How To Build A Moonshine Thumper?

What liquid goes in a thumper?

Infusing Flavors Using A Thumper Keg – We’ve already given you a pretty good idea of how a thumper keg works. But did you know you can also use it to add more layers of flavor to your moonshine? Before you start distilling, fill the thumper keg with a small number of spirit tails from a previous batch (best option), some wash from the current batch, or water (water is the last resort).

1. Add fruit-infused spirits to your thumper keg – You can place your chosen fruits, spices, and herbs into a big container of low wines or head/tail spirits. Then, let it sit for about a week or two to gradually infuse these flavors into the liquid. Once it’s time to distill, just add this solution to the bottom of the thumper keg to impart its flavors into your final moonshine.
2. Add juice or oils directly into your thumper – In case you want a simpler and faster process than the one above, you can also add liquid ingredients like juice (apple, lemon, peach, blackberry, etc.) and coconut oil directly into your thumper keg.
3. Add raw ingredients directly into your thumper – Now this is a combination of the first two flavor infusion methods we’ve mentioned. You can choose to add fruit peel, herbs, spices, and mashed ripe fruit directly into your thumper keg. Just remember that in the case of mashed fruit, you will need to add large quantities to impart that flavor. Also, it can result in quite a mess.

Regardless of which method you choose, you need to extract the heads from the ethyl alcohol before infusion. This will make sure the flavors will infuse the distillate that you will drink.

Is a thumper needed to make moonshine?

Figure 1, Typical backwoods whiskey still. Smaller copper pot in center is thump keg. – An ordinary pot still, without a thump keg, is capable of distilling a wash to only a “low wine”, which will be about 40-50% alcohol. A second, or even a third, distillation is needed to achieve the high alcohol content necessary to make high-proof whiskey or other spirit.

1. Most European distillers still use swan-neck pot stills, and will have both a “beer stripper” to distill the wash to the low-wine state, and a second “spirit still” to rectify the low wine to a high-proof spirit.
2. In the hillbilly still, the thump keg serves the same purpose as this second, spirit still.

The thump keg, moreover, does this in a very clever manner, utilizing waste heat from the still pot for its function. Many shiners in fact prefer to use a wooden barrel for the thump keg, precisely because it loses less of this useful heat than would a metal one.

As the hot vapor comes out of the still (Fig.3), it exits the arm into the low wine that condenses in the bottom of the thump keg – indeed, it’s the thumping sound of the the vapor and condensed low wine (and not, as some sources assert, “bits of mash”) periodically erupting out of this pipe that creates the characteristic bumping noise giving this piece of equipment its name.

This hot vapor continuously heats the low wine to the boiling point of alcohol, thus distilling it a second time, and producing a much higher-proof product than could otherwise be obtained in a single run through a pot still.

Can you pressurize a Mason jar?

Mason Jars are NOT rated to be pressurized and are likely to explode – spraying shards of dangerous glass in every direction. They will obviously hold a little pressure – but I wouldn’t be using them for ANYTHING that meant that they were pressurized OR heated for any period of time.

What are the benefits of a thumper?

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1. Comes with built in thermometers which makes tracking the progress of your distillation simple.
2. What Is The Purpose Of A Thumper Keg? The main purpose of a thumper keg is to speed up the distillation process.
3. It lets you distill a high-proof spirit without running it through the still multiple times.
4. The other purpose of using a thumper keg is to add botanicals to your spirits.

It becomes simple to introduce fruits, spices, and herbs, creating delicious new flavors and aromas in your spirits. Related: List of Moonshine Distilleries

What is inside a thump keg?

What Is A Thumper Keg? – The thumper Keg is a small copper, steel, or wooden vessel which is placed between the stillpot and condenser. It receives low wine from the stillpot and heats it again, sending highly purified alcohol vapors to the condenser. This creates a high-proof spirit without the need for double distillation (more on how a keg thumper works, below).

Also known as a Thump Barrel, Thump Chest, or Doubler, the thumper keg was very popular amongst Prohibition-era distillers and moonshiners in the Appalachians. However, it is thought that the thumper keg was invented in Europe many years earlier and came to America with the first settlers. It is called a Thumper Keg because of the thumping sound that the vapor and condensed low wine make when the still is in operation.

Contrary to popular belief, the thumping sound is not caused by mash falling into the container. Moonshiners interested in making potent spirits would sometimes place additional alcohol into the thumper, which would be distilled again to create a very powerful spirit.

What do you charge a thumper with?

Thumper should be at least 1/3 of boiler size and it can be charged with water, low wines, tails, wash, really up to you.

Do you need to do a stripping run with a thumper?

Re: thumper with strip run? – Post by evilpsych » Wed Feb 25, 2009 1:10 pm bobtuse wrote: True, but I had read that Pint equated two thumper runs to more like 3 distillations than 4. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment, but my strip runs came off around 65% and my spirit was 75%.

I think I would still run the thumper on the spirit run. It can only help right? What are you trying to make? If you do a search, most folks on stripping runs use a simple potstill with no thumper. A stripping run is meant to be hard and fast, and to not make cuts at all to speak of (some do though) Using a thumper during a stripping run does present the problem of using more energy total.

I just realized that my life is a very complicated drinking game. bobtuse Novice Posts: 43 Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:19 pm