What Is A Moonshine Still Slobber Box?

Re: Thumper keg and Slobber box – Post by Buteo » Wed Dec 18, 2013 5:41 am A slobber box was/is used by someone who distills using a wood fire to catch puking from an over heated boiler. If your using gas or electric you have much better control and shouldn’t be puking if your paying attention. Bushman Admin Posts: 17453 Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 5:29 am Location: Pacific Northwest

What is the difference between a thumper and a slobber box?

This page describes them. A thumper has the inlet go down to the bottom of the vessel, so that vapor can bubble up through the liquid. A slobber box has both the inlet and outlet at the top, it is just to catch any dripping from the still.

What is the purpose of a thumper keg on a moonshine still?

A Quick Summary – If you’re in a hurry and just need to know the most essential information about the humble thumper keg, here it is.

• What Is It? A thumper keg works to distill your low wine a second time. It may be made of copper, steel, or wood, and sits between the still pot and condenser.
• What Does A Thump Keg Do? It speeds up the distillation process and transforms your low wine into a liquid with higher alcohol content, which is critical for making moonshine or bourbon.
• What Size Thump Keg Do You Need To Use? It should generally be about 25% to 40% of the size of your main boiler.

Now, if you need to know more about the thumper keg, keep reading.

What is the purpose of a slobber box?

Re: Thumper keg and Slobber box – Post by Bushman » Wed Dec 18, 2013 6:00 am As mentioned above you don’t see many anymore as it’s kind of old school. A slobber box was designed to prevent any foam or puke getting into the worm condenser and blocking it. S-Cackalacky retired Posts: 5990 Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:35 pm Location: Virginia, USA

Can you run a still without a thumper?

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.

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. 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 use a mason jar as a thumper?

Glass Thumper –

Glass is one of the most common thumper materials because it is so flexible, especially when you use Mason jar thumpers. The design of mason jars is ideal for moonshine brewing because these glass jars can easily be removed from the thumper gasket for cleaning or replacing. Glass thumpers are also ideal because you can buy thumper kits that fit right on top of mason jars online.

How much liquid do you put in a thumper?

Making moonshine with a thumper instead of a pot still is great because thumpers essentially perform two distillations in one—without stripping the flavor the way reflux distillation does. Depending on your thumper, it’s typical to plan to fill it about halfway with liquid.

What is a doubler in distilling?

Doubler In American whiskey distilling, a type of used for the second round of, A doubler receives spirit that has already been cooled into a liquid, whereas a receives vapor. May 12, 2023 | Hyatt Regency Chicago

Does a thumper strip flavor?

On slobber boxes and thumper kegs One of the most popular questions we get here is whether or not it’s necessary to install a thumper keg on our stills to have success in distilling. Before we answer that, it might be helpful to explain just what this contraption is.

• Basically, a thumper keg is a container that is installed in the distillation apparatus between the still pot and the condenser.
• It was traditionally used in hillbilly stills to increase the alcohol content of the distillate because, traditional stills only output product with about a 50-60 percent alcohol content.

The thumper keg collects this output, which condenses out as a substance known as “low wine.” Then, as more hot vapor flows through this low wine in the thumper, it gets heated to the boiling point of alcohol and the vapor that then flows into the condensing unit has a higher alcohol content – typically around 85 percent.

So, in effect, the thumper acts like a second distillation process to increase the strength of the distillate. It also catches unwanted sediment that might otherwise flow through to your end product. The problem with thumper kegs, which are now usually used for high-production runs, is that they can strip flavor from your whiskey.

When you look at our copper stills, you’ll notice that they have a unique onion-head. This particular design was adapted because it eliminates the need for a thumper keg by only allowing pure vapor and no sediment to flow through to the condenser. Plus, our stills will output whiskey with an alcohol content of approximately 70 percent, which should be more than satisfactory for most home distillers.

1. Do you see where this is going? In short, the answer to whether our stills need a thumper keg is: NO.
2. Which means the distillation process with our stills is simpler and your success is more likely guaranteed.
3. You’re welcome! Cheers to all of us dedicated home distillers.P.S.
4. So what about those slobber boxes ? They were similar to thumper kegs in that they were installed in traditional stills, but the vapor they collected never bubbled up through the low wine, so their purpose was really to just collect sediment.

Again, they’re not needed with our stills thanks to the eye-catching and functional onion-head design. Posted by Jason Stone on July 31, 2018 : On slobber boxes and thumper kegs

Do you need 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