How do I into making moonshine. I know its a lengthy process and involves alot but how?
>disregarding the law, of coarse
>>929858
Distilling ethanol is not Amateur Night, if you fuck up you can cause an explosion, or you could distill it wrong and end up with poison.
>brew alcoholic beverage
>run through still
>??????
>profit
Seriously though, Google will give you tons of simple designs for a distillation apparatus.
As long as you follow the instructions and don't use lead solder, it should be fine.
PROTIP: use a reflux still
>>929880
Not possible to make poison by distilling wrong. Anything bad in the product came from the mash.
>>929902
>>929880
You can make yourself go blind if you distill wrong senpai. :^)
Back when I was in college we had a shitty still in the frat garage and I got to be brew master. I should set up a still again it was fun. Just make sure you have an accurate thermometer and google the rest. It's not that hard just don't fuck up and you won't go blind or set your house on fire.
>>929915
love this meme
no you can't
distilling doesn't add methanol to the final product. there can only be as much as there was in the mash. you would die a hundred times over from liver failure before you could drink enough methanol to go blind from it.
>>929937
confirmed. abos go blind from not washing their faces not methanol.
to the person who said distilling doesn't add methanol to the finished product.
you are correct. however the distillation process removes all other parts of it which means that it will increases the percentage of methanol in the finished product if done incorrectly. but if you are accurate with temperatures then there is very low risk.
for reference look up east coast of Tasmania 2013 moonshine deaths
Rice cooker and garbage bag.
Even you can afford that.
cost for materials to build stills?
Fire and explosion are the only real risks. As >>929937 said accurately, it doesn't magically create methanol. What ever methanol is in the mash, will be in the end product if not removed. This amount will do pretty much nothing to you.
Ethanol will kill you before the methanol makes you go blind.
This myth comes from idiots and sleazy fuckers (mostly prohibition era) who would cut their alcohol with cheap (and legal at the time) methanol to make more money. Not realizing that it will get your drunk, but kill you too.
>>929858
Can you make wine?
No, then do that cause it is easy and a good way to start.
>>929915
No senpai the whole story of becoming blind from moonshine is from when the mystic toothed hillbilly would make shine with copper soldered together with lead
>>929858
I'll dump an excerpt from a RPG handbook for alcohol stuff:
The following is a large excerpt from a discussion about distilleries with Jesse Duke, Master Bootlegger.
Jesse is considered one of the finest moonshiners in the land. Although he operated illegally, many law enforcers
overlooked his operations for just a sip of his elixir while others hunted him down because he was considered the
prize catch. Now retired, Jesse lives of the riches of his successful career. His love now is telling tales for all who
will listen of his many adventures. Many sages have regarded him as an expert on distillation. Unfortunately,
nobody can get Jesse to put his knowledge on paper. At least we can listen to him...
"So you want to know about a still do you? Well, I suppose I'm the expert around these parts. Your
not with the law are you? Of course, I'm in retirement now and don't distill, except for medicinal reasons.
>>930782
It still is a very old, very simple concept. It has been postulated that perhaps the reason that people
actually started farming was in order to produce an excess of grain from which to produce alcohol. At any
rate beer is made simply from fermenting most any grain starch. Whiskey, hard liquor, or other distilled
drinks are made by removing water from the base material. If you distill beer you have whiskey, wine
wields brandy, potato mash wields vodka. The technology to do this is available among almost any people's
that are capable of speech it seems. All that is required is a source of heat, a cooking vessel, and some sort
of cooling element. The principle of the distillery, or still for short, is that water boils (i.e. becomes vapor) at
100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit). Alcohol (ethyl alcohol that is) on the other hand boils at about 73
degrees Celsius (170 Fahrenheit). If a liquid contains both water and alcohol and is heated to a temperature
somewhere between these boiling points then it is possible to drive off the alcohol and leave the water
behind. Now all that is left to do is capture these intoxicating vapors to increase the percentage of joy in
the drink.
>>930783
How is this done? The absolute simplest way is to place a freshly fermented, malted drink (beer in
the raw) into a container and heat it. Seal the container except for a single tube/pipe/etc. leading away and
into a tub of water. At the other end, allow the tube to empty into a cup or jug that has been set in a bed of
ice. This is not the safest, or easiest still to run, it is the simplest. Constant care must be taken of the
temperature, as there are no safe guards against overheating the beer (thus boiling off a good bit of water
too) or an explosion. This can be caused by the careless who don't clean the equipment properly. A build up
in the tubing can cause the pot to build up steam, and the you can say "Good night!"
>>930784
The basic workings of the still are as follows. The pot is the containment vessel for the crude
fermented beverage. A heat source is applied to the bottom of this to drive vapor out of the top vent pipe.
