Anyone else on here distill their own spirits?
I finally got round to building my still a couple of months ago after a lot of research. Started off by running some cheap and nasty wine to make high proof brandy and get used to making the cuts.
Since then I've done two runs of corn whiskey that came out at 140 proof and 150 proof each.
Currently waiting on 40 litres of blackstrap/brown sugar rum wash fermenting in the garage.
I can't go back to shop bought spirits now I've started this. They smell like the shit I throw down the sink.
Moonshine thread!
>>7877872
how do I into home distilling
>>7877892
I would also like to distill in my driveway.
>>7877892
I was bouncing around on youtube and wound up watching a documentary about Popcorn Sutton. Next video after it was this vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfOL60CsF9U That's what put the notion in my head so I started looking up the home distillers forums and making notes.
This guy uses a similar setup to me on a slightly larger scale https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-nGbAf81Zs
And this guy has some great vids for beginners and will answer questions in the comments. https://www.youtube.com/user/wcemichael/videos
Do a bit of research and it is RIDICULOUSLY easy. And cheap. And better than the shit in the stores.
>>7877872
Inb4 BATFE shoots your dog
>>7877939
I'm English m8.
Biggest risk for me is the local Bobby giving me a bop on the noggin.
>>7877872
I have, but it was more of an experimental phase than anything I've done long term.
I made several batches of moonshine using "sweet feed"--that's horse food (grain) which has molasses added. Also made some booze based on bananas. Holy fuck did that make the house smell good while it was fermenting. It was like someone was baking banana bread 24-7. I've done the brandy thing too--buy a "thumb jug" of cheap ass Rossi wine and then go to town.
>>7877969
The banana thing sounds good. I've found corn whiskey smells like something between baked cornbread and a brewery when it's fermenting.
The rum wash smells fucking gorgeous right now. Like boozy raisins or something. I've been tasting it and it can't be far off ready.
I think I'll try some more fruit based brandies next year since apple juice is so cheap. Apple pie moonshine made from apple brandy must be fucking god tier.
>>7877968
No, the biggest risk for you is that the local Muslims decide to stone you to death for violating Sharia law.
I hope that's lead free solder in that little deathtrap, friendo
How do I avoid going blind from the methanol runoff?
>>7878077
There isn't any. Methanol is not formed during normal fermentation (unless you're stupid and ferment fruit that contains pectin).
Plus, part of the distillation process is to discard the "heads" and "tails". that's the first and the last stuff to come out of the still. Since methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol, even if it were present it would be discarded with the rest of the "heads".
>>7878077
First portion that comes out of the still is called the heads or the tops. That's any acetone, methanol etc in your wash. All the bad shit that you hear horror stories about. You can tell it by taste and smell. That goes down the sink. Ironically, that's what shop bought spirits taste like to me now. Big distilleries don't tend to be as ruthles making these cuts as i am. There isn't actually enough meths in there to do you any damage, it'll just taste like shit and give you a headache. The myth about shine sending you blind comes from either someone accidentally drinking pure Heads or shady motherfuckers cutting their product with industrial alcohol to increase profits.
Second portion that comes out is the hearts, aka the body. That's the good shit. All that nice clean ethanol that will get you drunk. That's what we're collecting.
Third portion is called the tails or the bottoms. We've stripped out most of the ethanol and now we're getting more water and oils coming through. There's still some alcohol in there though so I like to let the still keep running to collect up about a wine bottle full of tails to throw in with the next run.
>>7878073
How big is your pot and how do you heat it?
>>7878217
I'm not the guy you're replying to, but I got one of those "turkey fryer" setups like pic related. My pot is about 5 gallons. Heat source is a propane burner.
>>7878217
20 litre (so about 5 gallons American) stainless steel soup pot with a big stainless steel mixing bowl for the lid, drilled in the centre to take a brass 15mm (half inch) tank connector. Lid is clamped to the pot with 6 pairs of mini vice grips.
