespect to you uh and i really shouldn't disrespect this guy because uh honestly i'm gonna shake your left hand because i've got this in my right hand yeah but still it would not happened would not have happened without this fellow so thank you so much sir you have a special set of skills that makes uh having you here today somewhat helpful for us to know whether or not this piece of equipment is worth it let us know well i'm a plumber yep yes yep and quite a bit about metals and he's been putting kick-ass stills together for i don't know a long-ass time yeah what are your main concerns i don't know what you're going to find in here dude i want to find it still sort of like i can use um out of the box ish i hope um and it's put together with a reasonable quality so um yeah it's not gonna fall apart after a couple of uses and and i think probably most importantly today we want to make sure that you actually got everything you paid for [Music] just got this thing out of the box but first impressions lads yes very tidy very nice pretty well finished what are the sort of things you're looking at to see whether or not these people know what they're doing when they're welding the stuff together uh looking at the um quality of the tig welding okay and in particular looking for what's happening on the back of the weld ah okay so on the just inside the inside yeah yeah okay and what sort of things like like what actual things are you looking for to to give the impression of subpar workmanship for example like what would be a l for for instance if they hadn't uh back perched with argon okay they would be all sugary on the inside uh okay yeah just so like um very small lumpy powdery sort of yeah okay cool but everything looks clean everything looks fantastic so far [Music] we have everything out of the boxes and we haven't really had any nasty surprises yet no no everything we were expecting to be there was there yeah and a few more bits and a few moments yeah but we did you were saying that you had a slight issue where there was a part you expected was going to be here and it was it wasn't yeah yeah i um when we opened the box first of all there was a big hole like an eight inch hole at the top of the still and i realized that my column was like four inches and all the bits for the column were inside the still so based on that if you've got a part like this which is eight inches and it won't go into a hole that is also eight inches um so i figured that there was at least one part missing so i checked with the nice guys at oak stills and they basically they put one of these uh a reducer an eight to four introducer into a box and got it here within three days which is bonkers absolutely nuts and they one of these as well and some um of the um gaskets for it so yeah that was absolutely superb of them so yeah great up to the guys at uh excels for that yeah so a slight screw up that didn't come in the first place but uh i always feel it's not the screwing up that counts it's the fixing the screw up yeah for today's philosophy lesson [Laughter] we're not really going to know if we're missing pieces until it's put together yeah so come over here so i'm looking at all these bits and man it's not bad at all not bad eh not bad at all and i'll tell you what uh if it wasn't you're not the sort of person to oh no i won't probably punch you yeah let's uh let's show this actually for example really heavy yeah so this is um the reflux condenser i have to imagine yes um and it is all stainless on the outside which is cool but all of the no no it's this is copper that's not copper is it yeah see he uh will tell people when they're [ __ ] up yeah it's not picking up your fingerprints so i'd say it's it's got to show out of some sort on there crazy well there you go [Music] we have the still built and as far as we can tell we're not missing anything essential but we also don't have instructions and we have extra parts we have a few running theories what's your theory currently james um something to help flow back in to this into the pot but right um donna me um i initially thought it was a water manifold yeah i initially thought it was a water manifold too but then we found some extra plumbing parts that we didn't know [Music] existed [Music] dana yes oh i see your name right yes uh so what do you think of overall quality mate now that we've got it all together and you can see how it fits together uh everything fits nicely certainly looks great time for a cleaning run yes yep everything that we've put together so far looks really good it's great yeah i think it's really happy yeah awesome man awesome i'm glad to hear you're happy it is definitely sexy as hell the thing is that none of us are electricians [Laughter] yeah and this is big boy voltage yeah what could go wrong with alcohol vapor and water and yeah we might uh we might see if we can rope someone in to help us out with this all right guys it is uh months later actually isn't it a month later yeah we had christmas in between but we're all set up and we are heating up the vinegar run we are here oh exciting exciting uh so a couple of things to catch people up on on what's been happening while you've been working on this well i i haven't been able to be around uh did you get a sparky in yes we've got a sparky yes okay cool and what was the verdict on everything that they produced for you um right so the verdict was good good mostly yeah so they did a good job of what they made yeah um the control box could have been better but um it was a 70 control box so right was it safe yes it was safe was it functional yes it's functional so it was just it could have been implemented implemented slightly better okay right i'm with you okay cool cool cool uh what about getting it set up did you get all the electronic stuff set up by yourself uh no yeah so worked out pretty quickly we needed a 30 amp circuit and they're not very easy to come to come around in the garage and so we needed to run a whole new 30 amp circuit um so that involved quite a bit of cabling um and some hardware that uh so plug sockets right in the roof sort of up there um and yeah that all needed fitting i fitted most of it and it's all been checked by the the sparky the other thing that i didn't know what you were going to do when