How To Set Up Your Still
From Mile Hi Distilling

Video Transcript:

Hey, it’s Mike at Mile Hi Distilling. We get a lot of questions about how we ship our distillers and people are really curious if the box has anything about distilling on it so I just wanted to show you that we ship in a standard brown box it’s a heavy-duty box and there’s nothing on the box at all says anything about distilling. And the shipping label itself can’t see it from there but it just has Kermits Products and it’ll have the shipping address and that’s it all right. I want to take the still out of the box so I want to go ahead and pack the column and hook it up for you so you can see exactly how to connect everything. Alright, that’s Jayson the manager here on the camera.  “Hi guys he’s been with me now three years and when you call a lot of times you’ll to talk to Jayson he’s taken distilling classes and is round or at least so many times he’s very familiar with distilling.  If you have any questions ask for Jayson.  We try to pack these pretty well because you know how shipping carriers can be they can just open the door and kind of push them out I’ve seen that happen a lot a lot of times our boxes get into bashed up but everything’s fine inside.  The stills are basically pretty bullet proof.  This is our dual purpose distiller. I’ve been building these now for like 12 years and they’re just bulletproof.  They work great as a pot still and a reflux still and let me set this aside now I’m going to show you how to pack it and hook up the hoses.  Hold on, let me pull out the rest the stuff here. Of course I want to thank everybody out there you have made Mile Hi a great company, and it’s been a pleasure working for you.  Alright the milk cans definitely heavy duty.  The lid has a built in stainless steel screen the back you cannot fall into the can.  Has a heavy-duty silicone gasket.  Alright we usually ship most of the products inside the cans or if you do order like a starter kit or anything that has like a bucket, look inside the buckets because there’ll be a lot of stuff inside the bucket.  We’ve actually get a lot of calls people like hey you forgot my clamps everything, it’s like have you looked inside the bucket.  Oh hey I’m sorry let’s go no problem here’s the hoses.  Copper rings, but this one has a longer milk can itself.  Okay the milk can has a half inch NPT fitting on the front, this is for an option for a dial thermometer if you want to add it if not just when you get it take the plug out put some teflon tape on it put it back in.  Just over here it’ll come caps like it is now so if you’re gonna use it on a propane burner or hotplate that’s set up already maybe just make sure that’s tight. but if you buy one of our controllers.  These controller is really cool they’ve been working like a champ since we’ve been carrying them.  But our controllers just simply, here’s here’s one way heating elements this is a 2000 watt stainless steel heating element.  They just they just slide right in the same use the same kinda gasket I just took off so it’s all right on that.  And this plugs into the controller, and the power just plugs into the wall.  Alright pretty cool.  A little history about these cans when I first started this company 14-15 years ago.  it’s ok it was going to go phone ringing of course.  When I first started this company about 14-15 years ago we used to take dairy pails and we’d actually cut a hole on top of dairy pale and with let flip them rim to rim we’d actually weld all around the rim, it was very time-consuming.  We had like do a tig weld every quarter inch around our sim so it wouldn’t flare out.  It’s a real pain in the butt.  So we uh I was looking at one day on homedistiller.org and I came across an old photo of somebody used a milk can for a boiler like oh man light bulb! Just went off.  What great idea so I ordered some milk cans I found a company that made these heavy-duty nice milk cans and I have them modified just for distillers.  I have the clamp down with silicone gaskets.  We added the fittings and also they have the bottoms change sort of basically flat so use this on a hot plate or a propane burner, right and this has a rim at the bottom so it’s like it sticks down like a third of an inch in this ram just like a safety band, and it just helps straighten up the can that’s all there is to it.  So as you can see all the other companies now are all selling milk cans stills, so far basically became with standard since we started selling these about 14 years ago, but alright let me set this aside.  Let me show you how to pack the column.  Have I forgot everything yet.  Nope so far so good right.  I don’t care how many videos I do for some reason I always get nervous doing these videos. I just gotta figured you folks are just regular people like me.

