Every time I've seen a still for sale, I could buy a lifetime's supply for the same price.
Except in Jugoslavia(sic). There it's a little bloke with a handcart wheeling around something built by his great grandfather. You give him firewood and a tithe of the end results, he distills your home-brew for you.
There is so little involved, and so many ways it can be done. I think I would use an insulated hot/cold beverage container (5 gallon or bigger), an immersible beverage heater attached to some kind of float to boil the liquid, and some copper tubing to capture and cool the vapor. Figure out how to pass the wires and tube through the top and seal around them, so vapor escapes only into the tube, which rises a few inches, then falls so that liquid can run out. It is best to have a thermometer and watch the vapor's heat rise, discarding the early fraction while the temperature is rising, save the fraction beginning when the temperature holds steady, and stop when the temperature starts climbing again. That way you don't collect any of the nasties.
You want to start with the highest alcohol concentration you can obtain. Think ginger wine, not ginger beer.
Don't forget that the vapor and distillate can be flammable and explosive. And you might end up with nothing more than the equivalent of strong vodka (which you can dilute and flavor to your liking).
I believed or read that the difference was that compounding means "dump it in" whereas distilled means more like infused with vapor of
Western expats at Saudi Aramco published a how-to manual on home distillation "The Blue Flame"
It's easy to make bad spirits.
The US is overly paranoid about distilling - I read an article a while ago, on a still manufactures site, that advised US customers to never use the word "still", but "water purifier", and to order them in separate boxes to avoid confiscation by customs.
New Zealand accidentally legalised home distilling in the 90s, by removing the need for still operators to continue to pay the $100 annual license, which cost a lot more to collect (inspectors were required to travel to each still). By the time they realised, every man and his dog had bought, built, begged or borrowed their own still. Hence New Zealand is the home distilling capital of the world. (Notice where the
From what I have learned, home distilling in the UK (IANAL, and there may be English/Scottish variations here) has never been illegal per se. However there was a requirement for still owners to register their stills, and declare and pay duty on what they distilled. Obviously this is not what home distillers are going to do, and where the breach of law comes in. However it's not *criminal*, it really is "a civil matter sir", so HMRC have no enforcement capability for home distillers. I met the UK rep for Still Spirits, and he showed me a letter from HMRC confirming this. Apparently HMRC never dreamt that commercial manufacturers would make and sell a device *capable* of distilling alcohol (the actual still spirits still is designed primarily as a water purifier), and by the time they had realised, like in New Zealand, every man and his dog had one. They decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and not to enforce the requirements for registration and duty payment for people home distilling. Judging from most peoples reactions, when I mention I home distill, their centuries long campaign of FUD has permeated the publics mind, so it will probably remain a minority pursuit.
The basic still spirits still is a pot still - the most basic form. It is less effective at isolating the ethanol from the higher fusels, but the result is certain very palatable, as long as you follow all instructions *precisely*. If you want to start making purer stuff, you'd need to look into reflux stills, which is where copper tubing and the likes starts to play a part.
I rub them through a metal sieve to get the stones out and have them with a dollop of cream. Looks like it was a good year for sloes but I just didn't get round to picking them. Waited for a hard frost and then got overtaken by events.
Got a fair bit back by using 2 big 'champagne' bottles, a cork
I've heard that _The Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible_ is good.
I think they're sold for purifying water. Similarly, I've seen signs in shop windows that say "These products are sold for tobacco use only." ;-)
the technical details for building a still.
If you believe the document, it's pretty easy to make good spirits, too.
In message , john robinson writes
Have you any Irish contacts who could advise on the making of poteen? I've drunk a bit a couple of times, and it's interesting to say the least.
"Spamlet" schrieb :
No. It depends on what you distill. Pure alcohol is double distillation.
It works by letting the mash rest for some months. We did the last of mashing in November; in April we'll distill the mash.
Cheers,
Michael Kuettner
In France are les bouilleurs de cru, who operate similarly to the handcart man. Historically they could distill up to ten liters of alcohol tax-free, per year, from their own fruit, but supposedly they will distill yours as well for a tithe.
If you think there's something wrong in paying someone to do a job that needs part P, and it's beyond your DIY skills, how do you propose to get the job done?
MBQ
Which is what I meant by distilling *properly*. As a chemist I would have equipment that generally separated the individual fractions quite well by their boiling points. In practice, I would throw out the first fractions as likely to contain methanol, even if this meant throwing out some of the flavour compounds. The stillers for booze must all have their own techniques for keeping a mixture of flavour compounds in the distilled product (Keeping everything that distills over between a range of temperatures, instead of just at the boiling point of alcohol), but to a chemist these would all be ways of producing impure alcohol. And even the best stills don't prevent the water that is bound up with the ethanol molecule distilling over, so that to get pure alcohol extensive drying processes have to be carried out.
As a long time home wine maker and lab tech, I did test the alcohol content of some of my wines chromatographically. They can exceed 20% so, in many ways, no point in distilling, but when I did try, I decided it was easier in the long run to buy gin or vodka and add fruit to it, rather than distill from a fruit ferment and try to keep the flavour.
S
I tasted more bad spirits in Saudi Arabia than good ones. Distilling on the sly, in a hurry to get results, is not conducive to quality.
if you read their recipe for beer at end of document, it is pretty vile stuff. Another home brewed beer was made by dumping sugar and yeast into non-alcohol beer, fermenting for 1 week, and drinking the turbid slop.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember John Rumm saying something like:
Several years ago, someone posted up here an interesting link to a C&E page where it laid down the quantities you could legally distill for personal use in the UK. Fubberd if I can find any sign of it. Iirc, you can do some, but it's not a lot and most certainly not for sale.
Not according to "Oz and Hugh Raise the Bar" on the Beeb earlier this week - see
How much fruit for how much liquor?
What fruit did you use? Apples, plums, grapes?
Yes, I know, I think that is great. I really like it
"spamtrap1888" schrieb :
Depends on the sugar content of the mash. Can be anywhere from 15 to 40 liters of mash for one liter of Schnaps.
Apples and pears. It's not a good idea to mix stone-fruit (like plums) with seeded fruit (like apples). Somehow the result doesn't turn out well.
Cheers,
Michael Kuettner
Try freeze distilling for a start to save outlay. Alcohol doesn't freeze, water does ;-) Just scoop the ice out and (eventually) enjoy the rest.
Instead of ginger beer, try making ginger wine with a high alcohol wine yeast like chanpagne yeast, water, ginger and sugar. That will get you to
18%. I did this years ago with about 2kg of ginger root minced up into a 25litre batch. Put the result into P.E.T bottle into the freezer. After a few days, take them out and give a good shake. Squeeze the "toothpaste" out and suck the "goodness" for a fairly good hit. Must have been a good 30% or more. If you like ginger then you'll love this!:-)
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.