Going back to this from a year ago. Is that the AlcoEngine pot still you have currently?
We actually have most of the still parts already finished for the new modular still design. We will do a video on these soon. These new stills will be manufactured under the new "polyphoenix" brand.
Most stills are made from copper or stainless steel which is great but this has some constraints. It's hard to see through stainless and copper so you are then forced to use sight glasses that add a lot of cost. When you can't see through the still it also makes it very difficult to troubleshoot of something goes wrong.
You can certainly get sight glass stills that have large glass columns but then these have the constraint that they are generally not very modular and are difficult to reconfigure for other applications.
Also we found that stainless steel and copper are much more conductive so if you are trying to establish a stable process small changes in ambient conditions can cause the fractions in your still to collapse or overheat. For instance if you have a draft in the room our outside this can cause a lot of variation in the distillation process as the conductive metal body of the still would drop in temperature if a breeze was to blow over the still.
Also we found that home small home distillers are using 2 inch stills but these are too small diameter to handle the 3-3.5kw of power. Depending on the configuration you would often have to reduce the power down to about 1600 watts if you have a 2" column. Because we sell a lot of 15mp boilers now such as the 65L digiboil and also the 65L BrewZilla we have found that there is a need for us to increase to a 3" diameter still so this is what we have done with the polyphoenix range.
The polyphoenix stills are made with a PPSU polymer that can handle up to 220C. It's also way more insulative while also being able to see everything that is going on inside the still.
As the parts are all injection molded they are precisely the same which makes it easier for us to continue to develop accessories with a precise fit. Previously with stainless steel segments they could vary in size depending on who was fabricating them on the day so making some components fit precisely was difficult.
I know this new format of still is going to be a bit strange to many customers who might feel that having a still made from a polymer a very foreign concept but given the high temperature rating of PPSU, the strength of the plastic, the chemical resistance I feel that the benefits are substantially worthwhile.
The PPSU is also about 20 times better at insulating when compared with stainless steel and copper so you end up with a much more stable process that doesn't vary as much with varying ambient conditions.
Here are a couple photos showing what the segments of the still look like:
This is what the gin basket looks like inside the still segment:
This fully modular design has various different condenser options, different configurations, new copper bubble capper designs to fit into the segments, new reflux components.
We wanted to wait until we had the full range of components before we released the product so once these come in stock we will do a launch and do a video on this new distillation process.
