The Turbo 500 is the still most Australian home distillers reach for first, and it earns that spot. Run it properly and it turns a cheap sugar wash into 92 to 93% alcohol, recovering 95% or more of what you fermented. Run it carelessly and you get scorched wash, a foaming column, and a spirit that tastes like the fermenter smelled.
This guide covers the whole job start to finish: how the T500 works, making a clean wash, setting up the cooling water, running the distillation, squeezing out the best purity and yield, switching the rig over to make gin, and keeping it clean so it lasts. It pulls together everything that used to live across eight separate posts into one place, so you are not clicking between tabs mid-run.
How the Turbo 500 works
The T500 is a reflux still, and reflux is the whole trick. The wash heats in the boiler until it boils, then stays there for the rest of the run. Vapour rises up the column, and the heavier stuff (water and the undesirable heavier molecules) cools, condenses, and falls back down. That constant cycle of boiling, rising, condensing and falling is refluxing, and it is what strips the alcohol away from everything you do not want.
A few things follow from that:
- The top of the column runs cooler than the base. As the rising vapour gets more concentrated with alcohol, its temperature drops. A hotter reading at the top means weaker alcohol coming through.
- The ceramic saddles packed into the column give the vapour and the falling liquid a huge surface area to meet on, which speeds up the reflux action. The T500 is built so this reflux rate keeps compensating on its own as the run progresses.
- As the alcohol in the wash runs low, the reflux ratio climbs to keep purity high, so the flow slows down. Near the end, purity stays strong but output tapers off and then stops. At that point water vapour is still rising and condensing partway up the column, but nothing reaches the top. The run is done.
You do not have to babysit the reflux ratio. The still handles that. Your job is heat and water, which we will get to.
What you need before you start
A full run on the recommended wash takes about four hours start to finish, so set aside the time and give it your attention. Before you begin, have this on hand:
- A clock or timer
- A 1 litre calibrated jug (for setting water flow)
- A 5L jug or vessel to collect the alcohol
- A cooling water supply you can control
That is the operating kit. The consumables (yeast, carbon, clearing agent, distilling conditioner) come in below.
How to make the perfect wash
Most of the flavour problems people blame on the still actually start in the fermenter. The distillation removes most impurities, but a clean wash going in makes a real difference to what comes out. For the T500, the standard wash is 6kg of white sugar in 21L of water, fermented with a Still Spirits Classic Turbo Yeast. That makes 25L total.
Turbo Yeasts are premixed with the right nutrients to ferment hard and produce fewer impurities. Adding Still Spirits Liquid Carbon during fermentation soaks up a good chunk of the off-flavours. It turns the wash black, which looks alarming and is completely fine. It does not harm the ferment and comes out when you clear the wash.
Here is the full process:
- Clean and sterilise your fermenter.
- Add 21 litres of water at 40°C.
- Add 6kg of white sugar and stir until it dissolves.
- Add the Classic yeast and Turbo Carbon and stir well.
- Leave the fermenter at around 20°C room temperature to ferment.
- It has finished when the hydrometer reads 990 or below and the wash has stopped fizzing.
- Add Turbo Clear. Stir vigorously first to knock out the gas, then stir in part A. An hour later, gently mix part B into the top of the wash. Leave it 24 hours to clear.
- Siphon the clear wash into the boiler, leaving as much sediment behind as you can.
- Add a 3ml capful of distilling conditioner and the ceramic boil enhancers to stop frothing and surge boiling.
That SG reading of 990 or lower matters. Distil before fermentation finishes and you are leaving alcohol in the boiler and carrying sugar through.
Advanced wash tips for the cleanest possible spirit
If you want vodka or a clean gin base and you care about the last few percent of quality, this is where it is won. Pure Turbo Yeast is the highest-grade yeast for the job, but it is fussier. It wants to ferment between 18 and 24°C. Too hot and it dies. Too cold and it stalls.
Holding that window is the hard part in an Australian shed or laundry, which is why temperature-controlled fermentation is worth it if quality is the priority. A Grainfather conical fermenter with a glycol chiller lets you set 20°C and walk away. At that temperature expect roughly two weeks to fully ferment out.
A couple of things that catch people out with that setup:
- Do not use the trub discharge tap with Pure Turbo Yeast. It can clog. Pull the finished wash off the sediment through the other tap instead.
- After you add Turbo Clear at the end, leave it a few extra days and drop the temperature as low as it will go. 10°C is good. 4°C is better. Cold-crashing like this drops the impurities out and leaves you with a genuinely clean wash.
