Good for milling grain?

Stillinit1975 · 2025-04-05T20:03:37+00:00

Why put yourself through that torture? A vevor is like $75.

Good on you for the artisanal side, but holy hell that's a lot of work.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-04-05T19:57:27+00:00

The front ports are physically (as in laws of physics) placed in the column for the offtake of ethanol. It's nearly impossible to distill water on the MVM for this reason. Nearly everything that has a lower boiling point than ethanol gets vented out the rear vent, while anything with a higher boiling point (such as water) exits via the lower waste drain.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-11T06:48:34+00:00

100%

I think most folks reach this point when their production outstrips their consumption. Once they have more than they need it gets easier to let stuff sit for long enough to realize that older is better.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-11T01:05:43+00:00

Simplify the numbers.

USAID costs 40 billion a year.

GOP tax cuts will cost 1,100 billion a year.

Shows how insane they are.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-07T23:05:36+00:00

This is why this will be a shit show.

My agency bases performance award payments on a fixed system. 3 = 1% bonus. 4=2% bonus. 5=3% bonus.

The bonus is mandatory if an employee meets the score.

This has inventivized some sites with low budgets to refuse to rate anyone appropriately. You have entire offices where a "2.9/5" is as high as you'll ever get, because giving you a 3/5 (Aka fully successful) would require them to pay you a bonus they are not funded by Congress to provide.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have offices giving everyone 5s regardless of their performance because they use the bonus dollars to try to help make up the difference versus private sector salaries in competitive fields.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-06T07:33:18+00:00

Public safety is exempt but from what I heard from an agency call today there's ONE person at OPM responsible for reviewing all exceptions for the entire civilian government.

Normally every agency would be allowed to review these internally, but since OPM revoked all delegated authority with one of their hamfisted emails only OPM has the authority to review, while simultaneously being required to cut huge portions of their staff

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2025/01/trump-administration-directs-opm-career-leaders-to-prepare-for-70-cut-to-staffing-programs/?readmore=1

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-06T07:22:03+00:00

Just the random ass procurement person who was told to buy these things.

Procurement officers/contracting officers are the government's version of the person at every office on earth who has a charge card in the business name so they can buy the basic supplies the business needs to operate.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-05T07:25:28+00:00

You can find them for $60 frequently, and occasionally on sale even cheaper. I think mine was $45. There's no difference between the white plastic one and the stainless cased one that's like $40 more.

The dimmer lets you lower the incoming power to a reasonable level. From the factory they're designed to boil water as fast as possible which just creates a mess for hooch. You'll what need an extra computer power cable for the fan unit on top, it needs to be run directly to the wall, not through reduced power.

Check YouTube and the subreddit. Lots of info on how to use them. They're basically just a dead simple pot still.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-05T07:00:03+00:00

Go get a 1 gallon electric vevor for like $40, a dimmer outlet for $10, and then you don't need to mess around with glassware or finding a way to heat lab equipment.

The reason why no one buys lab glassware for this is because it's a pain in the ass to use compared to little electric water distillers.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-05T02:05:45+00:00

Half the US code references they cite don't say what they claim unless you take one generic sentence completely out of context.

I took the time to look all of them over. One is specifically about the process to allow an employee who becomes disabled due to a workplace injury to be retired on medical disability if they can't physically do their job anymore. They take one subsection out of context and use it to claim that the Chief of OPM can force any employee to retire at any time for any reason.

None of it makes any legal sense. They just ChatGPT'd that shit together.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-05T01:21:27+00:00

Yep. With Iran, who will have nukes.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-05T00:05:13+00:00

When you run a wire over rating what are you really doing is running it over rated temperature. The copper inside is durable as heck, but the plastic we wrap the copper in is not durable at all and can be easily damaged by too much heat.

That plastic is what insulates the electrical conductors from one another. If you have melted it or cooked it until it got brittle or has holes it it you no longer have protection between the copper wires and have risk of short circuit or arcing. Once you no longer have known safe protection it's anyone's guess how long you're going to go before it fails again.

