Stripping Run #1

Published by Joey Joe Joe Jr on April 6, 2019April 6, 2019

Howdy Varmints, I’ll be going through my stripping run process from beginning to end including clean up. I try out a new invention where I turned my keezer’s C02 tank into a wastewater pump.

Here is a link to the fermentation of the sugar wine, and here is a link to the recipe I used.

Why a stripping run?

• Removes the solids from the sugar wine.
• Takes a large volume of low abv and turn it into a smaller volume of a higher abv, allowing you to fit more alcohol into your boiler.
• In future, we’ll adjust the pH before and after the stripping run to facilitate reactions that produce a higher yield and a cleaner vodka.
• Low wines store indeffinitly where sugar wine will spoil over time.

Let’s start off by siphoning into the boiler. I’m putting about 12 gallons of sugar wine in here at about 10% abv. We’ll assemble the still, ensure the needle valve is open all the way.
My still is hooked up to a 30-amp ground fault interrupter circuit breaker, you’ll need one if you are going to distill as they’re designed to save human life. I’ll be running a 240 volt 4500 watt element at 208 volts giving me about 3125 watts. This plugs into a clothes dryer plug I had installed in my den, which is where the breaker box is.
I’ll flip on the power, turn on the cooling water, and set an alarm for 2 hours. I’ll be shooting for about 12 quarts, or 3 gallons, of low wines.
While that happens, lets clean the fermenters.
2 hours has come and gone, my vapor temp is about 98 Celsius meaning most of the alcohol is gone, and I’ve overshot my collection by a quart or so. My apartment was getting pretty stinky with the smell of low wines at this point, and the distillate was sitting around 54 Celsius which is way too hot. In a future project, I’ll build a Liebig too cool down the distillate and keep the smell at a manageable level.
We’ll turn off the power and rinse out the fermenters with hot water.
We’ll remove the column and still head and attach this fitting that I doctored up.

We’ll pressurize the boiler with my invention and that will push out the wastewater. I hook up the drainage hose and run it to the bathtub.
Turn on the cold tap when draining hot liquid. Boiling hot water is not good for your pipes.
Give the boiler a tip to get the last of the liquid out. I don’t have a dip tube in there so it’s just a half coupling welded to the side wall. No need to actually pick it up.
Gas goes off, my contraption comes off, the ball valve is closed.
We’re ready for round 2, second verse same as the first.
We’ll siphon 12 gallons into the boiler again and do the entire process over again.
We’ll disassemble the pump, still head and column.
We ended up with over 6 gallons of clear, colorless, low wines, with about 35%ABV, devoid of any solids. We’ll be good to store these low wines indefinitely as they are high enough in alcohol to never spoil. We’ll use them in a future video for our spirit run.