Morning, Gents. I made RSO one time the old fashioned way and vowed not to bother doing it again until I came up with a better idea. I made a still out of an old pressure cooker, a condenser out of soft copper tubing, a coil cooler out of a coffee can, and used the mash I'd been utilizing for CO2 production to make the alcohol.
It dawned on me, why couldn't I do the RSO conventionally, strain all the vegetable matter out, chuck it back in the still, and reclaim the alcohol? You'd never get the goodies above 180 degrees or so, so it wouldn't hurt the RSO, and you catch the alcohol condensation to reuse it at a further date. Once you got the batch thickened considerably, I'd let the rest evaporate via air. I don't think you'd have enough ethanol residue left to match what's in a 3/2 beer. Any water could be carefully poured off.
My coffee can cooler is being replaced with a coil in a igloo water jug, hooked up to a recirculating pump drawing ice water from a laundry tub, which should work a lot better than chucking more and more ice in a quickly heating coffee can and dealing with the spill over.
This is all from the brain of a high school dropout, so try it at your own risk. I know for a fact that the still part works. I wound up with some 180 proof shine. Anyone sampling it claimed it was good! I did the fermentation in 5 gallon plastic carboys with home made air locks, with two pounds of cracked corn, two pounds of sugar, and a package of cheap Fleishman's yeast. Once the bubbles stopped, I chucked in another two pounds of sugar and let her start all over again. Didn't need to add corn or yeast as long as the water being added was warm.
