RUNNING A STILL PART 1 MileHi 4 inch bubble plate column

welcome back to barley and hops i'm george we're so glad you're with us today i figured it'd be a good idea for us to just spend the day together um we'll talk about a bunch of different topics uh and yes uh we'll go through some routines and we're [Music] you know as always with all videos that we start we always have to go through the routines you know the rudimentary stuff you have an opportunity you're right there please subscribe share us with your friends comment below you know the routine and we appreciate that here at the channel we do get credit every time someone subscribes all right thank you all right um we're gonna i'm gonna do a bunch of different things today uh so this is going to be an editing nightmare trust me i'm going first i'm going to work on cleaning this copper but before i get to that uh on the last video when we ran the still i actually misidentified the kettle is a 26 gallon but it was actually a 13 gallon kettle so oh no sue me no uh you know sometimes it's just you know it it's it's it was an absence of the mind not the heart as they say so i want to show you the difference uh because today we're going to actually run the 26 gallon yes this is it this is the 13 gallon kettle and this is the 26 gallon kettle and this is the one that i mistakingly identified as a 26 gallon doesn't really make that much of a difference no not really because everything that happens happens from here up from here up and that is exactly the same the only difference is the volume that you start with in the bottom so in this particular case i'll be able to produce uh more because i can start off with a larger volume of mash as opposed to my smaller kettle but besides i thought i'd show it to you i mean my cool points go away you know you know what i mean and now before i get even get started i've got to do a little bit of cleaning and you know that we always make what we call 551 our cleaning solution god that stuff is amazing um because i'm going to clean these these copper plates that i used on the last time you know you take them out and you rinse them off and that does a pretty good job but they still oxidize um and tarnish so in order to get those clean and we'll show you this is what they look like this is uh this is what it looks like now and uh we're going to give you a look at these uh when they're finished um so all i've got to do now is just mix that up and five five one 500 milliliters of water 50 milliliters of hydrogen peroxide the three percent hydrogen peroxide real cheap stuff and one weight ounce of um citric acid so i'm going to mix this and the first thing i do is i'll mix 1000 milliliters because i'm gonna make actually i'll make a a quadruple batch because i want to be able to cover these down comers at the same time so that was one thousand and if you're following along and i make that's one thousand so that's twice as much um and this you see this is a linear problem so i can make four times as much and there we go and see that should cut yeah that should cover it so if i use 50 milliliters in um 500 milliliters then how much do i need in this one uh for this batch because i've quadrupled it so i'm going to need 50 50 is 100 50 is 150 and 50 is 200 so i need 200 milliliters of hydrogen peroxide now this is not as much as of of an exacting science these are of course rough figures if you put in an extra 20 or 30 milliliters of hydrogen peroxide it's you're not going to hurt anything but you need that hydrogen peroxide because of that reaction that it has with the copper and then the citric acid which is key there we go 200 and now all i've got to do is find myself a little there we go and we we needed one ounce and so we'll get now we need four ounces so i'm putting four ounces of citric acid now i get the citric acid at the it's your caning aisle you know in the grocery store where you've got all those mason jars and lids and stuff like that the citric acid is really really inexpensive as well car and i got to set this thing to ounces now for those of you who are not familiar with ounces um then please just use google and convert it that's what i normally do whenever i'm doing the videos i'll just i'll ask you know who alexa and also that was one oh i can just do this by volume now because i know what is in there two three and four so that was four ounces of citric acid so now i've got my mixture made uh the only thing left to do is to just kind of mix it up and then toss in and we're going to leave that set and we'll come back and check on it but you'd be amazed at the results and let me get all of these put in there now this stuff is not caustic so if you get it on your hands it doesn't hurt you uh it's not like an acid uh there's a there's a reaction that takes place between the copper and the slight film that's on this and it releases that and turns it to a clear clean copper there we go i've got all i've got all five of them in there and i'm going to leave that set aside and one other thing i'm going to throw in there just just because it's neat to demonstrate see i've got this old piece of copper mesh that's just been laying around i'm going to stick that in there too just just so you can see what it actually does it's it's pretty amazing stuff so you don't have to do anything to that but just leave it set there okay oh yeah one of my other adaptations i put this on a base with a two inch high capacity rollers so i could move it around that really comes in handy and i used a double bass for for strength that really comes in handy when you fill that up because it's extremely heavy that way i can roll it around the shop where i need it because you know as well as i do that once you get it set if you don't have it on something that moves it's there so a couple of other things that i need to do though see i need to take into consideration since i have