It sits on top of my stove and the condenser (20 litre bucket with a 10 mm copper coil running through it) sits on the worktop next to it.
Fill your pot with whatever you're distilling, Seal the lid to the pot with flour paste, clamp the lid, couple the pipes up, fill condenser with icewater and fire her up. The lower heat you run it at the better your product will be.
>>7878259
Forgot to mention, if you want to start smaller and you don't want to shell out much cash you can start with an old pressure cooker since it's a ready-made sealed unit.
>>7878285
Depends on exactly what you mean by "make". Brandy is distilled wine. So if you start buy buying some wine then you could make a basic brandy in just a couple hours. On the other hand if you want to start from scratch and make your own wine that would take a lot longer. And once the brandy is made it's often aged. That can take years.
>>7878288
Vodka and moonshine are distilled the same way that brandy would be. The only difference is the ingredients.
Vodka is made from any sort of grain (or sometimes ptoatoes). Because it's supposed to be pretty much flavorless, it's commonly distilled multiple times, or with a reflux column.
Moonshine is a general term for illegally produced spirits. It could be anything, but is typically made from corn.
The process is always pretty much the same:
Ferment grain to make "wine". Distill "wine" to make liquor.
>>7878285
To ferment your own? About 10 days for it to ferment then however long it takes to run through the still.
I'd recommend you start by buying some cheap and nasty wine to run through your still to learn how to make the cuts.
My first attempt was with 4 bottles of gutrot wine. 4 hours later I was sipping some smooth, high proof, clear brandy.
>>7878288
Vodka is just a clear spirit made from potatoes or grain. Same process, you mix it up with water, sugar and yeast and let it ferment. Once it's fermented you distill it to strip out all the alcohol.
"Moonshine" is just a word for illicit alcohol that hasn't had any tax paid on it. (Anyone who tells you it's a particular kind of corn whiskey is full of it. That's just the most common kind in the US)
Anything you distill without paying revenue on it is moonshine. Whiskey (grains), brandy (fruits), rum (sugarcane), vodka (taters), whatever. If the government doesn't get a kickback it's moonshine.
>>7878311
>And once the brandy is made it's often aged. That can take years.
I'm reading up right now about force-aging spirits. Thinking about trying it on my next run of rum. add your wood chips then give it 24 hours in the freezer then 24 hours somewhere hot. That's meant to mimmick the effect of a full 12 months of aging.
>>7878317
>To ferment your own? About 10 days for it to ferment then however long it takes to run through the still.
>I'd recommend you start by buying some cheap and nasty wine to run through your still to learn how to make the cuts.
>My first attempt was with 4 bottles of gutrot wine. 4 hours later I was sipping some smooth, high proof, clear brandy.
I mean to just buy wine, and make brandy.
>Once it's fermented you distill it to strip out all the alcohol.
How long does it take to ferment?
>"Moonshine" is just a word for illicit alcohol that hasn't had any tax paid on it. (Anyone who tells you it's a particular kind of corn whiskey is full of it. That's just the most common kind in the US)
>Anything you distill without paying revenue on it is moonshine. Whiskey (grains), brandy (fruits), rum (sugarcane), vodka (taters), whatever. If the government doesn't get a kickback it's moonshine.
Huh. I see. Welp, thanks mane.
>>7878311
thank you too.
>>7878334
No problem.
Oh, and a quick comment: the liquor coming out of the still will be a much higher % ABV (proof) than most liquor you'd buy at the store. The stuff straight out of the still will be somewhere in the range of 140-170 proof. That's about double what most liquors are bottled at. Generally speaking, commercial liquor (except vodka) is aged in barrels at full strength out of the still. It's then diluted with water when it is bottled.
>>7878334
>I mean to just buy wine, and make brandy.
Scroll up to those youtube vids I posted. There's an instructional to make a beginners rig out of a pressure cooker and start with ready made booze that explains this better than I can.
