Do-it-yourself coil from a copper tube. What to make a coil for a moonshine still from

Why did such a simple invention get its own name? Because there are a lot of laboratory coolers, the main purpose of which is not to reduce the temperature of the steam, but to condense it as efficiently as possible. This process provides for the rapid removal of heat from the vapor phase while simultaneously reducing the dimensions of the device and refrigerant consumption.

The coil is not anything outstanding in this regard - in terms of efficiency it is somewhere in the middle of the rating scale. But it has a number of undeniable advantages, which are offset by relatively low productivity.

Copper coil

First positive quality coil for a moonshine still is the ease of its manufacture. Even at home, using a minimum of tools that can be found in any garage, you can make a coil with your own hands, in other words, wind a spiral from any suitable tube.

What to make a coil from

A tube with a diameter of 10 mm (internal) and a wall thickness of 1-1.5 mm is suitable for work. Depending on the expected power of the refrigerator, the length of the tube is selected in the range of 1.8-2 m. This range is given for a flow-type cooler for a moonshine still with a cube of 10-20 liters. For a larger device, the length of the tube should be increased by 1-1.5 m.

Many lovers homemade alcohol claim that if you increase the water pressure in the refrigerator, then there is no need to increase its length. There is a rational grain in this - the intensity of heat removal is enhanced not only due to the heat transfer area, but also due to its speed. But let's approach the problem realistically - how many water pipes allow you to regulate the pressure (flow rate) within a wide range?

If this is still possible in a city highway, and even then not in all cities, then in a house where an autonomous water supply is organized using a household pumping station or a submersible pump, this is difficult to do. And by increasing the coil for the moonshine still, you can be guaranteed to increase heat transfer at any pressure of running water. The same applies to coils for non-flow type devices.

Increasing the length of the tube by 1 m will result in the appearance of one to three additional turns, which will lengthen the coil itself by several centimeters (20 percent). Agree, for a stationary device this is not critical.

Materials for making a coil

A high-quality, durable and healthy coil for a moonshine still can be made from a limited number of materials. These are copper, brass, stainless steel and glass. In some articles you can read that it is best to make coils from aluminum. It's a delusion.

Of course, in a mechanical sense, aluminum is better than all metals. It bends well, does not crack, and has good thermal conductivity. But it is not safe for health. Scientists are still debating the influence of aluminum on the human body, and the number of opponents of aluminum in cooking (including alcohol distillation) far exceeds the number of supporters.

The thing is that this metal tends to accumulate in the body. Studies of victims of Alzheimer's disease have revealed that all patients have an excess amount of aluminum in the brain. If aluminum utensils - pots, plates, spoons and forks, which came into contact with food in a cold state, were secretly banned because of its health hazard, then the interaction of aluminum with hot alcohol vapor (along with impurities) is doubly dangerous.

We exclude glass from the remaining materials. Refrigerators made from it are some of the best, but making a coil with your own hands from a glass tube at home is almost impossible if you are not qualified as a professional glass blower. If you manage to buy one in a store, you are an unusually lucky person. More often you can find Liebig or Allin glass refrigerators, but today we are talking about coils.

Of the remaining materials, copper is the best in terms of its thermal performance and ease of use. For comparison, let's look at the thermal conductivity of metals:

• Copper 382-390 W/(m K);
• Matun 97-111 W/(m K);
• Stainless steel ≈ 20 W/(m K).

From the list it is clear that copper has a thermal conductivity almost 20 times higher than stainless steel. But this does not mean that a copper refrigerator will be twenty times smaller. The most that can be achieved is to reduce it by about half. For a stationary moonshine still this is not such a noticeable value.

From practice, I can advise that if you have a choice between copper and stainless steel, choose stainless steel.

Coil manufacturing technology

You can see how to make a coil with your own hands in the video. Briefly about the technique - the required section of the tube is clogged on one side and dry, sifted fine sand is poured into it. Be sure to be dry and be sure to be small.

