Handicraft distiller manufacturers are often faced with the challenge of selecting the most suitable cooling coil material. The choice must be made based on the capacity of the device and the specifics of its use.
The question of what to make a coil for a moonshine still should be considered in great detail. The material should be accessible for processing, practical to use and necessarily inert - not reacting with alcohol and its compounds. Also of great importance is the thermal conductivity of the material, which directly affects the cooling rate of hot alcohol vapors. You can choose from several types of materials, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Copper tube
The most popular material for making a moonshine coil is copper. It has high thermal conductivity and is a very soft metal that bends easily. Coil tubing does not need to be preheated to roll up a copper tube, unless the bend radius is less than five times the nominal diameter of the tube itself. On the other hand, such coils are not chemically neutral, although copper itself does not react with alcohol. Upon contact with oxygen, a thin coating of copper oxide forms on the surface of the copper tube, which inevitably enters the distillation product, albeit in very small doses.
Stainless steel
Corrosion-resistant steel produces a cleaner end product, but is more difficult to process. If a coil made of softer metal can be bent, as they say, with bare hands, then a gas burner, a pipe bender or a special radial template will be required to process the stainless tube. In addition, stainless steel coils are the heaviest.
Glass coil
Glass is the least commonly used material for the moonshine coil, although it provides absolute purity of alcohol after distillation. It is only necessary to bend the glass in a special glass-blowing workshop, otherwise local stress points will appear in the curved tube, which will lead to spontaneous destruction of the coil, even without mechanical or temperature effects. In addition, glass has a significant drawback when connecting the coil with other elements of the apparatus: it cannot be threaded or a tight tightening clamp installed on it.
Nylon or polyethylene pipe
A good alternative when choosing a material for a moonshine cooler can be a tube used for installing underfloor heating systems. The main advantage of such material is its cheapness and ease of processing, although it must be carried out with extreme caution. Nylon and polyethylene tubes are considered chemically neutral, do not come into contact with most of the known solvents. The main disadvantage of these tubes is their high elasticity, due to which the coil does not hold its shape well, therefore it is fixed to the frame, most often to the wire frame.
