Turbo 500 (T500) Instructions: Making Spirits with the Turbo 500 - With Videos

The T500 is a forgiving machine with one unforgiving control. Get the outlet water temperature wrong and you will either collect nothing at all or collect something weaker than it should be. Everything else is patience.

These are the complete Turbo 500 instructions in order: how the column works, making the wash, plumbing the cooling water, the run, diluting and filtering, and keeping the thing clean. There is a gin section too, because the same still does that job with the packing removed. Where our own older pages disagreed with each other on the numbers, this reconciles them rather than picking one quietly.

Videos first if you would rather watch someone demonstrate how to use the Still Spirits Turbo 500. The Turbo 500 Distillation System instruction manual is the PDF that ships with the kits.

• Step one: how to make the wash
  
  
• Step two: distilling with the Turbo 500
  
  
• Step three: filtering your neutral spirit
  
  
• Step four: Still Spirits flavourings and essences
  
  

The legal position before you start

This matters more for the T500 than for a benchtop still, purely because of the boiler size. There are two separate rules and people routinely collapse them into one.

• Owning the still. The ATO requires permission to own or possess a still with a capacity over 5 litres, and that applies regardless of what the still will be used for. The T500 boiler is 25 or 30 litres, so it is well over that line. The ATO is explicit that permission for the still is not a licence to distil alcohol.
• Using it to distil alcohol. To use a still of any capacity to distil alcohol you need an excise manufacturer licence, and the ATO states plainly that it does not grant licences to distil spirits for personal consumption. Penalties apply for manufacturing without one.

You will still find older pages, including some of ours, referring to a licence from the "Customs & Excise Department". That is out of date. It is the ATO, under the Excise Act 1901. Our complete guide to home distilling in Australia covers the licensing detail, and is it illegal to distil alcohol in Australia unpacks why the licence exists at all. Check the ATO's current position yourself rather than relying on a forum.

How the Turbo 500 actually works

Worth understanding, because it explains why the run ends the way it does.

1. The wash boils and vapour rises into a column packed with saddles.
2. Some of that vapour condenses on the saddles and runs back down as liquid, meeting more rising vapour on the way.
3. That repeated evaporate-and-condense cycle is refluxing, and each pass strips out a little more water and a few more of the heavier compounds.
4. What finally reaches the top and passes into the condenser is far purer than what left the boiler.

The clever part is that the T500 compensates continuously. As the run proceeds the alcohol left in the wash drops, so the reflux ratio automatically rises to hold purity up. Your output slows as the run goes on, but the strength stays high.

That gives you a clean end signal rather than a guess. Eventually nothing reaches the top of the column at all: water vapour still rises and condenses partway up, but the alcohol is spent. In practice the distillate slows to about one drop every 5 to 10 seconds. That is the run telling you it is finished, not a fault developing.

Turbo 500 purity and yield: what to expect

Still Spirits publish 93% ABV off the still, with 95% or more of the wash's alcohol recovered and 8 litres of spirit at 40% ABV from a 25 litre wash. In practice you should see 90 to 93%.

Here is the number most people miss. A run gives you roughly 3.5 litres at 90 to 93% ABV, which sounds modest. Diluted to drinking strength that becomes about 8 litres at 40% ABV. Same batch, described two different ways, and the second figure is the one that matters when you are deciding whether this is worth the afternoon.

Five things move Turbo 500 purity and yield:

• The type of sugar you ferment
• The yeast you choose
• The temperature you ferment at
• How well you clear the wash
• How well you hold the outlet water temperature

Four of those five happen before you switch the boiler on. The still is not where you win or lose this.

What you need

• 30 L fermenter, assembled, with an airlock
• Cleaning and sanitising products: cold water detergent and no-rinse sanitiser
• T500 turbo yeast and carbon, including Turbo Clear
• Turbo sugar, dextrose or other fermentables
• Hydrometer, and an alcometer with a trial jar
• Mixing spoon, and a syphon or 5 L jug
• 5 L vessel to collect the distillate
• Carbon and filters for the polishing stage
• An essence from the spirit flavours and essences range

Step 1: The T500 wash recipe (days 1 to 6)

Good spirit is a clean wash that has been distilled, not a bad wash that has been rescued. This is where the work actually is.