Anyone who has ever tried to do this knows that it is not an easy task. The sand should fill the tube completely. If there is an air plug between the layers of sand, a deformation zone or even a crack may appear there.

The secret of backfilling is simple - you need to do it together. While one slowly pours sand through the funnel, the second constantly taps the tube with a hammer, slowly moving it from bottom to top and vice versa, until the movement of sand stops.

After backfilling, we seal the open part of the tube (we hammer in a wooden peg, secure one end of the tube and wind it around a blank or pipe of the required diameter, 50-70 mm, depending on the size of the flow-through cooler body). If we make a coil for a vat or other container with stagnant water, then the diameter of the base can reach 30-40 cm.

There should be a distance of at least 0.5-1.5 cm between the turns of the spiral. In this case, heat transfer is much better. It is very easy to make a coil by hand from copper and brass, but somewhat more difficult (physically) from stainless steel. It's great to have access to a lathe. At slow speeds, the coil is completed in a matter of minutes.

After finishing the work, the sand must be removed. This is very simple to do - drill out both pegs and lightly tap the coil with a hammer, periodically turning it over and shaking it. In about five minutes there will be no trace left of the sand. Then we rinse the tube with water under pressure - the coil for the moonshine still is ready. All that remains is to insert it into the body and solder or weld the end caps, not forgetting to make fittings for connecting running water.

During operation, regardless of what the coil is made of, after each distillation session, the tube must be washed with a weak solution of lemon or acetic acid and rinse with running water under pressure. A properly made coil with proper care will last for several decades.

Sealing the still
For all aluminum flasks that have been in use for a long time, the rubber O-ring on the lid becomes unusable over time. The ring loses its elasticity, cracks and sometimes even breaks. Meanwhile, this defect can be easily eliminated using commercially available fluoroplastic tape. FUM tape (Fluoroplastic Sealing Material) can have different thicknesses and colors; you can use any, carefully wrapping the rubber ring around the entire circumference. Fluoroplastic can withstand temperatures up to 400 degrees, does not emit any odor and is absolutely safe.

Moonshine cleaning
The most harmful impurities in moonshine are fusel oils. We must strive to reduce their number to a minimum.
When distilling, you should not excessively increase the heating temperature of the mash. In other words, the thinner the stream at the outlet of the coil, the higher the quality of the moonshine. It is necessary to constantly monitor the water level in the reservoir tank and add water in a timely manner. The colder the water, the better.

To purify moonshine, you can use household water filters or strain the moonshine through a vessel with activated carbon. Carbon for the filter can also be obtained at home.
Somewhere I came across this method: “Light a fire from birch wood. When the wood is almost burned, but the heat is still very strong, fill a clay pot with coals, blow off the ash and close the lid tightly. Wait until the coals go out and cool down.”

Unfortunately, I didn't have it on hand clay pot, so I lit a fire from small birch logs, previously cleared of birch bark, in a 200-liter iron barrel with the top lid cut out. Such barrels are often used to collect rainwater for irrigation. At the right moment, I simply turned the barrel upside down and sprinkled the edges with earth to stop the access of oxygen to the cooling coals. The cooled coals must be crushed not very finely, so that pieces of 0.5-1 cm in size are obtained, then sifted through a not very fine sieve. Coals can be used in a filter, or you can throw them into a container with moonshine at the rate of 10 grams per liter. In the latter case, the contents must be shaken daily for several days, then filtered.

Carbon filter can be made with your own hands from 1.5 - 3 liter plastic bottle. The bottle is cut crosswise approximately in half. Use the part with the neck. They put a piece of gauze there, folded in several layers, then a thin layer of cotton wool and cover it with coal. Instead of gauze, you can use thin felt. You can put another layer of cotton wool on top. The filter is ready. It can also be used during the distillation process, simply by placing it under the coil. The carbon in the filter needs to be changed periodically.