a larger volume to run that means that my run time is going to be uh it is going to be extended and the reason the time is extended is because the volume that i'm going to run normally if you're gonna run like an eight gallon still you know one of the small those are pretty much standard and they're really really good for everyone to use um you should be running that probably around anywhere between four and a half to five hours and that is you know turn on and then okay i'm at the end of this shutdown if you're running it any longer than that a couple of things come to mind one is you're probably running a little bit too slow but if you're running it any quicker than four and a half hours then you're probably running it quite a bit too fast and we all know that tails can show up anytime during a run uh and how does that happen well if you've got more energy going into your still then you're able to remove and you're running it too hot then what you're doing is you're forcing tails to go through that vapor stream instead of instead of allowing your vapor stream to just naturally rise off of the volume off of your liquid and then transfer through the column so just keep that in mind and of course when you get down to the end of your run you're going to have to turn the heat up just a little bit because it takes more energy to make that separation and that's when you have a tendency to start drawing tails so that's a good time to look out for that so what we're going to do today is see normally for that eight gallon still i would have a cooler set here with a 5000 btu air conditioner unit that i have fashioned into a water chiller um the challenge with that is when you come to a volume of that that large and to run it for that length of time is that i wind up heating my water faster than i can actually cool it because the it it overtakes the chilling capacity of that evaporator coil so it becomes a useless piece of equipment so i had to come up with another solution a couple of different things i could do uh one i could pull the 90 cord out and then start filling that with ice and run that but can you imagine the amount of ice i'd have to go through or i could just run it straight off the garden hose but i'm going to be running this for quite a while probably about a good six hours um so that's quite a bit of water i have a solution um i just i just happen to have and not everybody has this available but the solution i came up with was this 18 000 gallon pool i got in the backyard uh right now the water temperature at the bottom of that pool is a real blistering 68 degrees so i'm going to use that i'm going to drop this pump the submergible pump into the bottom of that pool and then i'm going to pump it out because it's only about 75 feet away from the shop and i'm going to pump that water out all the way into the shop and then when i get it to the shop i've got this booster pump that i'm going to pump it into and then this is not actually the booster pump i want to use i'm going to use the one i used the other day and where did i put that whoops let me find that because this is not the one i wanted to use there you are ha gotcha this is that blickman pump that i talked to you about on the other video uh this is really neat and i got this from mike down in florida so i'm gonna use this as a booster pump so what will happen is is i'll pump that water into the inlet and i'll boost the flow rate because i'm able to control the flow rate with this valve and of course i've got a valve on the the flag motor so i can control the the flake material water flow and the other one is just the condenser i'll run that constant so i'll run it in and then run it from the from this pump into this pump and then out from this side of the pump into the still and then my exit port which i'll put together and i'll run that all the way back to the pool so that i can circulate warm water back into the pool so that's my solution for today now one additional thing that i'll be using is since i've got two 240 volt elements in that kettle and i've got 150 500 watt and i think i'm going to switch out the other one to a 3500 watt element because i don't really need that much energy uh we'll go through that on the board in a minute but uh so i've got two controllers i've got this one here from mile high that comes that came with a still and this thing i love it works really well it's a pulse width modulator so i can adjust the the uh the power that goes to that element so i can operate that element as either a 5500 watt element or i can turn it all the way off or anywhere in between that i want to and so for the other element what i do is i fashion my own and we've got a video you can go back and look at the videos uh about how to assemble one of these on your own and i made one that was it's just so simple took me about 45 minutes uh and i've got my volt amp meter i've got a master on off switch and of course my potentiometer to control the amperage flow so and i'll put that on an extended cord because just makes it easy for me to use so i'll use two different ones at the same that way i can shut one down completely without having to just reach up and unplug it um so that's just the way i'm going to run it you can run it any way you like but while we're on this topic oh let's talk about something near and dear to everybody's heart and that is heater elements let's answer some common questions that come up all the time because of course we want you to be safe in what you do as well as be efficient and also be successful i mean deal deal okay um now and i know there's going to be somebody in the back someone's sitting around there is going to fall asleep and you're going to miss this and of course that's when i get all the emails the text messages and all the other stuff um just this is not that difficult so let's talk about heating elements and requirements because in