Day 1, clean and sanitise. Clean and sanitise the fermenter and everything that touches the wash. Shake off the excess but do not rinse. Check the tap seal for leaks while you are in there, and rest the sanitised spoon on the upturned lid so it stays clean.

Day 1, mix it. Check your yeast sachet for the water quantity and temperature and the sugar type and amount. These differ between yeasts and the sachet beats any recipe on the internet, including this one. As a worked example, the long-standing T500 wash recipe is 6 kg of white sugar in 21 L of water with a Classic Turbo Yeast, making 25 L total. Whatever you use, aim for 20 to 25 L in a single batch.

Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Undissolved sugar ferments only partially, and you simply get less alcohol for the same effort.

Add the yeast and nutrient, then the carbon. Turbo Carbon absorbs a good share of the undesirable flavours during fermentation and turns the wash black, which looks alarming the first time and is entirely normal. It comes back out when you clear.

Days 1 to 6, ferment. Lid on, airlock half filled with water and seated in the grommet. Ferment in the range on your sachet. The manual's broad window is 18 to 30°C, but a quality yeast such as Pure Turbo Yeast wants 18 to 24°C: too hot and the yeast dies, too cold and it goes to sleep. Fermentation smells for a few days. It passes, and it does not affect the spirit.

Day 6, confirm it has finished. Float a hydrometer in the wash. You want a specific gravity at or below 0.990, stable there for two consecutive days. This is the step people skip, and distilling a wash that has not finished is the most common reason a first batch disappoints.

Day 6, clear it.

1. Stir vigorously to drive off all the dissolved gas. Degassing properly matters, because gas still in solution keeps the finings from dropping.
2. Add Turbo Clear part A. Stir well, leave one hour.
3. An hour later, stir part B very gently into just the top 50 mm of the wash. Gently is not a suggestion. Stir hard here and the clearing fails outright.
4. Leave 24 hours, until the sediment is all sitting on the bottom.

Going further: temperature-controlled fermentation

If you want the cleanest possible result and you do not mind managing it, control the temperature rather than hoping the laundry stays in range.

Set a rig like the Grainfather Conical Fermenter PRO GF30 with Glycol Chiller GC4 to a steady 20°C and leave it. Expect around two weeks to ferment out fully at that temperature rather than one. Then, after the Turbo Clear goes in, give it a few extra days and drop the temperature as low as it will go. 10°C is good, 4°C is better. The cold drops the impurities out and leaves a noticeably cleaner wash.

One practical warning on a Grainfather conical: do not use the trub discharge tap, because it can clog. Take the wash off the sediment through the other tap.

Step 2: Set up the still (day 7)

The Turbo 500 instructions in the box cover assembly too, but the points below are where units most often get set up wrong. Put the still somewhere it can stay for the full five hours: a level bench, power, a sink and a tap, and reasonable ventilation. Kitchen or laundry is ideal. Not outside, because draughts wreck distillation efficiency.

1. Transfer the wash. Boiler on a firm level bench with the tap over the sink, so you are not lifting a hot boiler later. Point the tap away from the front so nothing pours out on someone if it gets knocked. Syphon or jug the cleared wash across, leaving as much sediment behind as you can, and stay below the maximum level line.
2. Add the boil enhancers. All the ceramic boil enhancers go into the wash. If you suspect the wash will foam, add about 3 capfuls of distilling conditioner. Foam that reaches the column disrupts the reflux action, cuts quality and makes the temperature impossible to control, so it is cheap insurance.
3. Check the column packing. If the column is empty, copper saddles go in first, then the second-stage saddles. These vary by generation: older columns shipped with ceramic, current ones with stainless steel. A leftover handful that will not fit is normal.
4. Mount the column on the lid. Hold the condenser upside down while you unscrew the base nut, or the saddles will pour out. Leave the black O ring seated, put the boiler lid over the column, screw the nut back and tighten until the lid stops spinning.
5. Connect the tubing. Thick clear tube to the block outlet and into the sink, short thin tube for the top loop, thin clear tube from the water inlet to your tap, white tube to the spirit outlet.
6. Fit the thermometers with their LR44 batteries and mount them in the bracket.
7. Check it is vertical. If the still is tilted the condensate will not reflux evenly and the whole unit underperforms. Clip the lid down and make sure you can read the thermometer from where you will be standing.