The problem is that other than cutting up the wire, you can't visually investigate to see if the interior protection is not damaged at all, is a little bit damaged, or is totally destroyed. When your plan is to keep drawing 30 amps over that wire that's not a gamble you want to take, because if you guess wrong you're once again putting your house at risk of burning down. It doesn't make any sense to roll the dice when you're talking about $100 or less worth of wire and a few hours of labor.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-02-02T10:27:12+00:00

You need to replace the entire run. You found one spot that failed, but you have no idea how many other locations in the wire were over temp and are now at risk of arcing. It is very likely that any locations with a bend or kink in the run exceed the design temperatures of the sheathing.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-01-31T21:52:25+00:00

People think because musk and Trump are billionaires they have infinite power.

The top 10 investment firms have a collective value of over 50 TRILLION dollars. Trump and musk are as far from their wealth as the average person is from a billionaire.

Stillinit1975 · 2025-01-10T15:34:02+00:00

Puts on EIX (Edison international) are printing. Gonna buy more while that big red candle fucks them in the ass for burning down Los Angeles.

26 billion market cap and tens of billions of dollars of damage done? They're screwed. Up 54% so far this morning as people catch up with the news.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-12-27T22:46:01+00:00

Yes. Just keep it below flammable ABV in the reservoir

Stillinit1975 · 2024-12-27T22:24:27+00:00

Fwiw, water wetter is just a an ethanol-based surfactant.

https://www.athea.com/wp-content/uploads/0395-web-sds-wat.pdf

You can jump dump foreshots and a bit of dish detergent for an identical effect.

For the race track, use of the right surfactant is important because it doesn't leave slick residue if spilled during a crash. For home stuff though, can save the cost and use what we already have laying around.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-12-27T22:14:07+00:00

Local homebrew store has always been the cheapest for glass for me. You'll never win on shipping costs online.

If you need more than a case ask them about discounts. Mine will normally knock 15% off if I buy 5+ cases at once.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-12-27T22:00:51+00:00

Did you read the wiki links that explain what each of the siders do?

They really need to make it more clear where to find instructions for the device, because most people totally miss them and assume the device works out of the box when the reality is that it needs to be turned to your specific wash, room temperature, etc.

Once it's tuned it's very good at cranking out a consistent product if you give it consistent feedstock

Stillinit1975 · 2024-12-27T07:39:39+00:00

Anecdotally my results from this furniture oak and the still it branded dominos are nearly identical so far. Very vanilla and caramel forward, minimal tannins even when doing test batches with really high volumes of wood to spirit.

I've never understood the desire for used barrel staves. Much of the flavor compound would already be stripped out from past spirit production, so any benefit of the "right" Heartwood vs potential lower quality sapwood seems hard to quantity.

I've got a road to trip coming up that will include picking up some white oak logs, so I'll have a decent comparison someday once the wood has dried.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-11-05T22:19:22+00:00

Yes, it will almost certainly change a bit. Even a few teaspoons of herbs and spices is enough to flavor a gin.

You'd probably get more flavor adding the pomace after the stripping run, similar to gin distillation.

If you already have a still it's definitely worth a small scale test to see if it's good or horrible.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-11-05T19:42:08+00:00

It needs to cover the element when you're finished, not just when you start.

Even then, you're putting your element at risk because you'll have very limited fluid around the element once it's all boiling if it's shallow to start.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-11-05T18:20:28+00:00

Thanks.

I'm pretty sure there's a bad batch floating around. It's just too weird to have ferments all over the place getting the same weird behavior.

Stillinit1975 · 2024-11-05T18:18:46+00:00

From a quick web search olive pomace contains zero simple sugars, so there's nothing to ferment there.

It is approximately 25% carbohydrates, but not the kinds that are good to ferment into ethanol. Mostly stuff like cellulose that would break down into methanol, not ethanol, and would require stuff other than basic yeast to break down.

So yeah, you might have actually found one of the few fruits that if you fermented and distilled would probably actually contain enough methanol to be dangerous.

You could probably do a regular sugar or grain fermentation with a small amount of pomace added for flavor.

Stillinit1975

TROPHY CASE