Home Distillation of Alcohol (Homemade Alcohol to Drink)
Designs & Plans
Check out the Photos of Stills section to at least see what they should be constructed like.
Both Pot & Reflux stills are relatively simple and both produce liquor.
The difference is just that for a reflux still you have a packed column
before the condensor, and you get some of the vapour to condense and drip
back through the packing. You do this if you want to make
clean/pure/tasteless alcohol of around 75%-96% purity for adding flavours
to, or making gin/vodkas etc.
If however you just want to make straight forward whiskey / schnapps etc
with some flavour, you can use either a pot or a reflux still.
An interesting note is that some copper in the vapour path is benefical.
See the Materials page for more details why.
Some people who have built all-stainless steel stills have found there to still
be some smell +/or odour in their neutral spirits, which goes away when they put
some copper in (usually replacing the scrubber packing with copper scrubbers).
Reflux Still Designs
For neutral spirits you want a reflux condenser, so that the falling
precondensate washes the rising vapour, reducing the water and
impurity content, giving a cleaner, safer, and higher purity product.
The more contact you can achieve between the liquid & vapour, the cleaner
and purer the product will be. To do this, increase the reflux ratio (the
ratio of liquid falling to vapour rising) and the surface area that it
is occuring over.
A reflux can be made by packing the upper section of the column with
inert packers (eg marbles (OK), rachig rings (better), or best - stainless steel pot cleaners
(the ones that look like little springs, NOT the fine weave ones, or God forbid,
those already soaped ready for use)), and cooling them by
wrapping the cooling water hose around the outside, or passing a couple of
cooling lines through the top of the column. Even better is to have either a separate
condensor above them, or best - totally condense all the vapour above the packing,
divert some to keep, and return the rest to the top of the packing.
Plans for Reflux Stills
Pot Still Designs
There don't seem to be many instructions around for how to build pot stills.
I guess this could be because there are just so many ways, and it really depends
on what you have available to you. One factor to consider is the angle of the lyne
arm. Even with a pot still you get a little bit of vapour condensing on the head & arm,
and running back down into the pot as a bit of reflux. Depending on how much internal
reflux is going on, the flavour will vary. An upward sloping arm will cause much to run
back into the pot, thus cleaning & lightening the vapour more, whereas a downward sloping
arm will send all the vapour towards the jar, and you'll collect a heavier flavour.
See my Photos of Distilleries page to see
what variations in this are around in commercial distilleries. Some also have a bulge
in the head. This constriction then expansion causes some of the vapour to drop out,
and again increases the reflux, and lightens the spirit.

Wal elaborates ...
The shape and height has an effect on flavor.
- Traditional Alambic.
This is descended from stills used by alchemists. It consists of a
domed cylindrical boiler with a bulbous still head. It sits in a
brick furnace. From the still header chamber, the lyne arm usually
slopes downwards or is U-shaped ('Swan's Neck'). The condenser is a
coil in a tank of water. Raki stills, moonshine stills and the
'Alambic Charentais' for making cognac are examples.
- Varied Boiler shapes.
- Conical, classic whisky pot still ('Springbank' whisky)
- Onion shape, slightly fatter than the classic shape ('Glenlivet'
whisky)
- Pear shape ('Vintage Islay' whisky)
- Varied Neck (Column) shapes and heights.
- Conical column from boiler.
The smallest whisky stills are at 'Edradour'and the tallest at
'Jura', 'Bruichladdin', 'Glenfardas'. The stills at 'Glenmorangie'
whisky distillery are ex gin stills and are the tallest at 5.3m
- Boil ball and conical column ('Strathmill' whisky)
- Boil ball and cylindrical neck ('Lomond Still')
- Additional reflux feature in column. Column length and the Milton
Ball header chamber create reflux, but some necks are cooled with
running water to increase reflux ('Fettercairn' whisky). The
traditional Australian brandy pot still has a 'Brandy Ball' water
jacket at the top of the column. All are open columns. The 'Lomond
Still' has 3 adjustable plates and is used as a wash still at 'Scapa'
whisky distillery.