This then leads more or less directly to the worm. The worm is a coil of tubing which acts to cool the vapor
back into a liquid, which will hopefully be noticeably more intoxicating than the original material. A
pressure gauge and/or valve can be added to the pot as a safety measure. A thermometer/rheostat can also
be added to the pot to more closely control the temperature for optimum performance. However as hundreds
of years of backwoods moonshining can attest, there is no need for such extravagances to produce good
quality liquor. The worm can be made from almost anything. At one point car radiators were popular,
however due to their less than clean nature, this is highly unrecommendable. The lead used in soldiering at
the manufacturer can also easily react with alcohol to produce lead nitrates and other nasties that can
permanently relieve you of the necessity of sight. More common, and safer is a quarter inch diameter copper
tube, wound into a coil, and submersed in a barrel or bathtub of cold, slowly running water. A heat source
should be diffuse if possible, a common trick was to place the pot on a piece of slate, then use a wood fire to
heat the slate. This produced an even, slow heat that tended to prevent scorching of the grain sediment and
eventually leaving a burnt taste to the end product.
>>930786
Improvements are constantly being made to this basic design. One of the most revolutionary, and
important additions is that of the thumper keg. When this is added to a still, it halves the distilling time and
doubles the final proof of the beverage. The thumper keg is nothing more than a second pot which is not
directly heated. Hot vapors from the real pot are piped over into the bottom of the thumper keg. The vapors
then percolate through the thumper keg's hold of new crude alcohol. As it cools the vapor, water is drawn
from the vapor. As the thumper keg's liquid warms, more alcohol is vaporized. Thus, when the vapors finally
leave the top of the thumper keg, they have essentially been processed twice. Before the advent of the
thumper keg, the crude mash would first be run for "singlings". These singlings would be run through the still
a second time to produce the final whiskey. Now it was possible to produce a high quality, high alcohol
content liquor on the very first run.
>>930788
An additional attachment was invented long before the thumper keg, but is attached after it in the
normal sequence of the still. This is the dry box. Simply said, it is a air-sealed box that takes the vapors
from the thumper keg (or the pot, if a thumper keg is not used) and sends the vapors out the other side. In
the mean time, the vapors have cooled slightly and water has condensed on the inside of the box. (Please
note that this box is empty, thus "dry", except for the vapors passing through it.) The box is so angled that any
water condensing inside runs through a pipe back to the thumper keg or pot. There should be three pipes
attached to this dry box. One leads out of the box towards the worm, one leads out of the box into the
thumper keg, and one from the thumper keg to the dry box. The reason there are two pipes between the dry
box and thumper keg is to prevent a back log of liquid and a build up of pressure in the dry box. The pipe
meant for the return of water to the thumper keg should be visibly lower to gravity than the pipe meant
primarily for transportation of steam/alcohol vapor. Water from the dry box can be alternatively bled out
onto the ground, or into a nearby stream, but it may still contain some alcohol, and for this reason it is often
simply cycled back into the still.
>>930790
The worm is probably the most important piece of the still, as far as final quality goes. All the careful
care in the world can be put into making sure that the pot doesn't get too hot, the still can be clean as a
whistle every time you run it, and if the worm is nothing more than gunky, disgusting, rusty piece of metal,
your liquor will suck. Besides, that's not how they did it in the good old days, right? They used wooden kegs
for the pot and thumper keg, and chances are that they used a can in place of a coil. A can is a sort of sleeve
that has an input opening in one side for the vapor, and an output port for the leaving liquor. Basically it
looked like a very thick walled can without the top or bottom. This allowed the cooling water to flow over a
lot of surface area. It isn't easy to make something like this. It would involve a good bit of soldering with
plumbers solder (i.e. no lead) and two large, closely matched cans. Perhaps a better way is to use copper
tubing, coiled and submerged in a contained of water. (The can has to be submerged in cold water too by the
way.) This coil of copper tubing is what is most commonly referred to as the worm.
>>930791
That is the basics of the hardware. There are other nifty little adaptations that can be added but
each requires a bit more technology than the last, so we'll keep it simple. Next is needed the knowledge of
how to actually take field corn and produce drinkable white lightening from it. The true artists will insist
that it be done with grain, and grain alone, while the pragmatist will say that adding sugar really doesn't
affect taste that much and greatly increases the yield. You can decide for yourself whether sugar should be
used or not. First you need starter stock. Take 10% of whatever amount of corn your going to work with and
place it in a warm damp spot for about a week. Perhaps you will keep it in jars behind the stoves (don't
allow the seeds to become submerged, they can drown believe it or not) in a burlap sack buried in a manure
pile (please, please wash them VERY well) or whatever. After they have sprouted with 3-4 inch growths
(and preferably before the leaves break free of their casings) grind them up. For small batches a sharp knife
and cutting may work. Larger batches may require a meat grinder or something. This will act as an enzyme
to start breaking starch down into sugar. Next thing that needs done (and should be down simultaneously
with making the starter) is to grind up the other 90% of your corn. You might try buying ready round corn
meal, maybe use that meat grinder again, perhaps soak the corn in water then try to grind them up.