we last saw you was you hadn't decided what to put into the jacket whether you wanted this oil or so what did you what did you go with there right so i went with um monopropylene glycol which is antifreeze but also cows like it um which has got a boiling point of about 188 centigrade it's not cheap and neither was the heat transfer oil that was even more expensive um so i went with this and i put 20 liters into the jacket and it didn't really seem enough so i filled up another 20 liters of water um so that'll bring the boiling point down a bit um but yeah hopefully it will uh there'll be enough in there to see us through we also weren't entirely sure what you were going to do about cooling this thing how are you going to manage water what is the plan dude right what is this thing behind us because look look guys all right so this is off a subaru wrx um it's the radiator and so i've taken that straight off with a couple of big fans and i'm hoping that it's going to cool the water down enough so i can run circulation with a big barrel i've got outside yes so we've got a a pump here it's a um just a water water pump pump the water in from the barrel outside comes in up through there and i've got the basically straight flow through and to keep the pressure down so we're not plumbers we're probably going to get this wrong but the idea is that you don't want to be pumping a whole lot of water at a valve that's closed off or or cinched almost all the way down to control flow so you've got an overflow to direct water that we're not using in the condenser back over into the barrel yeah something like that does that work i think yeah yeah plumbers plumbers get in the comments and tell us why we're idiots all right mate the electricity is on the elements are heating up the water is sorted ready to go when we hit play uh and this thing is starting to get frothy so how are you feeling mate i'm feeling pretty toys feeling pretty good yeah it's taking a long time to get to this so uh yeah i'm feeling good unfortunately being a dad got in the way just a little bit and i ended up missing the rest of the vinegar run and the cleaning runs but but i made sure to get back to james's place asap to catch a spirit run [Music] all right dude so you've run this thing twice now i wasn't able to catch the first run yeah on camera but you've had some time to play with it big questions time number one what do you like about the store like what do you dig i just like the way it works right it's a real still right okay yeah oh and we should probably say uh i don't know if we even mentioned this before but before this you were using just a little tiny still oh yeah little pot still 25 litre thing that was given to me really by a friend who also thought i could do getting into a hobby what do you think of the boiler i love it it's really good yeah yeah so i've go towards gin so being able to make gin is going to be great um i've got some neutral now to do that yeah quite a bit of neutral so i've got some play time uh coming ahead but um yes i've got a one cpw and one tffb how is the actual running of the still been compared to what you were expecting it's a little bit harder just sort of finicky yeah well with the old pot still you just turn it on and it just does what it does because there's no nothing to no moving parts with this one um you make a change to the power and it takes quite a while for it to make a difference to the temperature because it's the jacket right yeah and so there's a bit of a delay there and then you've got water going everywhere yeah everywhere do you think that is due to this specific still or just the plate design in general just the plate design in general so there's nothing that you've ran into where the actual equipment you've bought isn't operating as it should be it's it's just you're getting used to a new type of stuff i'm just getting your sydney type of still yeah okay cool even bigger question what do you not like about the space um it could do with a few extra bits and pieces okay so um it's a water jacket still and i can't see how much water is in there oh right yeah okay so having a sight glass to show you how much oil or whatever it is that you're using yeah in the jacket whether it's full or not you just don't know anything i don't know yet so i'm sort of experimenting with a hose and emptying it and filling it right i had a bit of an escape this morning but not as much as the time before so that's that's pretty good okay cool yeah you also mentioned that it doesn't entirely drain properly the the inside of the pot yeah because it's a flat bottom yeah the bottom is flat um and the the fantastic agitator here sort of sticks into the hole a little bit as well okay so um the water doesn't quite drain out are they washed doesn't quite drain out properly at the bottom um and i think the agitator might stop some of the big lumpy bits going down into the uh the drain hole and i had a bit of a fun yesterday with that okay yeah so just to let you know you were doing uh plum brandy plum brandy yeah and you you had a whole lot of stones get stuck you couldn't drain them out even though it's got a dirty great big exhaust yeah well yeah yeah uh and then you flooded the place i had a bit of a flood yeah okay i don't have a video there unfortunately we've all done it don't you lie to me i know you've spilled stuff all over your garage already all right man so that's pretty much the list of complaints yeah oh oh we also found that the the column was leaking a little bit yeah there's feelings in the column but i think that's probably putting it together or switching out a gasket or yeah yeah just getting used to it and yeah okay cool now the thing i think that did sneak up on you is the amount of time and money you had to invest on getting this thing ready between it showing up in the box being able to actually run it yeah i guess so everyone else can go into this eyes wide open yeah do you want to just run through that first quickly yeah so the so to get the still here so when i first ordered the still um shipping was included and i was going to handle the customs myself okay um but really quickly i realized that i needed to get an agent in apparently yeah and so with with the agent still came straight through customs um