It is more work and more managing than a basic sugar wash. The payoff is real though: this process reliably gives about 3.5L of 93% ABV alcohol off a single run, provided you keep the distillation between 55 and 65°C.
Connecting the cooling water
The T500 lives or dies on controlled cooling water, because the water outlet temperature is your main control over the whole distillation. The needle valve (flow adjuster) that ships with the still is how you get that control, so it is worth setting up properly.
The needle valve is made to screw straight onto a modern kitchen tap: the kind with an aerator on the end. The aerator is the little screw fitting holding a metal gauze that breaks up the flow. Unscrew it and thread the needle valve directly into the tap.
If your tap will not take it, you have options:
- 20mm BSP adaptor. Screws into the end of the needle valve and lets you connect a washing-machine fitting or an external-thread outdoor or laundry tap.
- Garden hose adaptor. The last resort if neither screw fitting works. Run a standard garden hose for your cooling.
The reason flow control matters so much is that you are really only trying to hold a steady outlet temperature. Once that is set, a needle valve inline makes it far easier to correct for the pressure swings you get when someone else in the house runs a tap or the washing machine. If a controllable fitting is not an option, the simplest fix is to run the still when nobody else is using water. For a properly hands-off setup, the Still Spirits Water Flow Regulator holds the temperature steady for you.
Running your distillation, step by step
Under normal conditions you will want roughly 500 to 600ml of cooling water per minute. If the water coming out of the tap is warmer, run more; if it is cooler (around 20°C), 450 to 500ml per minute is closer. Here is the run:
- Set the boiler on a firm, level bench where the waste can drain into a sink. Keep it dead vertical. If it tilts, the condensate will not reflux evenly.
- Add the cleared wash to the boiler. It is built for a 25L wash with 23 to 24 litres of cleared liquid going in. Never fill past the maximum line. Add a 3ml capful of Still Spirits Distilling Conditioner to cut the chance of foaming (foam in the column wrecks the reflux and your quality), plus the reusable ceramic boil enhancers to stop surge boiling.
- Fit the column and lid assembly onto the boiler base so you can read both thermometers. Clip down all four clips and check the gasket is seated with no gaps.
- Fit the water flow controller to your tap (see the section above), connect the water inlet tube, drop the water outlet tube into the sink, and put the alcohol outlet tube into your collection jug. Position it so the tube end can never sit under the collected distillate.
- Connect the power and switch the boiler on. The wash takes 60 to 80 minutes to reach the boil.
- Before it boils, turn on the cooling water. Use the timer and the 1 litre jug to set the flow to about 550ml per minute if your cold water is over 25°C, or start at 450ml if it is under. Once the wash boils, the thermometers climb quickly and alcohol starts to flow as the top of the column passes 70°C.
Always discard the first 50ml
This one is not optional. Collect the first 50ml that flows into a separate container and throw it out. Your ferment produces a small amount of by-products (the foreshots) that boil off well below ethanol, and you do not want them in your spirit. Fifty millilitres, gone, every time.
Controlling the water outlet temperature
This is the heart of running a T500. Adjust the water flow to hold an outlet temperature of 55 to 65°C, and keep an eye on it through the run. This is different from older stills, where you fiddle the flow to chase a target temperature at the top of the column. On the T500 you control the outlet.
Within that band you have a lever:
- Push the outlet down toward 50°C and the alcohol comes slower but stronger and purer.
- Let it climb toward 65°C and it flows faster, at slightly lower strength and purity.
As the run goes on, the alcohol left in the wash drops, the reflux ratio rises automatically, and the flow slows. You will notice it most after about two hours. Keep going confidently until the flow stops on its own. There are no recognisable tails from a T500. Everything after that first 50ml of heads is high-quality spirit.
- When the flow stops, switch off the boiler and unplug it, then turn off the cooling water. The spent wash is dangerously hot, so let it cool before you empty it. It is rich in nutrients and makes a good garden fertiliser.
- Lift off the column and lid, rinse the boiler out (keep those ceramic boil enhancers for next time), and rinse the column by filling it with clean water a few times to flush any debris the vapour carried up.
For total confidence in the flavour, run the finished spirit through an activated carbon filter such as an EZ Filter for a final polish.
Getting the best purity and yield
Purity is how strong the spirit is. Yield is how much of the fermented alcohol you actually recover. In development the T500 hit 92 to 93% purity on a well-made, cleared wash, and with care you can pull 95% or more of the alcohol out of the wash rather than leaving it in the boiler.
