The official RU-vid channel for Panhandle Ponics R&D. Custom Software, Electronics, Automation Solutions, and 3D CAD Model Design. Systems for automated greenhouse and grow operation climate control, automated distillation, and the world's first 3D printed garden tower grow system.
Founded by Larry Athey of Minatare, Nebraska on September 27, 2016. Larry has over 44 years of programming experience as of 2024 and has been involved in aquaponics growing since 2013. Larry is not a user of any Meta services or other mainstream social media platforms. You can only follow his work on this RU-vid channel or by visiting panhandleponics.com and 3dgtower.com
If you wish to contact Larry, you will need to use the contact form on one of the websites linked on this page since spammers already know how to get their bots past the human user test here.
Fantastic series!! Thank you very much for a fairly thorough explanation and visual of the steps, especially for newbies. I can't wait to get this new hobby underway! Much appreciated! 😁 I'm going to check out your other videos as well and recommend them to others!
Hey guy I just discovered your videos and subscribed. I have a couple questions about redistilling to get a better tasting product. On a redistill I'm guessing that you still separate heads as that's what is causing the burn and off taste? Do I barrel it at the proof it comes off the still? Do I add the glycerin when I proof it down to drinking strength? Thanks for putting out these videos. Kenny
You'll never get rid of the burn, you only get used to the effect of ethanol on your throat. The glycerine is really only necessary if you don't redistill when you're using a basic pot still like the one I used in this video. I don't use that still anymore and no longer use glycerine at all. But you only have to get rid of the heads and tails on the first round, those chemical elements don't come back and have to be removed again. As for barrel proof, it needs to be 120 or less, or you will pull unwanted chemicals and elements out of the wood.
I got a homemade still 5 gallon haven't made a mash yet cause I'm not in a good spot but when i give it a go it will be like yours , god bless , thank you
Can you provide a brand name or other detail about the airstill? I see prices from $90 to $300. Can I use just a water distiller? Thanks for your wonderful videos!! Learning a lot.
The one that I got is no longer available, but there are plenty of others out there that would be an equivalent. You want one that you can adjust the temperature on because one that distills water only will run too hot and you'll get too much water in your distillate.
Funny, I buy the same thing from the same place: cracked corn from Bomgaars, and I use a blender and grind it to just coarser than cornmeal and it works amazing for me.
like it very much. agree 100% with your view on certificates Often I get to solve what those with certificates cannot solve I'm not humble, so i always told them if they put more energy into work than assert themselves with nice titles and certificates
Luckily, I finally annoyed the owner of that weak little IT business into getting rid of me in January. It didn't take too long to find work at another company who actually preferred that I know what I'm doing without any lame certifications that only prove that I memorized answers long enough to pass a test at some time in the past.
Hi mate. I’m in Scotland trying to get this perfected like yours. I have about 2 inches of dirty looking sparge at the bottom of my fermenting drum and the rest is looking good. It didn’t release as much gases as I thought it would. Should I just use the cleaner stuff? Trying my absolute best here 🤦🏻♂️
Did you measure your gravity with a hydrometer before and after adding your yeast? If it's all settle out at the bottom, that's usually a sign that the fermentation is done. But, having those two gravity readings is definitely the guaranteed way to know.
If it's still sweet, I'm betting it hasn't dropped much below the 1.065 mark, I would check it now. I can't predict what caused the fermentation to stall because there are so many things that could cause it. But the top 3 would be temperature, pH, and bad yeast.
Bummer, you're just further behind now. It would have been an easy fix. If you do things the same way, it will just fail the same way. Test your yeast to make sure that it's good and make sure that you're adding enough. Temperature and pH are also important to stay on top of because both will also cause a fermentation to stall if they're too far out of range.
By far the best videos on RU-vid from stage one till the end mate. I’m currently fermenting the same. Tried before but failed miserably, whole thing tasted like petrol
Thanks! A guy in Sweden has designed what you would call a "Raspberry Pi Hat" circuit board to simplify assembly so a person can just upload the design file to any PCB maker and order one already assembled. You just have to connect the sensors and motors at that point. I will be doing the same thing with the digital hydrometer part of it.
Because that wouldn't be anywhere near as reliable. Same reason why your house has faucets rather than adjusting the power to individual pumps. Once you slow down a pump so far, nothing comes out of it even though the motor is still moving. You would have to change to a paristaltic pump after that to keep water moving.
Some of the listings I've seen for that (or an identical looking) H-bridge driver, say the logic levels should be fine for 3.3V. Did you try it directly before adding the level-shifters? If so, was it unreliable? Ta.
In most cases, you can use 3.3 volts to drive 5 volt logic devices, but it didn't work with these. Very well could be due to the activity indicator LEDs loading down the Raspberry PI GPIO output.