The carbon filter does not allow elements such as mercury, lead, cadmium, zinc, iron, manganese, chromium and other heavy metals to pass through, which can give moonshine a cloudy color and negative taste qualities, besides, they are not at all good for health. It also purifies the product from elements such as arsenic, hydrogen compounds, sulfides, excess chlorine, etc.

Coil tube length
The table provides information that may be useful in the manufacture of a moonshine still. The most interesting is the calculation of the minimum length of the tube for the coil depending on its diameter. As can be seen from the table, the larger the diameter of the tube, the shorter its length can be. In practice, for reliable and trouble-free operation of the system, it is advisable to take the tube length a little longer than the calculated one.

Wire cross-section depending on its diameter

What is the wire cross-section and how to determine it? If you bite through the wire and look at it from the end, you can see the wire core in the form of a circle. The area of ​​this circle is the cross-section of the wire.
As can be seen from the formula, the cross-section of the wire (circle area) can be easily determined by its diameter. It is enough to multiply the diameter of the wire core by itself and by 0.785.
Example. There is a wire with a diameter of 3mm. Let's determine its cross section. 3mm*3mm*0.7854=7.065. Rounding the value, we get: a wire with a diameter of 3 mm has a cross-section of 7 squares.

Selecting the cross-section of copper wire for electrical wiring

When wiring circuits, a general switch (fuse links or electromechanical circuit breakers) must be installed at the input. In household networks, fuses are the most common. As a rule, such fuses always burn out at the most inopportune moment, and a full replacement is not always at hand. For self-made fuse, you can use the following table.

Electromagnetic purification of moonshine

Take a piece of wire 1-3 meters long, wrap it around a bottle of moonshine or any other drink. The wire must be rigid so that the resulting coil holds its shape, and its diameter must be such that a bottle of moonshine can fit inside freely. The number of turns does not matter, but the more, the better. The same applies to the wire diameter. Connect the ends of the coil through a switch to any DC source. A 12-volt battery is sufficient.
Be sure to turn on the light bulb at the appropriate voltage in the open circuit!
And the switch is only in the negative wire!

After placing the bottle inside the coil, close and open the circuit at intervals of 5-10 seconds. Under the influence of an electromagnetic field, all harmful substances that are in moonshine actively evaporate. Therefore, the bottle must be open. The duration of the process is no more than 5 minutes. As a rule, this time is enough to prepare a snack...

The method is especially effective in large companies, at picnics, etc. Tested several times last summer. Those present unanimously gave the highest praise to the purified drink. Moreover, after cleaning and tasting each subsequent bottle, the quality of moonshine, by all accounts, certainly increased...

The coil, as the main element of the refrigerator, is responsible for the condensation of vapors from the distillation cube. In self-made moonshine stills, pipes made of stainless steel, copper, metal-plastic or aluminum are used to make coils, and the power of the distillation cube must be taken into account.

Thanks to its simple form, making this part at home will not be difficult, but to do this you need to familiarize yourself with the features of its functioning in all details.

The coil is an essential part of the “moonshine still”, it is part of the “refrigerator”, which is one of the three required components along with the “distillation cube” and “hoses”, and is necessary for final stage distillation. After the liquid evaporates in the distillation cube, steam passes through the system and regardless of additional influencing processes, for example rectification, which requires or - distillation column—, goes into the refrigerator.

Here the spiral acts as the main functional element - condensation of alcohol, water and some fusel oils and impurities occurs on its surface, after which the distillate flows directly into the container for collecting moonshine.

Design and principles of operation

Structurally, the coil is a hollow tube twisted into a spiral. Steam from the distillation cube passes inside it, and on the outside there can be either air or water - a cooling medium. It is necessary to lower the temperature of the steam due to heat transfer from it through the metal to it, as a result of which the evaporated substances - alcohol, water and fusel oils - cannot maintain a gaseous state and condense.