>How long does it take to ferment?
Depends on what it is and what the climate is like. Yeast likes warm weather. Could be anything between a week and 3 weeks.
>>7877872
>I can't go back to shop bought spirits now
Really? I mean sure it's going to have less alcohol content but the aging and recipes of commercial stuff is surely going to be nicer than your stuff.
I'm sure it's better than cheap store stuff but I've never had moonshine I'd consider even close to as nice as a decent whiskey.
>>7878353
I'm not OP, but:
1) like >>7878341 said, booze straight out of the still is going to be a lot stronger than the ~80 proof (40% ABV) of most spirits. You can dilute it down though.
2) Regarding quality
I found that is was pretty easy to meet or exceed the quality of most well known brands: for example, Bacardi rum or Jack Daniel's whiskey. On the other hand, yeah, the higher end brands will be very hard if not impossible to compete with quality-wise. Price, on the other hand? That's a different story.
One thing that's very important to the taste of many spirits is the aging process. That's a bit impractical to do at home in the traditional manner, but there are many solutions available. You can get toasted wood chips or "infusion spirals" that you steep in the liquor to imitate the aging process. That makes a huge difference in elevating fresh-out-of-the-still 'shine with something that could compete with mid-shelf stuff from the liquor store.
>>7878341
Forgot to mention this.
You can either drink it as rocket fuel as it comes out of your still or you can proof it down to something closer to commercial stuff.
Jack Daniels is about 80 proof (40% alcohol), my last run of whiskey came in at 150 proof (75% alcohol).
>>7878353
Don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty new at this but learning the process has shown me what the bad shit in spirits tastes like and you can't help but notice how much of that nasty shit the big distilleries leave in.
I'm not comparing the shit I turn out to a 12 year old craft distilled single malt but compared to a bottle of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels I'd take my stuff any day.
Having said that, there's guys who have been in this hobby for 50+ years who can absolutely be considered craftsmen and their stuff stands up to anything being produced with a fancy label on the bottle.
>>7878367
>toasted wood chips or "infusion spirals" that you steep in the liquor to imitate the aging process
I forgot to mention that those are useful for many things other than just booze. I've used them to infuse soy sauce and worcestershire as well. It's become a thing to age those sauces in used bourbon barrels. That's impractical for home use, but it's easy to put the sauce in a jar or a growler or something, add a little high-proof bourbon to simulate what would have been soaked into the used barrel, and then toss in the infusion spiral (or chips). Let it sit for a couple weeks and you'll have a really great sauce.
>>7878367
>Price, on the other hand? That's a different story.
Well worth noting.
I can make 20 litres of corn mash for about £5. That'll produce about 2 litres of good quality double proof whiskey. Dilute that down to a commercial abv and you've got 4 litres of smooth clear whiskey for 5 quid.
Not to mention the fact that the process itself is an interesting little exercise.
Plus, it's always nice to be fucking the tax man out of cash he didn't deserve in the first place.
I want to try my hand at distilling, but I'm so afraid of not making the "cuts" right. I don't want to poison myself or my friends at the worst or get a brutal hang over...
>>7877872
this is pretty gud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvVtw2PKCyY
so is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep2I3Gf3Sec
I builts a 3inch 5 ft column with a jackson crossflow condenser cooled by a pond pump and a large garbage can heat sink. water runs through a custom liebig to cool the distillate. 9 gallon boiler and the entire thing takes up about 10sq ft in my kitchen/pantry. Fired by a 2600w stove element. It's like a kitchen appliance now.
>>7878094
>unless you're stupid and ferment fruit that contains pectin
Hehh hehehehh heh
>>7880195
Reflux rigs look like a lot of time and money to me.
Did you start out on a pot still or go straight for a reflux?
How much did that setup cost to put together?
>>7878192
>big distilleries
How do you know where the heads and tails are on continuous stills?