When you run the "Calibrate Valves" function in the UI, it times the valves from closed to full open and then again in reverse. The total milliseconds in both directions are averaged and divided by 100 in order to know how long to run each valve for every 1% movement. This is part of the temperature management so it can set target temperatures and maintain them.
Yes, even though the valve will automatically stop itself, I need to be able to tell when the valve is at either end of the range in order to time them and so my code knows when to stop trying to run the motor.
Hahahaha, I've got a T 500 reflex still as well and YES the water system leaves a lot to be desired, I put a 200mm spool and a sight glass on mine to up the proof a bit ... I get about 94% on a good day a lot depends on the water temp too and how slow ya want to run it. Good luck mater. From Aussie.@@PanhandlePonics
all stock sweet feed is good just don't use the pellets in there. or find sweet feed without pellets. pellets have stuff you don't want to ferment. i go to local feed mill and get the grains I want and have it mixed with molasses i buy 300 lbs at a time. picked up 300 lbs corn, barley, and wheat mixed with molasses for 70 bucks...
I'm not a rum guy, so I don't like sweet feed shine because of that rum taste that the molasses gives it. My go-to anymore is just cracked corn and Quaker Oats. I use high temperature liquid enzymes now and don't even need to bother with adding sugar anymore. I can get a 1.070 gravity reading from just converting the starch.
Depends on what you spend on your ingredients. Anything you make at home isn't burdened with taxes. With nothing but a 40 pound bag of cracked corn for $15 and high efficiency liquid enzymes, that corn alone could turn into 5 gallons of 80 proof clear moonshine. Try to buy even one gallon in a store for $15.
Thanks for the video, I love this type of how to , build it work through project. Thank you for taking your time in helping the rest of us in this endevor and still be willing to help.
Glad it was helpful! I've been a little sidetracked with other necessity tasks around here that sneaked up on me just as winter hit. Hoping to have all that wrapped up before the end of the month so I can get back on this project again.
I agree with you 100% on the certifications, I have seen so many so called Certified IT Pros that couldn't fix a simple problem that tech support couldn't hold their hand and walk them through the problem. When this person who did not get a certification, but did hours of actual study and many hours of trial and error repairs, fixed it in minutes.
No, the second Q&A video and the GitHub page both explain why that's not possible with any brand without the use of thousands of dollars worth of scientific lab equipment. That's why distilleries use a continuous still with bubble plate towers that span multiple stories of their building.
Thanks! I forgot what all I covered in this video. Funny, 2 years ago I had the wild idea of controlling that still with a Raspberry Pi computer and today it's a reality. github.com/larry-athey/rpi-smart-still
If you get a mash that's pure corn and sits there like concrete, you can add 15% malted barley and it will thin out and the result will be grain waste on the bottom and fermentable sugar solution on the top. Do not add too much water or the resultant mash liquid will be lower SG than optimum. The brewing process has been known since pre-history, it doesn't need modern science, though science may make the process easier.
That's an innovative solution! I started a similar project about a year ago but only got halfway through buying the parts before work took up all of my free time. My plan was to use a series of threaded thermocouples on my fractional distillation column.
I spent about 2 years thinking about it before I made my move to start building it. I kept waiting for these people to do something that kept saying that they "were" going to do it and then just gave up waiting on them. I don't have any experience with a fractional column or continuous still, so I don't know what I'd do to support one of those. I guess I considered those to be already pretty much automatic since they are in a commercial distillery.
Will you be doing any videos on building the electronics for this setup or if not have some details on how to do so or offering being able to purchase it?
First, there will be documentation in the GitHub repository covering each module with schematics and layout on a breadboard to make them easy to understand. After the official first release, I will do videos on the build of each module as I build them for sales stock.
you were mentioning that the deflag water temp tells you the volume of water going through, is there value in measuring the input and output temperature so you can measure the delta to get a consistent measurement or is that overkill?
You wouldn't gain anything by measuring the temperature of the input water. If the discharge water temp is higher than the value that you set in a program, it just increases the flow until it does drop or the still gives up and halts with an error.
That would be another reason why I got rid of that big ugly monster still and replaced it with a T-500 system. If you check out my smart still controller videos I've uploaded lately, my still has a nice hiding place behind a door in my laundry room.
FWIW Galileo discovered the relationship between a fluids density and temperature (which is why measurements should be temperature corrected -more coding for ya!). Archimedes figured out the density/mass thing (eureka!) and rainwater is not really pure it forms on a nucleation point (dust or pollen) so it is about 20K ohms, Distilled 0.5-20M Ohms, Tap 1-5K according to google.
That's another reason the temperature sensor is on there and controls the condenser valve flow. But, explaining that part to the average distiller would go in one ear and right out the other.