- Carterhead Still. The column contains a basket holding the gin
botanicals ('Bombay Sapphire' gin')
- Varied Lyne Arms.
- Horizontal
- 30 degree downward slope
- 30 degree upward slope ('Deanston' whisky)
- U-shaped or'Swan's Neck'.'Alambic Charentais' for cognac,
'Plymouth' gin', 'Talisker' whisky, 'Lagavulin' whisky.
Plans for Pot Stills
- Dangerous Laboratories Tea Kettle still
- Using a pressure cooker - Click on 'Articles'
Scroll down & Click on 'Distilling the Green Fairy' by JB
Regarding using pressure cookers, Jack cautions ...
I've used them- I hate them. The pressure release valves ALWAYS leak (fire
hazard, and damned wasteful), thay always come coated in some
impossible-to-remove grease, the places to mount the thermometer is always
guaranteed to give false readings (either high or low, never the same twice).
They are expensive, heavy, the aluminum model pits to easy, and the steel is
to expensive (with the same problems except pitting of the metal). Don't
bother. Get a small keg or 5 gallon drum that's stainless and food grade-
I've seen them for from $20 to $40US. Or get a milk can (US$100) expensive,
but attractive.
Below is a diagram of Harold B's pot still. Very cheap and easy
to make. Harold suggests that you should adjust the heat so that
the lower end of the condensor can be touched. The reason for this
is that you can see water vapour if things are too hot, but you
can't see the alcohol vapour.

Walter describes his pot stills ... "Volodia's Samohonka 1&2"
Inspired by folk stills in Jamaica and East Africa made from 44gal drums, (see "Alcohol in East
Africa. 1850-1999" - www.dur.ac.uk/History/web/distillhist.htm)
I made an urban version
using:

- Pot : 5gal (20 L) open top paint container.(These can be ordered in new from
some proprietary paint chain outlets/paint trade oulets, or get some free
from painting contractors and clean them with paint stripper/turpentine (I
have done this before I found a source for $AUS15 ($US7.50) "Ameron"
coatings makes a heavy gauge container for their industrial coatings. The
parent company is in the U.S. The paint company "Solver" in Australia can get unused containers through
their chain of shops. Container manufactures sell them quite cheaply but
only in lots of 50 (I enquired). Cleaning free empties is not too difficult.
and helps to recycle them. I know a local owner of a paint store who
recycles them into kid's rubbish bins with appropriate designs on them - why
not something more useful!
- Outlet arm - 1.5m of 10mm (3/8in) soft copper tube, bent to form a "lyne arm",up 200 vertically &
then 600 long inclined upwards (to get some reflux) and then down 700
vertically. The 10mm soft copper tube is easily bent without
flattening - use salt inside the tube to help prevent this, standard grommet
for plastic beer fermenters, or improvise using cut sections of synthetic
wine corks glued to both sides( they close in well).
- A 500 long Leibig condenser over the 700 copper tube section out of plastic
T sections (2 x 19mm/13mm (3/4in,1/2in) barbed PVC Tees) & 500 length of 19mm (3/4 in) plastic tube,
clamps, silicone or epoxy resin, plastic glue.


- Rubber grommets (as for plastic fermenters)
- Plastic tubing - standard 13mm (3/4in) plastic tubing with plastic tap to
hose connector, 10mm tubing for distillate (this fits on the 10mm (3/8in)
copper tube), and for the water outlet from bucket to sink.
- Gas flame diffuser mat or bain marie (water bath) to get even heating.
- Thermometer -digital or mercury to measure pot vapor temp. Stop distilling
at 91C (196F).
- Thumper/Doubler - 10 L (21/2gal) paint container, with rubber grommets for
copper tubing.

- Worm condenser variant - 20L (5gal) plastic bucket or cut down container,
coiled copper tubing, grommets.

No welding - just glue, silicone, clamps.