order to be safe and efficient and successful you've just got to follow some basic rules okay you you don't you you can't require more energy than you can produce than you can provide okay that's number one um so what happens if you do that well if you're requiring more amperage which is actually like the pressure of yeah the flow of electricity what happens in your circuit breaker but your circuit breaker trips because the byproduct of high amperage is heat heat dissipation if you don't have a wire gauge that's large enough to handle the amperage draw of an of an element well then that wire starts to overheat heat up and could potentially melt and cause an electrical fire uh so we need to understand that going in uh this is a 5500 watt element all right they come in many shapes many sizes many different designs but this is pretty much standard they look pretty much like this and this one's on a 10 gauge 10 this is a awg american wire gauge 10 gauge wire with a 30 amp twist lock plug now remember also electricity works the same way all around the world it doesn't electricity doesn't care where it is it's going to work the same way so everything i'm going to do anything i'm going to describe here is going to actually be applicable no matter where you are uh but here i talk primarily about where am i i'm in the united states so i'll use the american system of course in american voltage which is 120 and 240 volts for pretty much standard throughout households so this is a 30 amp twist lock plug and the reason i'm using a 30 amp is because 150 500 watt element requires a pretty substantial amount of amperage but it does not exceed 30 amps so when i do plug this in i want to make sure that i'm on a 30 amp circuit and that my circuit breaker can handle at least 30 amps in this particular case i've got one that will hold 50 amps so i'm more than safe but i just want to make sure that i've got the cable and the plug that will match my element now we're here alter let's let's first let's figure out how to do this all you need is a calculator or you know long hand on the board um your amps that are going to be flowing through to your element to make your element operate based on the wattage of that element is a is a product of uh watts divided by volts that's all that that's all that's the only thing you really need to know right now uh so we got a 5500 watt element if we divide that by and we're going to provide 240 volts 240 volts what does that equal you can do the math there at home 5500 divided by 240 equals at 100 power 200 or 22.91 amps of electricity will be running through that wire so you see and i have a 30 amp plug yeah we get that a in there i have a 30 amp plug and i've got 10 gauge wire which will handle up to 30 amps so i'm perfectly safe now what happens if i exceed that oh see we were talked about that what happens if i have 250 500 watt elements well 5500 plus 5500 is what is 11 000 if i divide that by 240 what does what is the results 11 000 divided by 240 equals now my amperage requirement is 45.83 amps this will no longer support my draw so what is what are the dangers well the dangers then is that as that wire is trying to carry that those 45 amps actually 46 amps really when you round it up as it's trying to carry that 46 amps it's only rated for 30 amps then it starts to heat up because the byproduct of high amperage is heat so now you have to use a larger wire or and a larger plug and and of course wherever your source is you have to have a source with a breaker that's large enough to handle at least 45 amps see in this particular case i have two boxes and i've got two circuits and they're both 50 amp circuits and i'm drawing it off of a 200 amp service so i'm going to run one off of one circuit and i'm going to run the other one off of the other circuit so i'm no i'm not i'm not going to come anywhere near pulling this off of one line the most i'll ever pull is 22.91 amps at a hundred percent you follow that so far oh gosh i knew you would i knew you would because as you see it's not that hard you can do the math real quick to figure out if what you're trying to do is both safe and effective and which will ultimately make you successful or not um and let's do something real quick here that really comes up often let's do the same problem this time using 120 volts when we use 120 volts um this is why you'll probably you will almost never find uh now i'm not going to say never because i have found five i have found 5000 watt elements that are rated at 120 volts which are so uncommon you can buy just about anything out of china but as a standard in the united states you will not find an element a an element larger than about 2 000 watts and why is that well because your standard current in your households in your garage in your shop at the shed your standard american voltage is 120 volts at 60 hertz and remember it hurts there's nothing more than a timing i believe we're just going to erase this because that's that's more of a timing function you know how many how many cycles per second so you got 120 volts and that's normally restricted to a 20 amp circuit and that's what you'll routinely find throughout most of your households now there are some households and depends on the age there are some that are 15 amp uh you very seldom find a 10 amp circuit because 10 amp circuits considered low low amp but normally you'll find either 15 or 20 amp circuits now on a 20 amp circuit you're also going to find that they're going to use 12 gauge wire and that's what's normally run throughout your household unless of course you know you've got the stove or your dryer or your washing machine or your air handler for your air conditioner and your heater for your your home will normally be on a a 30 a 50 or a 60 amp circuit with the appropriate gauge wire to support that and that'll be 240 volts okay that's what you'll normally find but we're