Despite the very simple structure and principle of operation, each parameter of the spiral - the material of manufacture, its geometric features and placement option - significantly affects the process.

Material

It affects both the functional part of the refrigerator and its service life. The main materials for manufacturing are copper, stainless steel, metal-plastic, glass, silver and aluminum. To understand what is best to make a coil for a moonshine still with your own hands, it’s worth going through each option in detail:

• Silver. It has excellent performance indicators: high thermal conductivity, non-toxic, good shock-absorbing life, but the metal itself is very expensive in comparison with other analogues, which is why it is used extremely rarely.
• Copper. A coil for a moonshine still made of a copper tube is one of the most common solutions, this is due to both the good thermal conductivity of the material and its reasonable price, and the fact that the metal is easy to process and such a part is not difficult to make with your own hands. Of course, a purchased option is also possible, which also has an affordable price.

• Aluminum. It has good thermal conductivity, is quite easy to process and is inexpensive. But there is a problem with its high oxidability; as a result, aluminum oxides, which are harmful to health, will enter the distillate, and it is impossible to apply a protective coating, as on food utensils, at home.

• Metal-plastic. A coil for a moonshine still made of a metal-plastic pipe is becoming increasingly popular, and there are a number of reasons for this: it is cheaper than other materials, even if you use very high-quality pipes, it is very easy to process and at the same time fulfills all the assigned tasks. A prerequisite for the original pipe is that it is made from a non-toxic polymer and can withstand high temperatures.

• Food grade stainless steel. The material is highly durable and does not interact with alcohol vapor, which affects the quality of the distillate; it has good, but not as high as copper, aluminum or silver, thermal conductivity; it is quite difficult to process due to its high strength. The cost is cheaper than copper and silver.

• Glass. The material has absolute chemical inertness, as a result of which distillation occurs in ideal conditions, but it is impossible to make a glass coil for a moonshine still, you can only buy it. An additional advantage is the transparency of the material, which, when using a refrigerator casing made of transparent polymer, will allow you to monitor the condensation process with laboratory accuracy. The downside is that it is quite fragile and needs to be used carefully. Price is one of the advantages of glass.

Geometric features

It is necessary to select or manufacture a coil for a moonshine still, taking into account the correct dimensional parameters of this part, which determine the course of the condensation process. The following significant points can be highlighted:

• Tube wall thickness. Determines thermal conductivity and, therefore, heat transfer between steam and the cooling medium. The thinner the wall, the higher the thermal conductivity. But since the thermal conductivity of each material is different, the wall thickness is selected individually each time, and it should not be very thin, otherwise it will lead to rapid wear of the part. Tubes with a thickness of 0.9-1.1 mm are used as standard.
• Tube length. The longer it is, the larger the area involved during condensation and the higher the performance of the refrigerator as a whole, so the length of the spiral should be calculated based on the power of the moonshine still. You also need to take into account the hydraulic resistance, which increases with the length of the tube. For stainless steel and copper, the optimal length is 1.5-2 meters in an untwisted form.
• Tube inner diameter. Together with the length, it determines the area of ​​the condensing surface; in addition, an increase in diameter reduces the hydraulic resistance. Typically, when making a coil for a moonshine still, a tube with an internal diameter of 8-12 mm is used.

Accommodation options

There are three positions in which the spiral can be installed:

• vertical;
• horizontal;
• diagonal.

The standard option is vertical arrangement. In this case, the substances, condensing, do not encounter resistance during further downward movement, which affects the distillation rate.

Important! With a vertical coil arrangement, not only a downward, but also an upward connection is possible - the pairs will flow from top to bottom. In this case, the operating speed of the refrigerator will decrease significantly.

