Our equipment

Distilling is quite equipment intensive and the choice will have a real impact on the spirit produced. Here you can see what we use in the different production stages. 

Malting

For steeping barley we use a simple 100l stainless steel tank with a false bottom. It’s off the shelf. You can also use it as a small mash tun, which is what we did when we started.

When germinating the barley on the floor we need to protect it from peckish birds and rodents. We do this by keeping it in pallet collars. In our case, these are wooden raised garden beds from B&Q with homemade mesh covers. Simple but effective! The barley is turned by hand so that part requires no equipment.

When it’s time to put it into the kiln we use a good old standard shovel. 💪

The final, and most high tech, part of our malting set-up is the malt kiln. This we had to have custom built. It can be operated in both manual and automated modes and also has temperature control to prevent over charring of the grains.

Whenever we can, we try to use standard equipment, albeit sometimes with modified usage, but occasionally we need to build bespoke. Such are the joys of being small scale! 😂

Milling and mashing

After the barley has been turned into malt, we need to crush it. The mill we use is a 3-roller mill from Crankandstein. This has been mounted on a custom built stand and is powered by a reused motor that was previously used to crush trees for compost! Yes, pretty hard core.🤘

Our mash tun is a 300l traditional mash tun from Latimer Ales. This type of mash tun is more common in beer brewing than in distilling. It’s an insulated stainless steel vessel with a conical bottom, a perforated mash steel filter and (2b) a copper sparge arm.

To cool the wort we use a small heat exchanger. It’s a simple plate exchanger that we picked up at The Malt Miller - an online home brew shop. We use a very primitive under back to prevent compaction of the grain bed when we pump and recirculate the wort. We have two pumps that are very similar to circulation pumps you would use in a house heating system. These we also bought from The Malt Miller.

Lastly, unlike a large mash tun which might have an internal rake to stir and ‘tickle’ the grains, we make do mixing our grains between waters with an off-the-shelf cement mixer 😊

Fermentation

The equipment we use during the fermentation process is pretty basic. All of it can be bought online and re-jigged for purpose.

We ferment in 200l food grade plastic drums. Not very romantic but they are solid, durable, cheap and very easy to clean!

The fermenters are placed outside the distillery, so they need to be insulated to retain enough heat to be able to finish the fermentations (especially in winter although this last summer…well 🙄). For this we’ve fashioned aluminium bubble wrap sleeves, combined with electrical heating elements on the inside, that can be slipped snugly over the drums.

The heating elements are controlled by a sensor and an electronic controller. This is very useful since we can accurately set a minimum temperature to ensure that the yeast doesn’t go inactive too quickly. With this we can also ‘push’ the fermentation a little towards the end to ensure extra fermentation yield and control the development of lactic acid bacteria. The final use for this heating system is to pre-heat the wash. By raising the temperature to 45 degrees the day before distilling, we significantly reduce the time it takes to get the wash still going. 👍🏼

 Wash distillation

In our wash distillation process, the only real equipment needed is … you guessed it … a still! Ours is a beautiful copper 400l alembic still manufactured in Portugal by Iberian Coppers. They also created the condenser and provided the paella burner which we use as our heat source. Here’s a few features of our setup :)

It has a reflux bulb which encourages circulation and increases copper contact of the spirit vapours. This improves the purification of the spirit. The lyne arm is horizontal and quite narrow. This also results in increased reflux and a somewhat lighter spirit. The condenser is a simple worm tub - essentially a bent copper pipe in a tub of water. This type of condenser tends to give a more robust spirit than more modern alternatives.

The paella burner used to heat the still provides a direct flame. This creates complex flavours through the caramelisation of residual sugars in the wash.

The final detail we want to point out is our parrot. This lovely contraption sits at the distillation output of the condenser and helps us keep track of the alcohol content of the low wines.

The only piece of equipment not created by Iberian Coppers in this process is the hydrometer you see floating in the parrot. Standard hydrometers are widely available online and can be bought on Amazon or eBay. Higher precision scientific ones can be bought from Cole-Parmer.

Spirit distillation

The equipment we use in our spirit run is, like the wash run, all about the still.

We use a really small (100l), extremely basic, no bells and whistles, spirit still. We love it. When we started out we also used it as our wash still (so no need to shell out for 2 stills if you’re just starting out 💪). It is of course only suitable for really small volumes, but we have filled quite a lot of casks using this still alone. Like our wash still, it was made by Iberian Coppers who also supplied the heater for it (another paella burner). The reflux bulb is similar to the one on our wash still, but the lyne arm points downwards quite dramatically. A short still like this produces a robust spirit (as opposed to light & fruity).


The condenser, again a simple worm tub, further accentuates this character. This pic from above shows off its lovely copper swirls.

Lastly, a refractometer helps us determine when to turn off the still. Both the refractometer and hydrometer measure the alcohol output. The hydrometer (which you saw last week) is more useful when the alcohol content is high, whereas the refractometer does a good job towards the end of the distillation. We bought this one on Amazon. 🤘