Connecting the cooling water

The needle valve supplied with the machine is the right tool here, because it gives you fine control over flow.

• Modern kitchen tap: it is designed for exactly this. Unscrew the aerator, the fitting on the end holding the metal gauze, and screw the needle valve straight into the tap thread.
• Outdoor or laundry tap, or a washing machine fitting: use the 20mm BSP adaptor, which screws into the end of the needle valve and suits an external 20mm thread.
• Neither works: the garden hose adaptor and a standard hose will do the job.

Why bother with the valve at all rather than just cracking the tap? Because what you are really controlling is the temperature at the outlet, and once that is set you will need to correct it every time household water pressure shifts. A needle valve in line makes that a small adjustment instead of a guess. Failing that, run the still when nobody is putting a load of washing on.

If chasing the tap gets old, the T500 Water Flow Regulator holds the flow steady for you.

Step 3: Distil, and the Turbo 500 water flow rate that matters

About five hours start to finish, and it wants your attention for that time. The still gets very hot, what comes off it is highly flammable, and children need to be well clear during and after the run.

1. Connect and close. Flow controller on the tap, valve fully shut. Thin tube to the controller, thick tube into the sink or drain, white alcohol tube into your collection vessel. Position that white tube so it can never end up submerged in the distillate, otherwise the boiler can implode.
2. Start the boil. Power on. A 23 L wash takes a bit over an hour to reach boiling.
3. Open the water at about 45 minutes, before the wash starts boiling. Ease the valve open to somewhere in the 400 to 700 ml per minute range. Measure it properly by timing how much fills a jug in a minute. Start nearer 450 to 500 ml if your tap water is cold.
4. Then stop watching the flow and chase the temperature. Once the wash is boiling, the outlet reading needs to sit between 50 and 65°C. Below 50 and you will collect nothing at all. I would aim for 55 to 60, which is what our older instructions recommended, because it gives you margin at both ends. Too cold, close the valve very slightly. Too hot, open it a little. Expect to adjust several times across the run. The Turbo 500 water flow rate is only ever a starting point; the outlet temperature is the real control.
5. Discard the first 50 ml. Set aside about a quarter cup and throw it out. These are the foreshots and they carry acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate and methyl propanol. People describe the smell as hospital or nail polish. Do not drink them.
6. Collect. Watch the drops rather than guessing. You are aiming for about 3.5 L.
7. Finish. Around the five hour mark the distillate slows to a drop every 5 to 10 seconds, which means the alcohol is spent. Turn off the boiler, unplug it, turn off the water.
8. Empty carefully. The spent wash is dangerously hot. Let it cool before draining it through the tap. It makes excellent garden fertiliser.
9. Rinse the boiler, keeping the ceramic boil enhancers for next time.

Step 4: Dilute and filter

Everything comes down to 50% ABV before it touches carbon, whatever filter you use. Filtering at full strength does not work properly.

1. Measure first. Pour about 200 ml into the trial jar and float the alcometer. It should read 90 to 93%. The alcometer is calibrated for 20°C, so if your spirit is warmer or cooler use the correction tables rather than the raw number.
2. Dilute. For every litre of distillate at 90 to 93%, add 850 ml of clean drinking water and mix thoroughly. So 3.5 L of distillate takes about 2.9 L of water. Re-measure: you want roughly 50%. If it reads a little high, add water 100 ml at a time and recheck. If it reads low, leave it and move on. Adding water raises the temperature slightly, so allow for that when you re-measure.
3. Filter through activated carbon, following the instructions with your filter. Check the strength again afterwards and adjust to taste.

Step 5: Flavour and bottle (day 8)

• Bring the spirit to 40% ABV.
• Add an essence, following the dose rate on that specific flavouring, since rates differ across the ranges.
• Bottle it, then leave it a few days before you judge it. Fresh spirit always tastes sharper than the same spirit a week later.

Making gin with the T500 gin botanicals basket

The same still runs as a vapour infusion pot still with the packing out. This is how you get real botanical gin rather than an essence gin, and it is the single biggest thing most T500 owners never try.