How to make a coil for a moonshine still with your own hands

For manufacturing, a tube made of copper, food grade stainless steel, aluminum or even brass, similar in properties to copper, can be used. The length of the segment should be from 1.5 to 2 meters, have an internal diameter from 8 to 12 mm and a wall thickness from 0.9 to 1.1 mm. When twisting the tube into a spiral, the size of the refrigerator case in which it will be installed must be taken into account, as well as the fact that the volume occupied by the spiral should not exceed 1/5-1/6 of the volume of the case.

Work plan:

1. The tube must be filled with loose filler, for example soda or sand, this will protect it from flattening when curling. Alternative option freezing a tube filled with water will complicate the process a little due to an increase in the hardness of the metal and the ice itself.
2. The outlet openings are sealed using wooden caps, or soldered, or clamped, or in another convenient way. To facilitate the process, a nut is welded on one side or placed on glue/sealant.
3. To wind the tube, you need a round object with a specified diameter for the spiral, for example a block turned on a lathe. The figure shows the normalized aspect ratio and can be used even if a coil with a different diameter is required.
4. After curling, the spring is removed from the shaft and the filler is poured out, after which the spiral must be washed and it is ready for installation in the refrigerator.

From a technical point of view, making a coil for a moonshine still is one of the simplest tasks in comparison with its other parts. However, do not be deceived - for productive and high-quality distillation, the spiral must have the correct shape and be made of a suitable material: copper, stainless steel, metal-plastic, glass, and if funds allow and you want a luxurious distiller, then silver. In this case, the tube used to create the spiral must meet optimal parameters in terms of length, wall thickness and internal diameter.

On this page we will look at the principles of operation of a coil refrigerator for a moonshine still. The coil is the heart of the moonshine still!

It largely determines the performance of the moonshine still.

Why is it needed and what functions does it perform in? In the coil (Graham's refrigerator, if scientifically) condensation of vapors occurs and cooling of the condensed moonshine due to heat removal through the walls of the coil with cooling water (less often air). Moonshine vapor entering the coil comes into contact with its walls, cools and condenses and flows in the form of moonshine into the prepared container. The coil has a number of characteristics that significantly affect the performance of the moonshine still. These are, first of all, the geometric dimensions of the coil:
- length of the coil, the longer the coil, the greater its hydraulic resistance, but also the larger the contact area with the cooling water. Just in case, I’ll clarify that we mean exactly the length of the tube from which the coil is wound, and not the length of the wound coil.
- cross-section of the coil tube, the larger it is, the lower the hydraulic resistance of the coil and the larger the contact area for one length of the coil.
- the thickness of the wall of the coil tube, the thinner it is, the higher the thermal conductivity, but the lower the strength and ease of processing.

Although in fact, thermal conductivity depends very little on thickness due to the layer effect - a sharp decrease in thermal conductivity at the boundary of two media.
The next one no less important parameter- the material from which the coil is made. A very important factor. First of all, the material should not be toxic and form compounds with alcohol. Secondly, it must have sufficient thermal conductivity so that the moonshine and its vapors have time to condense and cool. Here is the thermal conductivity of the most suitable materials from the point of view of their non-toxicity:

Silver 429 W/(m K)
- copper 382-390 W/(m K)
- aluminum 202-236 W/(m K)
- brass 97-111 W/(m K)
- stainless steel approx. 20 W/(m K)
- glass 1-1.15 W/(m K)

Next is accessibility. The most accessible tubes are made of aluminum (for example, from old baguettes), copper (from old refrigerators in repair shops). It will be more difficult with stainless steel, although it depends on everyone. Silver is somehow expensive. You can buy a glass refrigerator at a chemical glassware store, but everything depends on the availability of such a store in your city.