>>7879714
No, wine has somewhere around 12 % alc., if you distill wine, you basically get a concentrate from the alcoholic content, thus several litres of wine would yield only a few dcl of pure spirit. From then on it is just a question of maturing and watering it down to a given percentage (spirit to water ratio). Thus you cannot remake wine from brandy. At best you can get a 12% brandy, which I dont know why would anyone do.
>>7879714
>So how is brandy made from crap wine?
Wine contains alcohol. It also contains water and stuff from the grapes. By distilling it, you remove the alcohol to make a strong spirit and leave behind all the other stuff.
>I read somewhere that brandy came about from sly merchants boiling down wine
Nope, brandy came about from wine makers using shitty wine or poor quality grapes to make a spirit rather than putting out poor wine.
If you boil down wine you lose all the alcohol. Tasty for cooking, zero use for getting drunk.
>you can't get wine back once you've made brandy, no?
Nope. When you make brandy you'll have the spirit coming out of the condenser and an alcohol free grape concoction left behind in the pot.
>>7879616
First things first, don't believe the scare stories. The powers that be want you to think that making your own spirits is somehow dangerous, poisonous or going to send you blind. Bullshit.
The stuff you're going to distill will have a small amount of methanol as well as all that good ethanol. If you just ran it and didn't make cuts the amount of methanol is nowhere even close to a dangerous level. It won't taste good and it'll give you a hangover but it's not going to send you blind or anything, that would only happen if you drank a good amount of pure methanol.
Build yourself a little still and start with cheap wine so you can learn how to make the cuts.
When your product starts running, get yourself a spoon and collect 6 or 7 drops. Give it a sniff, it'll smell nasty. Now taste it, it'll taste horrible and burn your tongue. Spit out out and rinse your mouth. That's methanol. "The heads".
Keep doing this regularly, you'll notice that the nasty smell will become less and less and the taste won't burn your tongue anymore.
When it's smelling like brandy and not burning your tongue anymore you've got rid of the methanol and the stuff coming out of your still is ethanol. That's the good stuff, that's what you're collecting to sip later.
Keep the still running and keep checking it with your spoon. After a while you'll notice that it's not as strong anymore, that means you've removed most of the good stuff and you're getting more water. That's the time you can quit collecting it.
It really is as simple as that.
I was out in the field yesterday and I had an idea. I was just minding my own, picking what's left of the raspberry patch when I took notice the massive amounts of raspberries I never got around to picking. They were just sitting there on the vine and ground just rotting, and that's when the SMELL hit me. I though one of the neighbors was brewing something a couple fields over, but it was really all the berries just fermenting on the ground.
Usually I just make a load of preserves, but in regards to brewing and distilling what could I do with raspberries?
>>7880857
>Thanks for the rundown. I was actually asking about the flavour of brandy made from crappy wine.
Flavour is excellent. Smooth when it's going down, it doesn't burn your throat like shop bought brandy, it warms your belly once it's in there instead.
It'll be potent when it comes out of the still so it will catch your breath when you first take a sip.
If anything it's lighter tasting than regular brandy since it's unaged. None of the woody, smokey flavour but still very nice.
>alcohol free grape concoction left behind
>how's that stuff? Useable at all?
You can use it in stews or casseroles for example or in marinades. It's basically alcohol free cooking wine at that point.
Or if you used red wine you can throw it in a saucepan and reduce it until it's syrupy. Great with duck or lamb. Google "red wine reduction recipes" for ideas.
>>7880886
There's better places to look if it's wine you're thinking of. That involves a bit more care and extra ingredients and special wine/brewer's yeast.
If you want to make mash to distill you want to get hold of as many as you can, the riper the better.
Weigh them and put them in a big container.
Cover them with water and mash the shit out of them.
Mix in a pound of sugar to every 4lbs of fruit.
Add a good sprinkling of ordinary baking yeast.