Whatever works for you. Then mix the ground corn with water to make a mix that won't quite hold a spoon
straight up. About a gallon of mashed corn to three gallons of water, or less if you have already soaked the
corn in water prior to grinding.
>>930792
Now heat this grain/water till it is almost boiling, keep it simmering for 10 to 30 minutes. Then let it
slowly cool, when you can comfortably put a finger in it, mix in the starter. Stir this around for another 20 to
30 minutes. Keep it warm during this time. If you desire (and it is a good idea to do this) yeast can be
added at this point. Best thing to do is get brewer's yeast at a store that sells supplies for making wine, and
then culturing the yeast in sugar water as per instructions with the package (if any). Otherwise you can use
regular baker's yeast, or not use any, and trust wild yeast to do the work (keep your fingers crossed here).
Watch the mix carefully, as without sensitive equipment it is hard to tell when the yeast have stopped
working. The yeast will form a foam or crust as they work. As they finish, the foam will break up and
disappear. The proper time to run it through the still is when the foam is pretty well gone, but not totally,
there should be a film of it left with some holes poking through. Wait to long and you will have wood alcohol
rather than grain, it is not possible, no matter who tells you different to return wood alcohol back to grain
alcohol. I cannot possibly emphasize enough the number of injuries and fatalities occurring from attempts to
"purify" wood alcohol. Run it too early and you won't get a good yield of anything but corn starch and water.
It is better to run it too early, trust me.
>>930794
The next major thing to know is how to know when to stop collecting the distillate. One easy way is
to collect a small amount of the end product, splash it on the pot, and light it with a match or lighter. It
should burst into blue flame. If it doesn't, there is too much water in it. Either turn down the heat on the pot
if you are just starting, or stop collecting if its been going a while. By this time you have as much of the
alcohol as you'll be able to get. Another, better way, is too watch the distillate as it pours out of the worm.
It will sputter at first, slowly develop into a ready stream (hopefully), then at a certain point it will sputter a
bit again, and then the twist to the stream will change very slightly as the content changes from mostly grain
alcohol to mostly water. These are very hard changes to catch, and it takes practice to learn. It is however
the most accurate means by which to gauge the distillate without high tech equipment.
That is about all there is to it. There are many, many other details that have been discovered in the
many years of distilling, but these are the basics needed to build a simple still. Now, don't go off half-cocked
kid. Distilling is illegal in this country without an official permit from the High Court. And of course,
permits are only issued to the rich merchants that can put some gold pieces in important people's pockets.
But of course, you young adventuring types try everything at least once, more until you get a sword in your
face."
– Jesse Duke
Master Bootlegger
>>930786
>The lead used in soldiering at
>the manufacturer can also easily react with alcohol to produce lead nitrates and other nasties that can
>permanently relieve you of the necessity of sight.
interesting.
it chemically seems viable if the distillate was at a hot enough temperature still.
How common was this back in the day I wonder?
that would contribute to the >>929937 argument.
>>929915
>>929937
You are mistaken. >>929959 is right. the cure for methanol poisoning is ethanol, it binds to the same receptors. So if you do it wrong, the first 2 bottles of the 20 will kill you with methanol poisoning, because they have way more methanol than ethanol. the last two may also because of other distilled oil poisons.
While it's true that it was also in the mash, what doesn't kill you if you drink a gallon of beer (because you also drink a bunch of water to dilute it and take a while so it washes out of your system), will kill you if you drink that gallon as a glass of whiskey.
also, some people use a double boiler method to make sure still can't overheat, which is a major danger.
I just bought some unused copper refrigerant hose, coiled it in ice and put the other end in a tea kettle. Got at least 100 proof shine outta it.
It tasted like shit though, the mash tastes better and is easier to drink.
>>931114
i built my still out of an enameled soup pot with a 1/2 inch copper tubing worm and a meat thermometer in the lid to temp the vapors so i knew when to start and stop collecting the alcohol, i'm not sure of the proof but if i filled a spoon and lit it on fire it would burn until there was almost nothing left, that was like 12 years ago or so it is usually cheaper to buy booze than to make it, interesting hobby though
google homedistiller. The site provides all knowledge needed to do so.
Made shitty rum in college using the method. Rule of thumb (moreso for flavour than safety) is to toss out the first 150-200ml distillate of a 20litre mash to rid yourself of any methanol and fusel oils. The rest is good to go.
>>929964
That's hilarious
>>932423
when i distilled i threw out anything that came out of the condenser coil before the steam in my still hit 180 degrees, that's the stuff you don't want once the temp leveled out at 180 i saved what came out until the temperature started to rise again, that meant more water was vaporizing an coming through the worm