Thus, copper is the most advantageous material due to its high thermal conductivity. In practice, we will not get a 19-fold reduction in the area of ​​a copper coil in relation to a stainless steel coil (this is how much worse stainless steel conducts heat than copper). This is due to the formation of surface layers of liquid and gas on the coil, which seriously (tens of times) reduce the thermal conductivity of the coil. But a 2-3 times gain in length when using copper versus stainless steel is quite possible. Much depends on the nature of the flows inside and outside the coil. If possible, they should be swirled somehow, creating turbulence. Although in most cases, a well-made coil already provides almost a fivefold margin of thermal conductivity.
Regarding the toxicity of copper and stainless steel, the opinions of seasoned “moonshiners” differ. Personally, I prefer copper due to its greater thermal conductivity and ease of processing. The non-toxicity of copper compounds with moonshine can be judged by the fact that the French and many others noble drinks It is distilled in copper distillers - alambiks, the closest relatives of our moonshine stills. But stainless steel is a controversial material for the coil of a moonshine still. There are a lot of grades; during processing (especially welding), the composition of the steel undergoes changes and how this changed composition will react with moonshine is not known. In addition, copper is an essential trace element, and WHO believes that a lack of copper in the body is much more dangerous than its excess.
The next important characteristic is the orientation of the coil in space. It can be vertical, horizontal and inclined.

In our business, it is very desirable to place the coil vertically - this way the moonshine will flow by gravity and will not create additional resistance to the movement of steam, accumulating in the hollows. During the coiling process, you should avoid the formation of “knees” in the coil, in which condensed moonshine could accumulate.
The vertical coil, in turn, can be ascending or descending - that is, steam flows from bottom to top or from top to bottom. In moonshine brewing, it is very important to use the coil in a downward mode, that is, supply steam from the moonshine still from above, and the condensed moonshine will not create additional resistance to the steam. And with this movement of steam and the supply of cooling water from bottom to top, water convection will play into our hands, but more on that below.

The next important parameter is the coolant movement mode. That is, does the coil operate on running water, or is an excess amount of water immediately poured into its casing, which gradually heats up by taking away heat from the moonshine.

One of the stages of the distillation process is the condensation of alcohol vapors. To make this stage go faster, a coil for a moonshine still is used. This is a special chamber that is cooled from the outside. Passing through it, volatile substances pass into the liquid phase - droplets of moonshine are formed, which then fall into the tank. There are other designs of heat exchangers, but the spiral is the most effective and easiest to implement cooling method.

Types of heat exchangers

The main purpose of a coil for moonshine or other equipment (oil distillation, refrigeration) is to transmit the temperature of the external environment to the steam or liquid located inside the chamber (or vice versa). And in this regard, the spiral design in our case is the most cost-effective in terms of energy costs.

The Weigel-Liebig refrigerator has too small a cooling area. Sectional and plate models are bulky and difficult to implement at home, since their assembly will require welding. The optimal and most used in distilleries is the Graham heat exchanger.

Schemes of the simplest heat exchangers of different types.

Models: a - Weigel-Liebig (aka “pipe in pipe”); b - ball Allina A.G.; c - R. Vesta; g - O. Dimrota; d - T. Graham; e - Friedrichs; g - tangential.

If you are assembling equipment for distillation or rectification of moonshine on your own, then a homemade spiral cooler will be best choice. It can be quickly made from available materials without the use of hot soldering.

Making a basic coil-type cooler

The simplest refrigerator for a moonshine still is a stainless steel or copper coil. These materials are preferred because they have high thermal conductivity. In addition, they do not react with substances evaporating from the mash (alcohols, acids, aldehydes and others).

For the design we will need a copper tube for winding (with sand inside) about 2 meters long and an axis. As an axis, you can use any rigid cylinder or a stick of suitable diameter.

1. We wind the tube onto the axis so that we get a spiral with a certain pitch (the gap between the turns).
2. Remove the spiral from the axis.
3. We connect one end of the coil to the tube that removes steam from the distillation cube, and the other to the tube leading to the tank.

Moonshine still with coil type air cooler

We received a rudimentary air-cooled cooler without a shroud. These are the structures that our ancestors used for many centuries. But since our goal is to effectively distill moonshine, it is better to make the coil submersible with water cooling.

