Home Distiller

Something I've never seen anyone do and wondered why is to use a standard spool with TC on both ends and just surface solder it on. You'd have a lot of surface area and could even preload the gasket groove with ring of solder. Seems reasonable to me. This is what I decided to try with 51% silver br...

You can save some of that 3" and cut the plates from smaller pipe if it saves some money. 1" ought to do, right? Regarding the boiler connection, you said kevlar, I assume you meant teflon? Yes... Teflon. I was thinking, "kevlar" doesn't seem right," nothing like being righ...

Thank you all for all your help. This boka has been a plan of mine for some time and I'm so excited to build and run it. So now I have some questions on the specifics of construction. I was going to by a 42" piece of 3" pipe for the whole still. That's 24 for the packing, 8-10 for the cond...

I have done both what der wo mentions and Odins method. It is true with odins method you still get flavor due to the smearing resulted from adding heads and taisl from previous runs. I find it make a bit light whiskey than the way der wo mentioned.. both are good depending what your after. Odins me...

I've done similar runs once or twice. Harry used to do it and walked me through it back in the day. So yes it is possible. Personally I would aim to target your oaking strength so you don't have to water down. I think when I came closest to that I had to increase power a bit in addition to manipula...

TLDR up front: I'd like to make a 3 inch boka with 2' of packing to make whiskey by running it at 89-90% alcohol for the duration of the run. is 2' of packing a good starting place for this? Can you run a still at a reflux ratio of less than 1? Long form: I've run a 5 gallon pot still to make a rea...

The results are in! Sort of. The result: I suck at all grain mashing. 30 lbs of grain later I have a gallon of 25% first run whiskey. I can tell you its NOT bitter though. Very fruity actually... dont know what caused that. Because I dragged my feet building a still I freeze concentrated each 5 gall...

An update (and more questions) Made my first wash the other day, then realized I might have made a bunch of mistakes. Oh well, live and learn right? I used 6lbs of flaked corn and 2.7lbs rye extract (Forget why I thought this was a good idea). I mashed this at aound 155 for close to two hours and du...

Yes. I'm making a wash for distillation, I'm not making beer. Fermenting and striping on grain I get more flavors from the grain to carry over into the distillate. Off flavors is not a problem. Got it. Similarly, do I need to worry about fermentation temperatures like I would with beer? Also, am I ...

Ok the next set of noob questions: A 1.5 run is a little different from what I had planned. I guess I was planning on stripping three mashes into low wines and then doing a run with those. In terms of resulting product, what's the difference between a 1.5 run, and stripping several stills full down ...

For distillation purposes sparging isn't that helpful because, unlike in brewing, you don't want to do the boil which will denature the enzymes. You want to keep the enzymes somewhat active through the ferment. You can sparge and use it in your next mash. Typically I brew in a bag, so "spargin...

Thanks for the help so far gentlemen! and now more questions... Glad you made a start on the research. figure on about 4 weeks of 8 hours a day reading to get up to speed From what I've seen so far that sounds about right. No. Your are right, it's rough as guts as 'cuts' would be a fairly foreign co...

I'm a new home brewer (about 4 months, and 5 brews now), and I've become VERY interested home distilling. I've been reading as much as I can lately and I've tried really hard to piece this all together myself (read through the stickies, thumbed around this site, googled everything I can, picked up a...