All this is sitable for most kitchen stoves and sinks. Obviously this is an
introductory still for the beginner.Paint tins are not heavily coated. Kept
dry it should last years - rust remover will extend this.
I forgot to mention Safety aspects important as we don't want kitchens going
up in flames!
I switch the exhaust fan on to take away any stray fumes, even though the
ring clamp is air-tight.
I made the lyne arm quite long for partial reflux and to take it away from
the stove.
The distillate outlet tube goes down to the floor, well away from the stove.
An electric stove might be safer, although apparently slower.
MooNShiNeR describes his 75 gallon pot-still, doubler and shotgun condenser below.
See Moonshine Still Photos for a couple of photos of it.
I use a medium sized (75 gal) pot still with a doubler/thumper
(5 gal) and a shotgun condenser for my purposes. I also utilize a
20 gallon outfit with a 1 gallon doubler and a worm condenser mainly
for running smaller batches and epecially for running backings or low
wines to "up" the proof quickly.
I use copper sheets soldered with silver solder to build most of my
components. Shotgun condenser made from of an old, antique copper
fire extiguisher. Cut both the ends off and sand everything inside
and out. Clean it to the "eat off of it" stage. Cold water enters the
shotgun condenser from the bottom and exits the top to force the hot
water out and this always keeps the bottom part of the condenser
way-cool.A shotgun condenser is basically a condenser with a water jacket too cool
the steam and it has dozens of 3/8" copper line that the steam goes
through. It's kinda hard to explain. Where the steam goes through looks
like the business end of a gatlin gun.
Bore two holes in the jacket about 3" from each end and solder a brass hose
copper garden hose connector in it, top and bottom. On the one you use for
the bottom, you will put a spigot used to regulate the amount of cool water
coming into the condenser. On the top one you'll attach a garden hose and
lay it out where the hot water can drain off the top of the condenser.
Two copper sheet circles are cut and clamped together and numerous holes
drilled through them. The circles are placed inside the copper jacket and
spot soldered.(silver) in place with a few pieces of the 3/8" line in to
keep things lined up good. The lines are cut about 4" shorter than the
jacket. Start putting the lines in and soldering them in place and solder
the circles in good, top and bottom.
On the first run, you'll be able to tell if you have any leaks or not. you
can fix them if it does.
Make a tight fitting cap for the top to be sealed/pasted on with corn meal
and water. The bottom does not require a tight fit at all. It is just there
to collect the alcohol as it comes through and then out to the jug/bucket.
With a shotgun condenser, you can fire the still as hard as you want to and
you'll have no problem with it not keeping up. That's why people who do
volume like them so much.
A. Nonimus suggests ..
First off - most homemade potstills
in the U.S. are made out of 20 litre pressure cookers (they have all the
fittings you need including pressure release safety valves)- If this is in
fact what is planned, you MUST remember to NOT PERMANANTLY MODIFY THE
PRESSURE COOKER IN ANY WAY -(remember, 3/8" copper tubing makes a nice coil,
and fits the outlets on most stills!) if the law gets news about you running
your own still- they can (with a warrant- not hard to get anymore, I'm
afraid) raid your place, if they find a pressure cooker with a bunch of
copper tubing attached to it, and holes drilled in it that are homemade- they
will have the evidence needed to take you to jail for running a still. IF
the pressure cooker is always returned to it's original state (normal
fittings and weights) after you distill with it, and if you put your
condensor next to some beer making supplies (or, rather mash making supplies-
same thing)- when (if) the cops show up, they find a normal (unaltered)
pressure cooker and something you will swear up and down is a wort chiller
for the making of beer. If no moonshine is found- they have absolutely no
case against you.