Check back in a week. When it's stopped fizzing and everything's settled it's ready to run.
Never used raspberries but blackberries are fucking excellent.
>>7877920
damn thanks bro
so many brewers use sugar. i'm allergic to sugar in all but mono-saccharide form. could i sub with honey?
>>7881098
If you're talking about distilled spirits then it doesn't matter because the sugar is removed during the distillation process.
You can use honey. Fermented honey is called mead. Though, keep in mind that honey is a fuckton more expensive than sugar is.
>>7881134
expense isn't really a problem, health issues force me to only eat good food so i'm used to being broke. right now i'm eating a £48 jar of manuka honey, straight from the pot, lol.
if i can use honey though that'd be awesome. or pure glucose would work too. thing is though, afaik the bacteria which ferment are all fairly complex carbs, not sure if monosaccharides work.
how potentially dangerous is it if i fuck up? i mean i'm growing a shitload of micro-organisms and i've no idea how to test for pathogens...
>>7881141
It's nearly impossible to fuck it up in a way that would be dangerous to you because it's obvious if its fermenting correctly or not.
A correct fermentation will smell of bread and booze. If something is going wrong it will have a very obvious bad smell, and you will see all kinds of weird colored molds, etc.
Also, if you're talking about distilling liquor then it's even less of a concern: the heat from the distillation and the high % ABV ensure that the finished product is sterile.
>>7881098
>>7881141
Moonshine doesn't contain any sugar.
The sugar that goes into the mash gets converted into alcohol by the yeast. After the yeast has done its thing, if there's any sugar left that hasn't been converted it just gets left behind in the still.
The stuff coming out of your condenser hasn't got any sugar in it.
Honey can be fermented to make shine but it's fucking expensive. Look up how to make mead if you don't mind shelling out, then just run it through a still to make honey liquor.
I plan on doing some eventually but I'll be running the still hot and dirty to keep as much of the flavour as possible.
>how potentially dangerous is it if i fuck up? i mean i'm growing a shitload of micro-organisms and i've no idea how to test for pathogens...
It isn't. If it smells boozy while it's fermenting it'll be good to go. If it turns bad it'll smell foul.
The stuff that comes out of your condenser is pretty much sterile. It's basically its own preservative and will keep indefinately if stored correctly.
>>7881155
>If something is going wrong it will have a very obvious bad smell
ok cool man, really tempted to buy a load of kit right now on ebay
>>7881163
thanks anon. and yeah fuck up fermentation and that stuff will stink like nothing you've ever known. i once made sauerkraut by hand. took me 2 fucking days to manually shred and pulverise something like 20 cabbages. let them ferment for a couple of weeks... then opened the container to find the most revolting, stinking, pus-like ooze of a mess. with a dead fly sat in the middle. i didn't eat that sauerkraut.
anyway, thanks guys, imma go do some reading on the subject, really liking the idea of getting this up and running.
>>7881176
My pleasure dude. Have fun.
mfw:
you cant talk about weed on ck but you can talk about how to illegally make booze
>>7881203
>illegal
what?
>>7881203
Only illegal to distribute.
>>7881209
Some places require you to get a permit from the gubmint to distill your own spirits.
Some places, New Zealand for example it's completely unrestricted. The best discussion forum on the net is the kiwi home distillers forum imo.
In the UK you'd have to get a special license to do it legally, otherwise you could be fined if caught. Cops don't give a shit about home distillers though, they only care about Polacks making counterfeit vodka to sell.
In most parts of the US it's a misdemeanor to distill spirits for your own use. It only gets messy and federal if you're selling it or shipping it across state lines.
>>7878094
Thatll be all fruits then you retard
>>7881259
You think all fruits contain the same amount of pectin?
Yes, all fruits contain some, but not enough to matter. It's only certain fruits which are very high in it that are risky.
>>7881203
>Be American
>Love freedom
>Get shot for making your own liquor
Land of the """free"""