the the guys did open it up so there's a bit of an extra charge there but it was a little bit more than i was thinking so it's like 800 or so to get that so okay cool to get it to get into the country and just so you know guys obviously this is specific to new zealand i have no idea how this works anywhere else your mileage may vary i guess so once you got it into the country that wasn't the end of the i wouldn't call it a saga so long story short you knew you were going to have a electrician coming out to install the high-end plug yeah but what you didn't anticipate is for example that this thing didn't come with the power cable to go from said plug to the box yeah and it didn't come with any way of connecting the still itself to the control box that's absolutely true yeah so you had to get the the same electrician to buy extra parts yeah roughly how much does that cost you um the electrician is a really good friend of mine right so only a few dollars in in parts from him yeah but going to the shop getting all the extra bits there's 250 300 worth of hardware right and that was at um cost rates so maybe 500 bucks or 700 bucks a year plus if you had to get an electrician in to do it it was a commercial one yeah they would have been charging you time as well so you're going to be looking at a grand or so yeah yeah okay uh cool all of that summing all of that up now that you know here's the question guys this is what you guys want to know now that you know exactly how much it's cost you and you know the amount of effort you've put into it and now you've been able to run the still are you happy this is what you bought would you buy this again i i probably would yes yeah yeah that's awesome yeah uh and we were having a talk about this off camera and it almost for me it kind of comes down to just the boiler the the pot because all of this you can buy in bits and pieces or you can make yourself or whatever but getting a jacketed still set up with an agitator you could have some pretty serious skill and probably kit to do that right yeah i think so yeah and i mean you could go down with go down the route of having a um direct heating yes um but that does limit and i want to make gin um so and i do have a gin basket as well sat sit down in the corner if you're wanting to do that then the jacketed boiler really gives you the added advantage you've been able to put the stuff into the skip yourself in the still and i think the same as well for um yeah whiskeys and bourbon especially anything yeah all right we've had james's thoughts and in just a minute i'm going to give you my thoughts sort of sum up my feelings on this whole thing but before i do i need to say a huge a huge thank you to the patreons thank you so very much patreons uh i get to do cool stuff like this all the time because of you and because of you guys i get to share it with everyone else as well so thank you very very much team uh alright guys so before i get into my thoughts on this i just wanted to touch really quickly on i don't know what else to call it but the morals of buying stuff like this from china um i get it some people aren't going to want to buy from china and some people are going to tell you that you shouldn't do it either honestly man um it's up to you and i'm not going to weigh in on this at all it's a personal preference if you want to vote with your wallet one way or the other then that's up to you um yeah that's what i'm saying about it but uh here's the thing guys so if you take that out of the equation um honestly man james got a damn good deal i will put a link to a spreadsheet down below that'll have uh literally an itemized cost of everything that he bought including um shipping and customs and the extra electronic parts he bought or the electrician bought for him and all those sort of things down the description below so if you want to check that out check it out but the long and the short of it is that it costs james um pretty much five grand new zealand to land the thing here in new zealand which works out to about three and a half grand american now if you take into account or or you think about the fact that he's getting a four inch column with plates uh a d flag and a product condenser uh and and most importantly a hundred liter jacketed pot or boiler whatever you want to call it i don't know man that's pretty freaking good value that really is if you think that there's better value for money out there and once again we're not talking about oh it's shipped from china because trust me uh if it was [ __ ] from china dana would have said so this the quality on this thing was pretty freaking good uh obviously we'll check back in with james in a year's time or whatever um and see if he's had any problems but really guys i couldn't fault it there was nothing i could fault about the the workmanship in the still so if you take that into account uh i think you're doing pretty freaking good to get all of those things for that price but in saying that if you think uh that you know of a product out there or a way of buying something out there for better value for money let me know comment section how about it now obviously obviously uh building yourself yeah um of course but dude i would uh i would not want to tackle building a jacketed still especially with an agitator as well i don't know man uh i guess you could buy the agitator build it still that's not for me anyway guys i hope you enjoyed this uh i hope you enjoyed having a look at someone else's kit i know it's on the high end uh we can definitely do these sorts of videos as well for the low end as well for the the cheaper setups perhaps people that have been a little bit ingenious and how they've spent their money how they've got value for money at the lower end or how they've set up cheaper stills if that's something you want to see let me know in the comments down below anyway guys uh i hope you liked the video if you did give it a thumbs up you know it helps me out a bunch if you like these videos and uh you're not subscribed yet hit the subscribe button down below and and i'll catch you next time guys keep on chasing the craft see ya

Channel: Still It

Views: 147,913

Keywords:

Id: zkwYD84J_Dc

Length: 23min 34sec (1414 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021