State of the Art Alcohol Production

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It's true that we can now take a "Monday morning quarterback's" glance at Lance's early work and point out the weaknesses and design errors (the gallon-per-hour yield from his solar still isn't overwhelming, and several such units should be used in series in order to raise the alcohol's proof strength), but the fact remains that Lance Crombie accomplished what no one else had managed to do: He took on the federal government and came out on top!

This "David and Goliath" encounter served to bring about two things: [1] It cleared the way for people who might have wanted to "grow" their own fuel but were prevented from doing so by restrictive legislation, and [2] the publicity showered on Lance and his solar still put a "spotlight" on the entire alcohol movement . . . which, of course, literally turned millions on to the fact that alcohol has real potential as a fuel.

THE NEXT STEP

As soon as we realized the importance of what Crombie had achieved, we applied to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for our own experimental permit. The thought of producing fuel by using solar energy was exciting . . . but even so, Lance's simple flatplate apparatus was still only a springboard for any number of other-possibly more efficient - designs we felt sure we could work up.

So, when we finally got clearance from our regional ATF bureau to go ahead with our alcohol experiments (just days before the deadline for MOTHER NO. 58), we whipped together a facsimile of the Crombie solar distillery and tested it . . . and although the results were not especially encouraging, the unit did show potential. (After all, it could effectively double the proof strength of the mash, and the federal agents themselves-who are trained in such matters-apparently thought enough of the apparatus to confiscate it from Crombie and, later, did issue permits based on the design!)

Nonetheless-mainly because of our limited number of workers and an equally limited number of hours in a day-we chose to forge ahead and develop a practical, inexpensive still of our own . . . capable of producing high-proof fuel alcohol the first time around with a minimum of energy input. This is not to say that we had discounted the idea of Lance's simple solar still . . . but after publishing two "alcohol" issues, we were under immense pressure from literally hundreds of groups and individuals to produce a reliable distillery right then!

Naturally, we'd intended to get back to solar stills as soon as scheduling permitted (especially since we'd received some calls from readers indicating that set ups they'd built from our plans worked to their satisfaction), but after "getting our feet wet", so to speak-and realizing what an immense task we had cut out for ourselves-it was difficult to look back, even for a follow-up. There were mash recipes to test, innumerable still designs to consider, various types of hardware to investigate, endless different crops to evaluate . . . in short, there was a whole lot of work for a handful of people-who were already overburdened-to do.

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