OLizee® 8 Gal Stainless Steel Water Alcohol Distiller Copper Tube 30L Still Spirits Boiler Home Brewing Kit with Thumper Keg

For what it is, this is a good stovetop still. It takes some twiddling to make it work well, though.First, this is a lower grade stainless that does work fine with an induction plate. That way there is no problem with open flame sources. I used a Duxtop induction burner with it and it did very well.The kettle and lid are a thin gauge stainless. Mine sealed perfectly although I needed to hand bend one of the clips just a very small amount to make it hold well. It doesn't take a lot of pressure to seal. If things get bent, I expect it will be difficult to impossible to get it to seal properly again, so be careful with the thin metal.The condenser is a bit problematic. The hole for the drain is too high up in the pot - half an inch lower and it would be far better for having more coils immersed.. And, since the pot has straight sides, the drain goes straight out - i.e. almost level. That can make for a liquid trap which will create back pressure and make your condensate sputter out instead of dribble in a nice stream. It took some bending and tweaking and also holding the condenser pot at a slight angle to ensure that there was a constant downward flow. I have a slight leak of the cooling water around the exit which I will seal with a bit of silicone.The thermometer is terrible and not accurate enough to be of much use. It goes 0 to 200C with markings each 4C. That's about 7F between the markings - not enough to make decisions on. I will be replacing the thermometer.The thumper needs a screen to disperse the bubbles more effectively. Would be nice if it were included, not hard to add one. If you can get a copper screen, even better! You can also use the thumper as a slobber pot or a gin steamer.The flexible hoses are screw connectors. It is tempting to use a wrench to tighten them, but I found that hand tightening works better and does not destroy the soft gaskets. A few extra gaskets are included if you do destroy or lose a couple. I had zero leaks in the system as long as all the gaskets were in place and hand tightened. My first trial I did have a leak - but a gasket had fallen out before I put things together.There are no adapters to a faucet. You could use an ice water bucket and a recirculating pump or go to a hardware store and/or waterbed store to make a faucet adapter. I tweaked one from a waterbed filling adapter and a barbed nipple. As an alternative, you can cap the bottom water connector and run the top connector to your sink and just keep pouring ice and water into the condenser cooler. If you aren't running the still with too much heat, this works fine, although it's labor intensive.The positives are that it runs fine after a bit of tweaking. Keep the heat down and all of the vapor will be condensed with no smell. For the person who answered my comment with a note about not using it inside, I have not had any problems with smell, but I run it slowly so that there is no "steam" escaping, just condensed liquid. The big copper tube coming up provides a tiny amount of reflux action to help increase purity.When you're done, everything fits inside the big pot so it is relatively easy to store.Overall, I'm pretty happy with this despite the tweaks that were necessary.

The Idea of the distiller is good, but this still has a lot of shortcomings. Where to start off? Well I did a cleaning run of Vinegar and water and then 2 runs of just strait water to distill the water the problems presented themselves right off the bat.While I only brought the temp to 200 degrees (boiling point of water here is 198) the gaskets and metal water hoses made the whole thing taste like it was coming out of a garden hose with that horrid rubbery taste.The so called Condenser is way to small to be of real effectiveness for the small worm. And the inlet and outlet of the water are just too small for proper cooling. This and the fact that the whole top part of the worm sits outside of the cooling water makes this inefficient.Then there is the fact that the worm is not shaped properly, and actually traps some of the distillate causing rushes of distillate at 1 moment from steam pressure, and then nothing at others.The seals on this thing leak. Even at only 190 degrees you can see seepage from these seals. I would hate to even think of trying to attempt to distill liquor in this as you would more than likely blow yourself up with the amount of leaking from these gasketsWhat can be done to fix this? Well that is what I am up to now.#1 remove all screw on connectors for all the hoses and pipes#2 Replace all hoses with copper pipes#3 Flair all ends of the copper pipe and then Silver solder them to the lids#4 make the collector taller and wider than the 1" copper tube it has now.#5 Throw out the so called condenser and worm. They are really useless and make your own from the 19$ stock pot here on amazon and some copper coil here on amazon as well.#6 Never make your mash in a metal stock pot. not only will the flavor be off, but you will see what mash does to metal when you have to separate the liquid from the solids. Not only that but it is easier to pour from 1 container to another after your mash is complete.In all if you are looking to distill water than this is just ok. I would not trust my life to this thing if you are going to distill liquor. It will leak way to much vapor and you will have a serious problem if it does not just blow up on you. Also I would use a propane burner. while a stove top may be convenient, the heating elements will not get this up to temp as fast or efficiently as a burner. In all really not worth what you pay as you will just have to redo it all in the end and make it right.Things I like.1 the latches are nice on the still and thump keg,The 5gal pot will allow for almost a whole 4 gallonsIt was easy to assembleBubbler airlockThings that I dislikeThe seals in the pipesThe Corrugated Stainless Steel Flexible Water LinesThe so-called condenser and worm.

The 8gal still has a great pot volume for running ~5gal batches. I had no leaks at all from any of the connections or seals. The thumper works alright, but it is undersized and you need to keep an eye on your temps to keep it from puking on you. Also, the setup in the product photo (with the thumper sitting on top of the pot) shouldn't be done. If you do this, your thumper will heat up too fast (it should be heated by the vapor from the pot only). The condenser is *way* undersized, but this is easily rectifiable by dropping it into a bucket and just running water around it. The worm could definitely be longer. The worm coil also wants to not stay level if you have to do a lot of bending to get the connector situated at the right angle, which can result in slugging if you don't rectify it. Overall, though, you can easily distill and make decent quality product (water, of course, lol). Not great, not terrible. Not a bad starter to learn with.

I have made a lot of hand sanitizer with this still. I had to tweak the worm a bit to get it flat so liquid quit surging. Gaskets for pots worry me, if they fail it will be difficult to find a replacement, I wish they sold a gasket replacement kit. For the good side, I like having stainless steel and large removable lid, easy cleanup even if you did scorch a mash. Worm works great and thumper is appropriately sized. Has worked great for me.