How to Choose the Right Distillery Equipment

Our team have been creating distillation equipment for ten years and can help you design and plan your apparatus based on the substances you are working with. Even if you’re not 100% sure what you need, our team can provide advice regards what solution will best fit your needs.

All of the laboratory products we produce are made to order, and the first step of the process is to discuss your requirements with our expert engineers.

Copper distillation equipment

THE DISTILLATION PROCESS

Distillation is a procedure whereby elements or substances from a liquid are separated through the process of boiling and condensation. Each elements boiling point must be different to allow effective separation to occur. The closer the boiling points of the elements within the liquid, the more complex the distillation process is required to be.

In a laboratory setting distillations are generally carried out as batch distillations. There are three essential pieces of distillation equipment needed to carry out the process;

• Reboiler or Pot – Used to heat the source liquid

• Condenser – The heated vapour is cooled back to a liquid state.

• Receiver Flask –  The device into which the concentrate/distillate is collected.

THE BASIC DISTILLATION PROCEDURE

• The first step is to heat a liquid to boiling point using the reboiler or pot. This causes the liquid to evaporate and form a vapour.

• The vapour is then cooled by passing it through the condenser, which is maintained at a lower temperature through the use of cooling water.

• The vapour, now cooled, condenses to form a distillate.

When planning to open a distillery, the equipment list begins with a still. Until the recent craft distilling boom, options were limited to large, expensive, towering copper vessels manufactured in Germany or the U.S., or, for smaller startups, self-designed and built DIY stills and distillation systems. However, over the past five years or so, demand for smaller and cheaper systems to supply the growing number of distilleries has resulted in an increase of U.S. - and China- made manufacturers of stills.

Distillation Column Sight Glass & Agitator with motor

Buy, Borrow and Barter for Parts

When pricing stills, especially on a larger basis, it's important to know that the cost is influenced by more than the still itself. In order to run a still you need all of the add-ons too. Boiler, mash tun, numerous fermenters, cooling system, pumps, tanks and installation. All of that will run you over a million dollars easy.

In addition to a still, distillers also need a boiler and mash tun to create the fermented liquid which will eventually be processed through the still.Mash tuns can definitely be expensive, as well as the boiler to run it, the costs of installation and inspection, and the related equipment costs from chilling equipment, and bottling tanks for diluting the final product.

Other important equipment includes having high quality industrial and portable pumps. Spending a little more money at the start will be worth it because it’s used all the time. Having a food grade air pump is indispensable.

Key Considerations

Another thing to consider is how to treat the municipal water where all the distilling begins. Public water can vary wildly in mineral and chemical composition, so using a charcoal filter, UV sterilizer, and/or a reverse osmosis unit can be useful in creating a consistent product. On that note, it’s important to coordinate with any municipal government regarding water pressure and water drainage in order for both sides to get what they need.

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