During a distillation cycle the gases that are produced need to be cooled back down. Normal tap water might do it, but a chiller certainly will take care of your cooling requirements. Students of the iStill University that become members of the iStill University Facebook Group discuss many topics related to craft distilling. What chiller set-up to use is one of the topics discussed. Underneath you will find a contribution by Vlaho on how his Habitat Distillery handled the chiller set-up.

- By Vlaho Carevic - Owner/Distiller of Habitat Distillery -

Hi guys! There have been quite a few questions asked here (red.: the iStill University Facebook Group) (myself included) regarding cooling our stills. We have an iStill 500 and the Mini with 50 l boiler.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the cooling system , therefore I contacted the local dealer of Daikin equipment … waited for almost 2 months that they do all the math and in the end it seems they have done quite well.

Basically, they have placed a cooling unit that has 32kw/h efficiency (inverter) and it pumps water through insulated copper pipes into the 200 l insulated tank and from the tank into the heat exchange titanium unit and that’s a loop.

Another pipeline is driven by Grundfos pump and it’s running water through the still and to the heat exchanger. The pump has controlled speed/volume therefore it’s relatively easy to control speed flow depending to your needs.

First loop (chiller&tank) they run 5C temp, while water in the second loop returns from the still at 20 C (even if power on 500 is max and 100C in the boiler, 98C at the top of the column).

My intention here is not to claim we have done a miracle you guys haven’t figured out or used already, but just to share our “newbie” experience with the ones coming after.

It’s certainly great to be able to use it for all our stills at the same time and have closed loop in order to save costs for the water being more and more expensive, at least where we come from!

Here are some photos and a schematic to consider. Hope it helped a bit!

Sincerely yours,

Vlaho Carevic, Habitat Distillery

Schematics ...

Habitat Diatillery ...

200 liter resevoir ...

A very cool iStill cooler ...

Insulated piping ...

Temperature and pressure ...

Actual chiller ...

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