Making a heat exchanger with flow cooling

Since a coil-type submersible heat exchanger connected to a running water supply can be considered optimal for a good rate of moonshine extraction, this is what we will assemble. Its scheme is quite simple.

Scheme of an immersion flow refrigerator

We will need:

• a container (any one with a sealed lid will do) into which the finished coil will be immersed (of any configuration, the main thing is that the spiral fits in it);
• copper tube for winding - 1.5–2 meters (external diameter about 10 mm, internal diameter about 1.2 mm);
• cylindrical axis for winding (steel cylinder, household equipment handle with a diameter of at least 50 mm);
• tubes for a moonshine still to ensure the supply of cold water and the removal of waste warm water;
• sealant.

Assembly steps

1. We make a plug on one side of the tube. After this, we fill it with sand - this way it will not flatten when wound. We make a second temporary plug on the other side.
2. We wind the main working element - the spiral - around the object chosen as the axis. Remove the tube, remove the plugs, pour out the sand - the copper coil is ready.
3. We make holes in the lower and upper parts of the side surface of the container for water supply/discharge.
4. We insert tubes into the water holes (in the lower one for connecting to cold water, in the upper one for connecting to hot water).
5. Seals the joints of tubes and containers (coil casing).
6. In the lower part (bottom) and in the upper part (lid) of the container we make holes for the tubes coming from the spiral. We lower the coil into the container, thread its ends into the holes, close and seal the lid.
7. We seal the connections between the ends of the coil and the container.
8. We connect to the moonshine still. In the upper part - to the tube leading from the distillation cube, in the lower part - to the tube leading to the reservoir. We check the tightness of the joints.

There are simpler designs, but this one is considered the most convenient and productive.

What should be the material for the coil?

If you are deciding what to make a coil for a moonshine still from, then probably the main question for you is - what material to use for the spiral. It must have the following characteristics:

• complete or relative inertness to the products of mash evaporation;
• durability (minimal thinning during use);
• strength (useful during assembly and disassembly);
• good thermal conductivity.

A number of materials almost fully meet these requirements. But before you calculate the design - find the optimal length of the tube, you should choose what exactly suits you.

The container for immersing the spiral has different requirements, because ordinary water will flow through it. cold water. Yes and nutritional properties We are not interested in the material.

Materials for coil type refrigerators

• Silver. Thermal conductivity coefficient (λ) is 430 W/m*K. The compounds formed as a result of exposure to vapors are not hazardous to health. The disadvantage is the high price.
• Copper, λ=400 W/m*K. Some compounds may be hazardous to health. The coil will require careful care.
• Aluminum, λ=220 W/m*K. Relatively fragile material. When reacting with vapors, alcoholates will be formed. They accumulate in the body and have a bad effect on health.
• Brass, λ about 100 W/m*K. Requires tinning before use.
• Stainless steel, λ about 20 W/m*K.
• Glass, λ=1.1 W/m*K. The glass coil for a moonshine still is very affordable, but extremely fragile.

Using copper and stainless steel for the coil is considered the best choice

It is extremely difficult to independently carry out calculations on the recommended length of the coil tube. Need to know not only the thermal conductivity coefficients of different media (container material, spiral, water, steam), but also the rate of water supply into the cooler casing, the volume of distillate per minute passing through the section of the coil. So it’s better to take advantage of other people’s experience.

If a stainless steel tube is used (D=12 mm, wall thickness 1 mm), then 1.5 meters of such material will be sufficient to sufficiently cool the distillate at the outlet. In this case, the condensation rate will be 3–4 liters/hour.

Let's summarize

All components, including the coil for the moonshine still, can be made with your own hands. It is best to use a stainless steel or copper tube as a material for the spiral. The best way cooling - water through the outer casing of the spiral. No special skills are required to produce this “spare part” for moonshine equipment.