1. Put your filtered alcohol in the boiler and top up to 25 L with water.
2. Remove all the saddles from the column. Set the unit up as you would for distilling water, running the cooling water straight through the condenser and bypassing the reflux coil and water outlet block.
3. Attach only the threaded section of the gin botanicals basket to the condenser column and the underside of the lid, in place of the stainless steel plug.
4. Fill the bottom piece of the basket with your botanicals, orientate the assembled pieces the right way up, and screw the basket in from below.
5. Switch on. About an hour to boiling. Turn the cooling water on around 30 minutes in, before it boils, and set it to roughly 2.5 L per minute, or enough that the distillate runs as liquid rather than coming off as steam.
6. Collect into a 5 L demijohn and stop when the spirit drops to 20% ABV.
7. Water down to 40% and let it settle before drinking.

Worth taking seriously: do not let botanicals fall into the condenser column, because that causes a blockage. If it happens, talk to us before you start poking at it. For botanicals and profiling kits, the gin botanicals and essences range is the place to start.

How to clean the Turbo 500 condenser

Three intervals, and none of them are onerous.

Repacking rule: copper first, then the ceramic or stainless steel saddles, whichever your column came with.

Two things worth knowing so you do not panic mid-clean. First, the column may leak while you are cleaning it. There is deliberately no seal between the top cap and the stainless condenser: it is a pressure relief path, and the vapour pressure a T500 generates during a normal run is nowhere near enough to breach that joint. Still Spirits document this themselves in their guidance on how to clean the Turbo 500 condenser. Second, if the distillate starts tasting earthy, replace the saddles. That is the signal, not a calendar interval.

For storage, the thermometers have an on/off switch on the back. Turn them off if the condenser is going away for a while.

The numbers, reconciled

Different sets of Turbo 500 instructions quote slightly different figures, mostly because the guidance was written for the older 25 L setup and then updated for the 30 L boiler. Here is the whole picture in one place, which is the fastest way to settle an argument with a printed manual.

When something goes wrong

How long the whole thing takes

Still Spirits reckon on excellent spirit in as little as seven days, which matches, as long as the ferment cooperates.

What to do before your next run

Learning how to use the Still Spirits Turbo 500 well is mostly about preparation, because the machine punishes impatience and rewards very little else. If you take five things from this guide, take these:

• Ferment it out properly and prove it with a hydrometer, not by eye.
• Clear it properly, and stir part B gently.
• Chase the outlet temperature, not the flow rate. 55 to 60°C.
• Bin the first 50 ml every single time.
• Dilute to 50% before the spirit touches carbon.

Restocking is the T500 turbo yeast and carbon page, and the T500 Turbo 500 reflux still range covers the still, spare saddles and accessories. If something in your run is not behaving the way this describes, get in touch. We run this gear ourselves.

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FAQ

Q: Do I need a licence to use a Turbo 500 in Australia?

Two separate rules apply. The ATO requires permission to own a still over 5 litres regardless of what you distil in it, and the T500 boiler is 25 or 30 litres. Separately, distilling alcohol with any still requires an excise manufacturer licence, which the ATO does not grant for personal consumption. Ignore any older page referring to a "Customs & Excise Department", including ours, and check the ATO's current guidance directly.

Q: How much spirit does one T500 run make?

About 3.5 litres at 90 to 93% ABV, which becomes roughly 8 litres once diluted to 40% ABV. Still Spirits quote 93% off the still and 95% or better recovery of the alcohol in the wash.

Q: What Turbo 500 water flow rate should I use?

Start between 450 and 500 ml per minute, then stop thinking about flow and manage the outlet water temperature instead, because that is the actual control. Keep it between 50 and 65°C, ideally 55 to 60. Below 50°C you will collect nothing.

Q: Why is my Turbo 500 producing weak spirit?

Usually one of three things: the wash foamed up into the column, the wash was not properly cleared before distilling, or the still is not standing perfectly vertical so the condensate is not refluxing evenly. Add distilling conditioner, give Turbo Clear the full 24 hours, and check it with a level.

Q: Can I make gin with the Turbo 500?

Yes. Take all the saddles out, bypass the reflux coil so the cooling water runs straight through the condenser, and fit the T500 gin botanicals basket in place of the stainless steel plug. That turns the still into a vapour infusion pot still. Collect down to 20% ABV, then dilute to 40%.