Home Distiller

Welcome. Remember garbage in, garbage out. Make tighter cuts or distill again for cleaner drinking product, however you will typically sacrifice flavour potential IMHO :) I'm currently tasting a one year ole bourbon, Woodford mash bill and triple distilled using their reported methods. It's a lot of...

Welcome back then, and share away because it sounds interesting!

Very far away, but welcome anyways. Everyone not from NZ is jealous of course

Hi I've done a double red wine kit, no doubt just "juice grape" juice, and was pretty happy with what came off the spout. Haven't checked it in a while but only expect it to get better. Also distilled a blackberry something the wife had made at the DIY wine store, after trying one bottle a...

Welcome eh!
Read till they bleed is sound advise. Mostly done grain myself but my last two brandyish attempts were decent.

Yes squigglefunk, I use the stir while heating technique when I have a wash that's heavy in solids. I think the issue with my fire incident was mostly that it was a rice wash, and therefore mostly sludge, no hulls. There was enough sludge that slipped through the false bottom to create a fairly thic...

So just an quick update, I haven't done this again :) My boiler still has the scars on the bottom but still works well with a commercial induction (3200 Watt) unit. I just watched a "Still It" video on distilling on grain and Jesse suggested this exact setup, so I did post a comment and di...

Welcome Yes don't dismiss a sugar shine. Quick search will tell you corn can be a bitch. I've had good luck with a step down corn mash from corn flour but separation may be worse. However my 1 yr old Wild Turkey clone is quite nice. My Odins Rye Bread has it's fans and my sweetfeed wasn't bad either...

I've had three successful batches of ORB whiskey, first two were a hit with others and now have 21L turning 8 months old which is even better than before. I've had a couple tries at an allgrain rye using malted rye, always a disaster, so gooey that it just foams up during ferment, plugged my airlock...

High corn mashes are likely the toughest mashes of all, adding heat to the mash is very problematic, hence the use of stirrers, steam wands and steam jackets. And the endless threads on the subject here :) I suggest considering a step down mash where you start with boiling water and add ingredients ...

Welcome from a West coaster. By far the best advice at this stage is "read till they bleed". Also recognizing which things are controlled by physics/chemistry, or equipment, or available ingredients, or personal preference. This will help you to pick out the solutions more likely to work f...

Parrot smearing, only if it has no dump mechanism or you don't know how to use that mechanism. I like to use my parrot on my reflux runs at high ABV. I like to make cuts at any change including drop in ABV. My parrot dump is 250ml which I think is plenty small enough for a cut for anybody, so just u...

Trying a custom mash bill for my liking, 50 Corn, 25 Rye, 15 Wheat, 10 Barley. Making 10 Gal batches, straining off 5 gal for all grain, and adding 10 Gal water and sugar to the leftovers for a sugarhead. Worked out fine that way with the HBB I made last year. Just emptied the all grain jug this wee...

Ya, should definitely mention that I pulled the copper mesh packing out of the column and it was nasty and required a good cleaning. I also scorched a 100% heavy peat run, think I might try and run that through, see if I can keep the peat and get rid of the ash taste. No more experimenting with dist...

I started making cuts when the output dropped to 95%, and did throw most of what came after out, but running slow and starting with a high ABV that was still a high percentage of the total volume. I am waiting for a real vodka drinker to come and give my 3 selections a taste test (FFV, TPW, and this...

I did a feints run recently that included some scorched rice vodka from my fire in the boiler incident. Ran it nice and slowly through my reflux setup and found it did clean it up very nicely through the hearts section. But what was really interesting was as I was just thinking it was time to shut d...

Was hoping to find a way to make this, although having to cross the line I would have been empty handed.... I'm close to a border crossing and when the dollar is more favourable we are regular visitors. Not worth risking that freedom. However we have tickets for the Brit Floyd concert in Vancouver t...

So I've been trying to do some distilling on the grain https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=72767 , had a few successful runs so was trying some AG rice https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=66045&start=30#p7553536 . Now I had an issue with my rice run, but...

So I decided to give this method a try with rice. As I said in another thread I got poor yield and a bit of scorching. My brix reading said my conversion was pretty good, so I thought my ferment must have quit, so I added some sugar, adjusted the ph, repitched some yeast, and watched it bubble for a...

I've also been thinking about trying to catch the nutty flavour of torrified rice like in 'gen mai cha'. Could be that your toasting is bringing out those flavours. While doing my rice run on the weekend I got impatient and turned my internal element on 1/4 power, think it started to scorch due to c...

Sorry El Cuban, I have no input for you except why go to all the trouble to malt the rice and still use enzymes? As an update on my rice whiskey, my strip run had quite a low yield but I think I got good conversion, so I tested my ph and it was about 3.3, so I figured the ferment just didn't finish ...

First AG rice ferment is just finishing up, so thought I'd share my experience and ask a couple questions that arose. First off I soaked 8Kg med grain white rice overnight, strained, added to 8g boiling water, and got a whack of cooked, slightly over moist rice, added another 2 gal to try and loosen...

>Longhairedcountryboy >Joined: Sat Jan 07, 2006 >I just gotten into all grain mashing recently. Really, thats amazing. When I first ran my HBB I had no experience with bourbon, I did like Makers, but didn't realize it was a bourbon (us Canucks tend to think of whiskey as rye). When I went to try a r...

So now that I've got about 12L of 70%ABV, I haven't decided what to do with it yet, but I have been mixing into both some sweetfeed and rye bread whiskies, and found that at 20% the peat smoke flavour is substantial. Now I have read that the smoky goodness will mellow out with age, so think I am jus...

Seems like yesterday I got my first welcome. This isn't the first forum I've spent years on, considering I was once on CompuServe forums, FidoNet forums, provided UUCP feeds to Usenet through my BBS, hosting PHPBB software blah blah blah.... I think the point is the more you read, the more context y...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-Stainless-Steel-304-Needle-Valve-1-8-1-4-1-2-Right-Angle-Female/32823110636.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dTQeR3r" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow I use these on all my condensers, I also reduce water ...

On another note, What is your process for aging like the amount of wood you add, for how long and how roasted are your pieces that you use. Hoping to do my last strip run tonight and final spirit run tomorrow, so no first hand experience with peated. However, although I like a heavy oaked product f...

Looks like I'm the odd man out because although I use 250, 500 and 1000ml jars for collection, I use 13L (3g) and 26L (5g) glass jugs for storing/aging. Guess I like the efficiencies that come from volume.

Agree with everything here except the suggestion that the temperature or flow rate change should be considered linear, anything besides that is ignored. These non-linear changes in temperature and flow rate are to me key indicators of specific points in the process and give valuable information.

I think this is all dependent on the individual stills "capacity" for reflux, in other words If you stabilize a column full of fores/heads, but that is only half the total volume of fores/heads in the wash, then you'd really have to stabilize again to achieve good cuts. But if you have mor...