We’ve officially got flute distillation columns and units now! To help you get familiar with the latest addition to our Brewhaus family, here’s the rundown on why these bad boys are worth every penny:

1. Heavy-Duty Power Gives You Faster Runs

Let’s start with the power. This is such a heavy-duty system that we don’t even offer an 8-gallon kettle with the full flute moonshine still package. This unit is about 75% faster than our high capacity distillation column (considering all other factors equal). You can put 2 or 3 band heaters on a 15-gallon kettle to really get it rockin’ because this thing can handle a ton of vapor. Under those circumstances, you could do a 15-gallon run in about 4 hours or so. We don’t recommend using the flute column with any kettles that hold less than 15 gallons just because of how fast it’s going to run. The column is so big and powerful that if you tried with an 8-gallon kettle, it would probably take you longer just to heat it up than to actually run it!

2. Superior Design Means Added Convenience

Brewhaus distillation flute columns were designed to not only look beautiful but also for ease of use. We wanted our flute columns to be painless to maintain and operate.

• Painless Maintenance: The whole column comes apart for easy cleaning. Each bubble plate is its own section so when you take the clamps off, your flute column breaks down into several sections that each contain a clamp, gasket, copper bubble plate, and viewing window. Plus, because the column is 4” in diameter, you can fit your hand inside each section for deep cleaning instead of trying to maneuver a bottle brush up a column that’s longer than your arm. Unscrew the stainless steel screws from the copper bubble plates and clean them as well with vinegar to fight discoloration.

• Structured Column Packing: Instead of packing your column with copper mesh or raschig rings, you have the copper bubble plate, which is easy to clean and can last a lifetime if you do clean it. Because it’s copper, you still have your copper reactivity, but it also eliminates channeling, which is when the vapor goes down the side of the column quickly instead of slowly filtering through the column packing. These copper bubble plates actually extend past the 4” diameter of the column, so there is no going around the bubble plate—the vapor and refluxing liquid must pass through.

• Logical Accessory Placement: Our flute column for distilling comes with a built-in parrot that makes draining the heads and inline testing a snap: Because there’s a valve at the bottom, you can drain off those nasty heads, close the valve, then let it start going through the parrot, and you’re onto your run—No waiting until the parrot is full! We also put the thermometer at the top of the column where it’s catching the vapor that will be collected to ensure accurate thermometer readings. There are other flutes out there that have the thermometer below the dephlegmator. That’s not the greatest place for the thermometer because it would give you a reading of the vapor before it enters the dephlegmator, not the vapor that is actually being condensed and collected—you might not get a proper reading. With our thermometer at the top, you know you’re really reading the vapor temperature of the product that you will collect.

3. Unequivocal Versatility Lets You Distill Nearly Anything

You can change the number of bubble plate sections to optimize your flute for whatever you’re distilling in your moonshine still. If you want to do a pot distillation, you can have 1 or 2 sections; if you want to do a high purity distillation, you might do 6. If you want to do more, you can do more!

“But what about gin?” you ask. I hear you. We now have a gin basket that goes between the top of the column and the dephlegmator, so you’ll just add that in. No need to buy an entire gin series moonshine still if you want to make gin—just buy 1 extra piece for the flute. That’s the beauty of our flute column being a modular unit: You can add and take away pieces to suit your needs for each individual run. Nothing else even comes close in versatility.

Bonus: Bubbles!

All specifications aside, the fact that it has viewing windows so you can actually see the bubble stuff going on is just plain cool. None of our other units let us do that. Yes, it’s just a novelty, but yes it’s also awesome. If you have any questions about the flutes that I didn’t cover here, just hit me up on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll be happy to answer them for you. Happy Distilling!