Second - The average
20litre pressure cooker can be set inside a large stockpot (the 30 quart or
larger models, just measure the cooker, and go out shopping for a cheap
canning pot big enough to hold it easily). By placing 2 pieces of wood,
pipe, etc. accross the top of the canning pot, the handles on the pressure
cooker will sit on these cross pieces- this will keep the bottom of the
pressure cooker off of the bottom of the canner. Fill the large tub with
water and then fill the pressure cooker/potstill with your mash and cook with
a nice even heat (if using gas this reduces the fire hazard as well- now the
alcohol isn't in direct contact with the metal touching the flame). This
allows you to distill mash that has a lot of solids (the more gentle heat
helps prevent sticking and burning), it also allows you to do something else
while warming everything up- Just put the water on to boil, and put the
canner in after the heat is where you want it- better temp control- and
unlike the still- you don't have to watch the water heat up (unless you are
bored out of your mind)- just make sure the potstill body isn't touching the
metal of the large stockpot (The "jacket")- there you go- a homemade steam
heated still!
Thumpers, Doublers & Slobber Boxes
Some moonshine stills have a "thumper" or "doubler" between them and the condensor. This is a
jar of sorts, half-filled with liquid (water, mash or tails).
See the Moonshine Photos for
examples of them.

Thumper
This acts as a simple second distillation stage. Once its
fully saturated with alcohol (hence better to start with something already
containing alcohol), and up to temperature, the vapour leaving it will be
doing the equivalent of a second distillation (usng the incoming vapour as
the heat source) (see the wee applet in Reflux Design ... set it to 2 stages
.... so the vapour leaving a 15% wash will be coming off at 65%, after going
through a second stage (the thumper) it will be at 85%).
How does this work ?
I'll try and describe it ...the main pot heats up, and begins giving
off ethanol vapours (say at 40% purity at 96 ° C off a 5% wash)... these get
passed into the thumper and try to bubble up through the water there. But
because the
water is cold too, the vapour will all condense if given the chance (e.g.
small bubbles & water deep enough). A bit later on, the thumper water is
starting to heat up and increasing in ethanol content ....
soon the thumper is at say 84 ° C, and the ethanol content
is around 40% - gees - that sounds like a second pot
still doesn't it ? So the ethanol starts coming coming out of solution, though
this time it will be at around 75-80% -
hence the second distillation occurring - all for free, no additional cost
or heating involved. Of course all this depends on how effective the
thumper is at knocking down the incoming vapour - e.g. bubble size, depth of
immersion etc, but you get the basic idea.
Look at the energy involved ..
Heat of Vapourisation/Condensation
Water = 2260 J/g
Ethanol = 855 J/g
So an incoming stream of 40% ethanol will give up about 1698 J/g, whereas to
vapourise a 75% rich vapour needs about 1206 J/g. Then given that the
flowrate of the 75% product is going to be only just over half of that
entering, you have HEAPs of energy left over, to first heat the liquid there
during the inital phase, then to superheat the vapour once the thumper is up
to temperature. So the stuff coming in can more than happily look after
itself in terms of redistilling itself.
To make the thumper effective you want
- lots of vapor liquid contact, ie heaps of small bubbles - eg use
a screen or simply lots of pinholes in the bottom of the inlet tube.
(You want to keep the depth of the liquid fairly shallow to keep the pressure
in the still low. Water accumulates in the thumper so it is nice to have a
drain to keep the level constant.)
- the liquid in the thumper to eventually resemble the vapors
coming off of the primary boil, so a small volume of wash or, maybe
better, tails from the last run to speed up the equilibration. If
the volume of liquid is small and/or the starting liquid in the
thumper is higher proof than the wash, all this will happen quickly.
Deb recommends .. You put tails or mash into the thumper - not water -
and the loss is not a factor compared to the resulting alcohol content :) I highly
recommend a thumper!
For sizing a thumper, Ted suggests ..A good rule of thumb is make the thumper twice the size of the amont of
distillate in a single run. ie: one run = 1 liter of spirits then make
the thumper 2 liters .... as a minimum, have it at least 1/3 the volume,
ie ((#gallons of wash * %alc of wash) / 3), or if using tails in the doubler,
((gallons of wash * %alc of wash + gallons of tails * % alc of tails) / 3).