Okay the copper.  Very simple do you get a roll of copper like so what you do is you roll it up just kind of kind of halfway snug but not like don’t have to like push it down really hard let’s just roll it up you want to roll it up till you think it’s going to fit into the column somewhat snug not too tight you can see I’m just going to roll on not push it down I’m sure it’s going to fit okay regular scissors cut it up take that push it in from bottom if you guys need to find some good information home to storage is a great place for recipes information on distillers different kinds of stills a lot of other companies have grown chat forums and you know I thought about it I just thought now you know I’m just a lot more gas everything anybody could ever look for into really good information so I haven’t done the chat for we used to have a long time ago okay so I got the copper packed up lined up here’s two rolls you put you can put three rolls one thing that packing a column there’s no perfect way to do it right you can use all a copper you fuse all rings you can even run the sil out any packing but for me what I what I see works the best for me is copper halfway up the greens the rest of the way you want copper in Derrick’s it helps cut back from sulfates the Rings make Colin run faster I know on some chat forms it might argue about that within one experiments the Rings death and make the silt run faster if I use all copper it’s going to run slower and get a lower percentage if I used all rings it’s going to run faster but it’s going to not be as the products not going to be as nice alright so if I stick this on here by itself you zoom in on my bald head there no I was a toughie right these videos go on I keep looking at my videos and my head seemed bigger and better okay because that’s connected one thing great about these try clamp fittings you always get a good seal they’re just heavy-duty you’re gonna last forever these stills or you know the 16 gauge super polish tubing heavy-duty stuff they’re going they’re going to last you a lifetime and then so we take the ring like I said I got the copper like that hi I’ll take the ring who’s going to arm them and these are quarter inch ranks which I think the two inch columns the carbon trees work right through the three-inch Hall I think we saw a create 380 on 3/8 no work good for a larger poem always pour those in like so you want to fill up right above the reflux jacket okay that’s good you got it filled up about right here right above there because we got that done so now we’re going to show you how to this one has a thousand or upgrade I’ll show that to you for our standard ones you just order the steel decking the upgrade you’re gonna get a it’s a natural gum plug with a cook thermometer and these work great I’ve sold thousands of these stills like this then we’re fantastic they just just push it down like that and they work good I saw I don’t know like I said thousands of them have to repeat myself all right pull that off so the upgrade definitely looks nicer but it’s not necessary goes on like so really simple things clamps together so okay the hoses now just like packing there’s really no perfect way to do this if you get it wrong it’s still going to work and you got experiment see it works about for you but what I like to do is these have regular garden hose and hunters so these just plug in you know to screw into any garden hose or you can go down to the hardware store and get the connector going here’s the kitchen sink if you want but it has a hose clamp put on here just tighten it down so I’ll have the water going in the bottom of this condenser the bottom of the condenser right here on top of this condenser that’s gone kink in it you can cut these down you don’t you don’t keep them this late go on top there and over to the reflux jacket on the towel right so so comes up here out the top down the bottom of the reflux from the top of the reflux is back out to the drain now one thing one I want to point out is this is the same way you hook up your your water lines on a torpedo tower to the torpedo the 3-inch torpedo it has that the has a chamber inside the column but has the same fittings basically got two fittings that stick out so it’s the same exact where you hook it up so same way you pack it everything right so that’s about it for that oh the cleaning room I do get a lot of questions hey how should I clean my still what I do myself I run about oh four five gallons of water and I just let it boil for that the still run for about three four hours I do it that way you know I’ll take I’ll make a wash out of turbo yeast and I’ll run that in the first quart I get out we’ll have some oils and stuff from the stainless but I’ll throw that first cord away or save it for fire starter cleaners or whatever but then I’ll keep the rest and next time I distill again I’ll throw it back in the wash you can just redistill it afterwards but make sure you have 50% of water to it you don’t want to be distilling something that’s let’s say 190 proof you want to cut it back down and let’s a hundred proof at least alright but I’m home to sign our word and I’ve talked a lot of people they like using white vinegar you can buy this up at Walmart pretty cheap I think this is like six seven bucks per gallon so you get a couple couple gallons of this 50-50 mix so if you put two gallons of vinegar in here the two gallons of water and run it that way for a couple hours it help clean it up and what other people say this is to a sacrificial run which I think turbo needs work great for that the 48 hour trip oh nice and just just do like a regular wash and basically throw it away or like I said before save it as a cleaning fluid or fire starter this stuff we use it all the time here in the shop just like cleaning parts so it actually works really good for cleaning up the parts but Mindy I brought Jason just maybe go over the pots to on the reflux okay yeah almost forgot that okay this is hooked up as a reflux mother right so in the the pot still mode is very simple you basically because once that little difficulties so as pot still mode you only want on the water to the condenser own do not run water to the reflux on the jacket so you just got the water come in here as a pot still mode and at the top and if you get it backwards you’ve got the water come in here and got the bottom it’s going to work just fine don’t worry about it’s going to work just fine for packing a column in Pottsville mode I’d only use copper I would placate the copper and basically pack most of combo Lea more loosely inside the tighter you got the copper the more is the higher percentage going to get right so you don’t want to pack it too tight so you need to take unroll a couple of those rolls and just kind of stuff it down in there as loosely network fantastic but you know Postell mode is for keeping your flavors in and this still has proven to work great both ways a reflux or Pottsville like I say it’s our biggest seller we sell tons of these things it happened for years but so that it I think that’s it you got it huh oh hey thank you very much happy to stay and take care