Contents
I have tried many ways to distill homemade rectified and I can say that this is a rather dreary and long process. While communicating with hobby colleagues, I learned that someone managed to automate the distillation a little.
And what moonshiner does not want his machine to drive on his own, without constant participation in the process? The determining factor in this matter is how the cube heats up. It is on the method of heating that the possibility of distillation automation depends, so at first nothing worked out for me.
The story was shared by my longtime subscriber Nikolay.
Gas heating – impossible to control
Gas heating is considered to be the most economical and fastest method. It is enough to put the cube on the stove and in half an hour the mash will be on the verge of boiling, but this is also the most unstable way – it is very difficult to control the level of heating of the mash.
Moonshine is a process in which 1-2°C already plays an important role, and a discrepancy of 5°C can fundamentally affect the quality of the drink at the end.
Light head fractions begin to evaporate already at 65°C, while alcohol – at 70°C, and if the temperature rises too quickly, the heads will inevitably fall into the raw alcohol.
Many also use induction cookers, but I have already ruined two stoves this way – they are not designed for the mass of the cube
I have always used gas heating and I can say that this method has its strengths, but the fact that it requires constant presence cannot be denied.
Theoretically, it is possible to automate the process, but only if the gas is supplied not from the pipeline, but from the cylinder. Then it is enough to use a solenoid valve and a spark source, but this is very unsafe, so no one uses this method.
Transition to electric cube
I used gas heating for about three years, but when I moved to the dacha, I was forced to change something, since the house was not gasified. Installing a heating element in an old cube was not an easy task – like many colleagues, I tried to save money.
The first thing I needed was to weld the clamp, and it is welded only by argon welding. It was possible to do this with specialists, and such a pleasure cost 1 rubles.
Also, to install the heating element, I needed:
- Special pad.
- Wires.
- Fork.
- Heat shrink.
Then, in ads on the Internet, I found a second-hand brass water heater for 500 rubles and decided that it would be perfect. After spending half a day installing the heating element and fixing the gasket to eliminate the slightest leaks, I decided to try the device in action.
At first everything was fine, the heating went on, the readings on the thermometers began to change rapidly, but after about 40 minutes the mash began to cool down. The cube did not heat up anymore, when the mash cooled down, I rang the heating element with a multimeter and it turned out that it just burned out.
Miser pays twice
It’s a shame that the Braga at that time could not be saved. Heating followed by cooling leads to its rapid sourness, so after six hours the mash began to emit an unpleasant sour smell and was poured into the toilet.
The next thing I did was to order a normal heating element, specially designed for home brewing. It turned out to be much easier to install, and all the wires were included. Half an hour later I already had a fully electrified cube in front of me.
However, this is not enough for a complete distillation, since the temperature must also be controlled.
To do this, you need to use a thermal relay, but I took the usual Tsypa thermal controller for incubators. The first distillation turned out to be much easier than the distillation on gas, since it was possible to leave for several hours.
Full process automation
I must say right away that I didn’t succeed in fully automating the process, since I still have to get the hose from one container to another, otherwise the heads, raw meat, and tails would all fall into one jar.
Otherwise, we managed to achieve full automatic switching of modes. The selection of heads begins first. The temperature controller is set to 67°C, passed through a timer and operates in this mode for exactly 60 minutes.
Then there is an automatic switch to the second mode – the selection of the body. The heating element warms up the mash to 82 ° C for three hours. All that is required is to transfer the tube to another container.
Another way to control the heating level is power control.
Then the final stage is the selection of tails. The third timer starts the final cycle and the heater heats the rest of the mash to 91°C. Tails are selected for only half an hour.
In total, you need to approach the apparatus three times – after the selection of heads, after the body and for complete shutdown. Think of a way to automate the change of capacity. Maybe you have some ideas about this?