I myself prefer to use a larger size to allow for condensation that always seems to
overflow the thumper.
My grandfathers still was 250 gallons and had two 50 gallon thumpers as well
as a 50 gallon slobber pot.
Note that thumpers aren't the same as slobber boxes (although they look fairly
similar. The inlet in a slobber box doesn't extend down into the liquid,
so no bubbling & hence further distilling takes place. Rather, it just
provides a place for any rubbish (ie foam, mash etc) pushed up the neck of a pot still
to settle out before entering the condensor. They sometimes have a small
drain cock on the bottom of them to help empty them while the still's running.

Slobber Box
Gin Heads
David writes .. A Gin head is a large separate compartment that sits above the
boiler on a gin still in which the botanicals (juniper berries, coriander
etc.) from which gin gets its unique flavour are placed and through which
the the alcohol vapour must pass before it enters the column. As such gin
stills are pot stills rather than reflux. They are still specifically
designed for making gin although they are and can be used for making other
similar drinks. As such they have mostly been made by one British company
for the last two centuries although I dare say there are now other
companies that make similar stills elsewhere. Steam or vapour distillation
is better at extracting essential oils and other more soluble components as
compared to steeping which tends to extract tannins, phenols and the more
harsh bitter components.
UPS adds ..A gin head still is a pot still that has a basket like arrangement just at
the start of the "lyne arm" (the part of the condensor coil that is coming
out of the top of the boiler, but has not yet entered the cooling tank yet).
In the basket goes the botanicals that turn what is essentially a vodka into
a gin. This is the method that Bombay uses among others, and is thought to
give a more delicate style of gin. Nothing really fancy, just a basket
sitting on top of the boiler before the condensor- if you lookat some
commercial distilleries pics, you often see a swollen bulb at the top of the
still where the condensor line runs out from - if a basket arrangement was put
there it would be a gin head still - appearantly, many scotch distilleries use
a gin head still - they just don't put any botanicals in it. This is a
holdover from the days in England when gin was the most common (cheap) drink
to be found- when gin's image crashed the scotch distilleries bought the
surplus stills.
Ted also adds ..A gin head is a pot or column that steam travles through enroute to the
condenser. A thumper works rather well. Just pack it with the herbs and run
clean drinkable 60% ethanol in your still for gin. Pack it with peppermint
to make schnappes. Pack it with... well you get the picture.
Put just water or varying amounts of ethanol in the still for making oils
from mint or whatever has an oil contenet.
Condensers
I have done a wee interactive calculator
to help with sizing condensers.
Andrew advises ...
One of the easiest ways to increase a heat trasfer coeficient is to
increase the velocity of the fluids. Temperature of the cooling
medium helps, but velocity is MUCH better. This is why blowing on a
spoon full of soup with your breath (about 90degrees F) cools it off
much quicker than holding it in front of your nose, even on a chilly
morning. What I'm getting at is that close clearances are desireable, as
you will get lots of heat tranfer into your cooling water.
A good design, utilising this is Tom's version, used in a Nixon-Stone
settup - see here for his diagram.
If you're wanting to make a condensor coil, like the Nixon-Stone style ...
Paul offers .. if you are going to bend copper, get a tube bender. This is a wound
steel spring that allows you to bend tubing without kinks. Your hardware
or plumbing supply can help.
and John ...Spring-benders while they aid in crude tube bending can be replaced with
a die and mandrel type of bender. This will yield uniform bends.These
benders are available from "Imperial Eastman Co." For larger diameters
anneal the bend area, cool,pack with sand and form over wooden die that
has been fabricated to match bend radius. This procedure will elevate
the finished product above the amateur level.
You just need to evaluate if the extra cost is worth the extra quality.
Jack suggests ..
A fancy mandrel type of arrangement is easier to get than you might think -
most people in this area just wind the copper tubing around an old paint can.
It works a lot better than doing it by hand or with a spring tubing bender.
Past about one half an inch in diameter it gets to be a little hard to do.