Both come down to five things you control:
- The type of sugar you ferment
- The yeast you choose
- The temperature you ferment at
- How well you clear the wash
- How well you control the water outlet temperature
None of these is exotic. They are the same fundamentals from the wash and distillation sections above, which is exactly why a clean ferment and a steady 55 to 65°C outlet keep turning up. Get those right and purity and yield look after themselves.
Making gin with the botanicals basket
The T500 is not just a vodka machine. Fit the Still Spirits Botanicals Basket and you can run it as a vapour-infusion still, pulling flavour out of juniper and botanicals as the spirit passes through. This is a different setup from a normal reflux run, so read the steps rather than assuming:
- Add your filtered alcohol to the boiler and top up to 25L with water.
- Remove all the saddles from the column. Assemble the unit so the cooling water runs straight through the condenser, bypassing the reflux coil and water outlet block.
- Attach only the threaded section of the basket to the condenser column and the underside of the lid, in place of the stainless steel plug.
- Fill the bottom piece of the basket with your botanicals. Orient the assembled pieces the right way up and screw the basket in from the bottom.
- Switch on. It takes about an hour to reach the boil. Around 30 minutes in, before it boils, turn on the cooling water and set it to about 2.5L per minute, or enough that the distillate runs as liquid rather than steaming through.
- Collect the spirit into a 5L demijohn. Stop collecting once it drops to 20% ABV.
- Water it down to 40% ABV and let it settle before drinking.
One warning worth taking seriously: do not let botanicals fall into the condenser column. They can block it. If that happens, contact Distillery King before you try to clear it yourself.
Cleaning and maintaining your T500
A clean still makes clean spirit, and the T500 does not ask for much. There are three levels of cleaning depending on how often you run:
- First use. Rinse the unit through with water. You do not need to pull the saddles out, just flush water from the bottom of the column through to the alcohol outlet.
- Every 5 to 10 distillations. Wash the saddles by rinsing the column through with water.
- Every 20 distillations. Give it a proper clean with a citric acid mix (2 tablespoons of citric acid to 4L of water), then flush with clean water two or three times to clear the acid. You can also unpack the column and soak the saddles in the citric acid mix before rinsing and repacking them. When you repack, seat the copper saddles first, then the ceramic or stainless steel ones on top.
You will see the column leak a little during cleaning. That is normal. There is no seal at the top of the tower between the top cap and the stainless condenser, and that is deliberate: the vapour pressure in a T500 run is never enough to breach it, so the open top acts as a pressure-release safety feature. It has no effect on how the still runs.
If you are storing the condenser for a long stretch, switch the thermometers off using the on/off switch on the back of each one.
FAQ
Is it legal to use a Turbo 500 in Australia?
You can own and operate a still, but it is illegal to distil alcohol for consumption in Australia without a licence. A manufacturer licence and an excise arrangement are required. Check the current rules with the Australian Taxation Office before you distil for drinking.
How long does a full T500 run take?
About four hours from switch-on to the alcohol flow stopping, on the standard 6kg sugar wash in 25L. The wash needs 60 to 80 minutes just to reach the boil, so plan to be around for the whole session.
What strength alcohol does the Turbo 500 produce?
Around 92 to 93% ABV on a clean, well-cleared wash, and a well-managed run recovers 95% or more of the alcohol you fermented. A careful cold-crashed wash with Pure Turbo Yeast will comfortably return about 3.5L of 93% spirit.
Why do I throw away the first 50ml?
Those are the foreshots: a small amount of fermentation by-products that boil off below ethanol. Collecting and discarding the first 50ml separately keeps them out of your finished spirit. After that, a T500 produces no recognisable tails, so the rest of the run is all usable.
Do I control the temperature at the top of the column?
No, and this trips up people coming from older stills. On the T500 you hold the water outlet temperature at 55 to 65°C. Lower for slower, stronger, purer output; higher for faster output at slightly lower strength.
Can I make gin with a Turbo 500?
Yes. Fit the botanicals basket, remove the saddles, bypass the reflux, and run it as a vapour-infusion still. Collect down to 20% ABV, then dilute to 40%.
Wrapping up
The T500 is genuinely simple to run well once you understand the two levers that matter: a clean, fully fermented, cleared wash going in, and a steady 55 to 65°C water outlet while it runs. Nail those, discard your 50ml of heads, and the still does the rest, whether you are making a neutral base for vodka, infusing gin through the botanicals basket, or just chasing the cleanest spirit you can.
If you are setting up or restocking, the full Still Spirits Turbo 500 range has the still, yeast, carbon, clearing agents and accessories in one place. Got a question about your setup? Get in touch and we will help you dial it in.
