How to build a still 

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Measuring the quality of the output  The quality of the output is controlled by the distilling temperature. sihdvgals

 

The 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)

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.

 

The Slobber box

 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.