This thumper liquid is the high-proof spirit that all moonshine-lovers covet. By heating the liquid again, the thumper keg sends highly purified alcohol vapors from your still to the condenser.You’ll start to hear a thumping sound as the vapor and condensed low wine erupt out of this pipe every so often.As the hot vapor exits your still, it will pass through the arm into the low wine that’s already condensed in the bottom of the thump keg.So, this steam will look for a way to escape, which means it will find its way out of your moonshine stills. Now it’s basic science that steam has to come out somewhere (otherwise things will start going ka-boom and nobody wants that). When it reaches this temperature, it will start emitting steam or hot vapor. One of the things you need to do in your distillation process is to allow your mash to reach the boiling point.

Some moonshine distillers add additional ethyl alcohol into the thumper during these distillations to make a more potent liquid with a much higher alcohol content. The thumper keg simplifies the moonshine-making process, which is why more moonshine-makers prefer it. This multiple distillation process, while effective, is expensive and time-consuming. These vapors are then captured by the condenser into the solution called low wines.ĭid you know: Without a thumper keg, you will need to distill this liquid through various stills to achieve that high alcohol content.A standard still will heat the wash or fermented solution to a high temperature.The thumper keg uses the waste heat emitted by the steam pot, making it a very efficient distillation apparatus in moonshine stills. Well, the way a thump keg works are extremely clever. Now, you may ask yourself how this magic happens. In the case of hillbilly stills, the thumper keg acts as the second distillation apparatus, much like the spirit still. Now, a lot of distillers in Europe continue to use the swan-neck pot stills and a beer stripper to distill wash to the low-wine state, while using a second spirit still to transform it into a high-proof spirit. If you want to achieve the high alcohol content for high-proof whiskey or any other spirit like moonshine, YOU WILL NEED… you guessed it! This will give you an output that is 40 to 05% alcohol by volume or ABV. Ordinarily, a standard pot still that does not have a thump keg can distill a wash only to a “low wine”. Now, let’s get into the details of how this works. So we briefly stated what a thump keg is meant to do. Simply put, its purpose is to distill the output of the pot still a 2nd time without having to run the distillate through the still again. The thumper keg can be made of copper, steel, or wood, and sits between the stillpot and condenser. Nowadays, the thump keg remains to be one of the most iconic and clever design elements of the traditional hillbilly still.Īnyone who makes moonshine will know how important this is for their moonshine stills. This means that the design and ingenuity of how it works were already well-known to the colonists who came over from the British Isles!ĭuring the Prohibition Era, bourbon distillers and moonshiners in the Appalachians favored using thumpers for their recipes. If you look around, some of the older European stills support this theory because they also made use of what looks like the same chambers that functioned as thump kegs. The prevailing theory is that early settlers brought this design of the thump keg along with them and incorporated it into the stills that they eventually started constructing once they’d, well… settled. the doubler, thump barrel, or thump chest, is usually referenced along with the backwoods whiskey still. What Is a Thumper Keg and Where Is It From?Ī thump keg, aka. Now, if you need to know more about the thumper keg, keep reading. What Size Thump Keg Do You Need To Use? It should generally be about 25% to 40% of the size of your main boiler.What Does A Thump Keg Do? It speeds up the distillation process and transforms your low wine into a liquid with higher alcohol content, which is critical for making moonshine or bourbon.It may be made of copper, steel, or wood, and sits between the still pot and condenser. What Is It? A thumper keg works to distill your low wine a second time.If you’re in a hurry and just need to know the most essential information about the humble thumper keg, here it is. We made this guide for the home distiller who needs to know everything about thumper kegs, what it does, what it’s for, its purpose, and how it works. If you’re someone who has zero knowledge about this and is hearing the words thumper and keg together for the first time, you might be thinking that this is what rabbits and bunnies use to party.ĭon’t worry.

Moonshine thumper diagram