Another approach is to air cool the distillate. "Vonmantik" writes ..
I had the fortune of befriending an
old distiller from the smokey mountains who had a ten liter cooker
with reflux tower. The unusual part was that he had designed a air
cooled condenser. It was made of about 25ft of 3/8 copper tube coiled
tight and centered in about 4ft of pvc pipe, on top was a small box
fan (from a recycled computer) that drew air through the pipe. Intake
was controlled by a homemade collar with allowed the operator to
contol air flow. This an idea that can be expanded on it there is a
problem plumbing water to the place you want to set up.
Homer has a diagram of how he has fitted the coils into his
reflux column. Click for a larger diagram :

Walter describes the "gattling gun" condensor ...
I noticed that the N-S stills have a coiled vapor condenser consisting
of 3m of 5mm tubing through which water flows, and from comments seems
inadequate. What about using a mini shot-gun condenser?
On a typical 50mm diam. column this would mean say a 300mm length of
50mm tubing, with a plate on both ends with 12 holes drilled in a
geometric pattern to take 12, 5mm open-ended tubes welded in place. It
is still open to the sky for safety. On the side there is a water
inlet at the bottom and an outlet at the top for the cooling water. In
effect we have 3.6m of vapor in 5mm tubing surrounded by cooling
water rather than the other way around. The unit can be welded on the
top or attached by a standard 15mm threaded plumbing connector so that
it could be replaced if necessary.
Vacuum Stills
Using a vacuum allows the use of lower temperatures, and can attain
higher alcohol concentrations, eg at 42 mm Hg (cf 760 mm Hg = atmospheric pressure)
the column only need be at 35 C (ie just use hot tap water to heat with).
The azeotrope (the point where distillation ceases to work because the vapour and
liquid purity are the same) moves towards 100 % as the pressure is lowered; below 0.1
atmospheres it disappears, allowing you to distill all the way to 100% alcohol
(provided you beef the reflux ratio up to >20). They can also be more energy efficient,
and allow for a greater capture of the available alcohol. The lower temperatures
also mean that they're use a bit in the distillation of essential oils
(which would be otherwise be broken down at higher temperatures).
The graph below shows the reduction in temperature. I'm not quite happy yet with my calculations
for this (the Textbook & 1 Atm lines should be the same), so don't go and
design from it, but you can see the basic principle at work ...

There are several problems with Vacuum stills though:
- you can lose a lot of valuable alcohol vapour out through the vacuum
pump,
- you must have an accurate measure of the vacuum applied
(not a big problem, one of the reasons the still is not easy to build),
- its hard to find leaks (thus requires care during construction),
- very low vacuums are difficult/expensive to attain (but generally not required - only a small vacuum is needed), and
- the low temperature can make it difficult to recondense to vapours
(need realy cold cooling water & enough condensor surface area)
Often the vacuum can be made by using a "Venturi" or "Vektor" which
uses the cooling water, and causing it to go through a small nozzel
increases its velocity. This causes a corresponding decrease in pressure,
and hence can "suck" vapour from the still. However, this ejects the vapour
out of the system. If using a food-grade vacuum pump, you can plumb it so that
it is inline with the outlet (eg before the condensor), and hence
not lose the vapour.
The heating can be a simple water jacket around the pot, using hot
tap water.
What can also be confusing is when the mash begins to boil, the vapours
will expand into the vacuum space, and your gauge may go back to zero.
This doesn't mean you've lost your vacuum, but if you can have some of your still appliance in glass
or plastic so you can see what is going on, this helps so you know you have some action and not a leak.
One of our visitors is in the process of working on an improved vacuum still design.
We'll keep you posted once he's happy with the results (including maybe a photo, design, info, history & performance.)
Other Design Sites
Other design sites include :
- Spirits by Harry Lythall (freezing, bucket still & distilling)
- Big Al's page
- The Hooch page
Other texts which you'll find out there in the Net include:
http://homedistiller.org    
This page last modified
    email: ackland@thenet.net.nz