just going to talk about these this right now keep this in mind two okay what was it uh we had watts we had 2 000 watts 2 000 watts divided by what 120 volts what does that equal i already know wait 16.6 amps what is our restriction what what what do we have available we have 20 amps so 16.6 amps fits what happens if we go to 2500 watts divided by 120 equals 20.83 amps we have now exceeded our 20 amp circuit so all we'll do is we'll just continue to blow a fuse we'll just continue to blow a fuse you see that's why you'll normally always find your you normally won't find 120 volt element that's in excess of 2000 watts so all these times when i get the e i get emails a lot i get texts uh somebody wants to put together 120 volt and they want to use two 2 000 watt elements well what happens if you use two 2 000 watt elements well now you have 4 000 watts divided by 120 equals what divided by 120 equals 33.3 amps far exceed your 20 amp circuits we don't have circuits available in excess of 20 amps within a standard household now you may find some in some industrial applications but again remember they are wired for that purpose and they're rated at that purpose because they have fuses for that purpose or circuit breakers but for our purposes that's why we're restricted to one two thousand watt element now one two thousand watt element is plenty it is plenty for an eight gallon still anywhere between 8 and 10 gallons what's the what's the challenge when you start to increase or exceed that 10 gallon limit well it just takes a lot longer for that element to heat all that volume so your heat up time becomes extremely long uh if you're losing heat faster than you could put it in well then there's a tendency for you to never achieve the proper temperature okay so if you're using for as an example a 1500 watt element or a 1000 watt element in an 8 gallon still a 1500 watt element would actually do but a 1000 watt element may not ever get you there a 1500 watt element would get you there and help you maintain that it would just take a longer time for you to heat it up a 2000 watt element would do extremely well put it on a controller and then that way you control it wherever you want uh but if you exceed 10 gallons in a still a 2000 watt element you're going to be pushing it to try to get it to do that now anything larger than that is when we go to we skip that and we go to the 240 volt circuit which runs the washer the dryer the stove your air handler your heating unit and if you can branch off of your circuit breaker your box if you can branch off another circuit with the appropriate circuit breaker and the appropriate size wire you can run a separate circuit on 240 volts and then you can start using things like a 35 100 watt a 5500 watt a combination of those so and again just do the math if uh if you're curious about what that what what your amperage yeah amperage requirement would be and they start making the 240 volt elements at about the 2500 watt uh level uh oh by the way while we're here okay so 35 and 55 we might as well do that if i was going to run those together on one circuit what would that be it would have to be a 240 volt circuit because we know what the requirement is for anything larger than 2500 watts it's going to be 240 volts if we have 5500 plus 3500 that equals 9000 watts better known as 9 kilowatts that'd be a 9 kw divided by 240 divided by 240 equals you got it yeah 37.5 amps you see we're back we're back at the beginning now we got and with these two in in combination you can run up to oh gosh you you go up to a 30 gallon still with that easily easily without any without any worries okay and also without any extended heat up time and you can maintain that temperature as long as you've got a controller on it so that's it in a nutshell and i know i hate to bore you with all the whiteboard stuff but when when you lay it out like this and you start to discuss it and you explain why things are the way they are well then it just all of a sudden it makes sense is why are elements why do they stop producing 120 volt elements of 2000 watts well it's because it would exceed our 20 amp restriction it's just that simple okay well now that we've been through all of that um we're now back it's been about 45 minutes and see you can see how that liquid in there is starting to turn a darker a darkish green hue or blue um and uh so and if you can recall what our bubble plates perforated bubble plates looked like going in all we've done is allowed those to soak and you'll see how clean they are now and one of the other things i put in there was this copper mesh and this copper mesh has been rejuvenated and again it's just uh simply allowing it to soak in that 551 cleaning solution and again this stuff is not caustic so you know it won't hurt your skin or anything like that but it does a really good job of cleaning copper it'll clean a whole lot of stuff uh it gosh it'll give a clean stainless steel it'll clean just about anything now i've well we've just about come to an end for today and i'm just going to wipe off all of these and set them aside because i've got some column cleaning to do then i've got some assembly to do and then of course i've got some i got to work on the water source and make sure i don't have any leaks in that and then we're bound and set to do some distill it but we've still got a whole lot to talk about so until next time happy distilling

Channel: Barley and Hops Brewing

Views: 28,205

Keywords: neutral spirit, sugar wash, barlerandhops, hops, home, Sugar (Ingredient), sugar mash, distilling, barley, corn sugar vs cane sugar, corn sugar mash recipe, making a wash for distilling, running a still for the first time, first distillation, using yeast, mooshine, whiskey, making rum, making vodka, bourbon, baby step bourbon, making bourbon at home

Id: DyO9umoGBmw

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021