Home Distiller

O.K. There are loads of elderberries around right now and I want to make wine and brandy out of them. The problem is that every recipe for the wine requires that the berries are destalked. I did this by hand (while watching the football) yesterday and it took a ridiculous amount of time to get 2kg. ...

I can't say I know enough about banana types to say exactly what kind they were. They were just the standard banana you buy in the supermarket, really. Anyway, I left them in the spirit for about a month before filtering. I drank a load of it last night and concluded that perhaps too much sugar had ...

I had some neutral that wasn't really as neutral as it should be (not sure why - spirit hydrometer definitely said it was 95.5% ABV). It had a strange smell when it came out the still and was pretty damn harsh (no-one could drink it without shuddering). Anyway, I didn't have much hope for it and had...

Out of interest, I came across a recipe on another site that is basically a sugar wash with rice in it listed as a rice wine. I wasn't really sure about it so I only made a gallon. It fermented in a normal amount of time, didn't clear (because of the starch), and doesn't seem to have any "off&q...

O.K. I just need this issue cleared up. If you're using a fruit with a lot of pectin, should an enzyme to break down the pectin be used? I got this off the home site: I think Jack would agree that what he means is that fermenting at a high temperature, or adding pectin enzyme, or trying for an abv h...

Haha, yeah, I normally call them country wines as well but have started to use "fruit wine" after a few discussions with people who didn't know what I meant. I'm no master distiller either; I've only just started and have turned out my fair share of mistakes using a ready made still a mate...

I'll be interested how this one turns out; I've been making fruit wines for a while but only been distilling them recently. Anyway, couple of questions:

1.) Are you going to distil this wine?

2.) Are you going to add any sugar (good for wines, bad for brandies, it seems)?

3.) What yeast?

Cheers.

I'm not sure about using that pectin enzyme; I heard somewhere that it causes more methanol. Better check that one out, though. Well, I pot distilled the plum wine and got 5 quality bottles of plum brandy out of it. I see what people mean when they say there's a difference between a distillate produ...

O.K. forget popcorn. Just to be clarify - if I steamed all the corn I need and then add it to water at, say, 90+C in the fermenter (insulated) and allow it to cool till I can add the barley, would the starch then be available for the enzymes? Assuming this hair-brained plan works, how long should I ...

I've been reading Ian Smiley's book today about pure corn whiskey and as I can get cracked (but not flaked) corn cheap and easy the methods interest me. At the moment, though, I'm rather poor and can't afford a 30+L stock pot to do the pre-malting and boiling of the corn. I do have a few large plast...

I always try to have all my fermenting equipment working on something at all times. In real terms that works out as me producing about 25L of "wine" at 11% - 12% a week. As with most things I do, there is no real system - just get whatever I can ferment, be it fruit, veg or sugar (and I'm ...

Well, this batch is a very strange beast indeed. I filtered out the solid material and the S.G. had dropped to 1.000 in just the crazed 24 hours of fermentation. In the random way I often go about things I went and got some more plums (another 4kg), steamed then and added another 1k of sugar. This t...

Thanks for the info, guys. Both suggestions are really helpful. I'm going to do the Saki in the winter because right now I'm getting loads of fruit and all my equipment is in use making brandies. When that dries up I'll be looking to expand my techniques with rice mashing. Out of interest, Stillvodk...

I would like to make a wash using rice without adding any sugar. I live in the U.K. and I was wondering if anyone knows where I could get the enzymes for the conversion of starch to sugar. Some wine shops sell amylase as a product for clearing starch hazes from wines; I have some from a brand call &...

I steamed them for about an hour. If something survived that then it must be a tough little bastard. All the sugar was dissolved - the wash was all liquid apart from the steamed plum material. 3.5kg sugar in 4 gallons shouldn't have taken the sugar content too high, but maybe ignoring the sugar cont...

I've been trying to make a plum brandy. I got about 10 kg of plums and steamed them a bit to extract some juice and to sterilise them. I cooled this and added to sugar and DAP to make a wash of these parts: 10kg steamed plums 4 gallons of water + steamed plum juice 3.5kg of white sugar. 2 tsps of DA...

Yeah, by the time I got around to picking them most of the flowers had gone as well. I also missed the Hawthorn blossom which would have made a great spirit I think. Still, like you say, no mistakes with the berries and there are going to be loads of them as well. Never made elderberry wine / spirit...

Today I've distilled some elderflower wine I made (twice in a pot still to take it to about 40% ABV) and it seems alright - very fragrant. Now as summer and autumn come around I'll be making lots of fruit and flower country wines and I'm going to distill all of them as experiments. What I'd like to ...

O.K. I did the steam extraction and got about 2 gallons of nice, sterile juice. I didn't want to waste the pulp, though, so I fermented the first 3 days with it and the stones in. I checked the stones and none of them cracked in the steamer so I thought they would be alright. Today I filtered the ju...

O.K. I got a bag of them out the freezer today and just couldn't face the prospect of getting the stone out of each one. I picked each one and that was hassle enough. Anyway, I've put about 4kg of them in the steamer and we'll see what comes out. I'll check to see if any stones break and what the ju...

I've got a load of cherries and want to make some brandy out of them. I've read most of the posts on the forum on this and so have got some good ideas. What I'd like to know is if I got the cherries from my freezer and put them in a steam extractor, would this get rid of the problem of the stones co...

Yeah, I'll give em a ring about it, but in truth I'm not that bothered as it cost me less than £2 and I ordered some EC 1118 today to get some better stuff. I also make country wines (it's how I started) so I might just do a 1 gallon run with something I know to see what the flavour is like. Would t...

I ordered some normal Young's yeast off the net and they sent me some Young's Super Wine Yeast Compond instead. Has anyone ever used this stuff? Is it going to produce off flavours on sugar washes? Everyone here says turbo yeasts are bad and I never intended to use them, but now I've got this stuff ...

O.K. I'll give it a go. It'll take a month or so because I need to wait for the stuff I've got in my fermenters now to finish and then distill that first. When that's done, it's the time of the carrot. Man, I need some new equipment.

I guess I'll just have to put up with those longs ears.

O.K. I can get carrots really cheap from an animal feed store. I know you can make carrot wine and was wondering about making a spirit from a crude carrot wine (pot distill it). I tried the search engine and couldn't find anything. Before I go ahead, is there any reason why I shouldn't give it a go?...

Cheers. Saved me a wasted sugar wash.

I found a tub of old yeast nutrient (DAP and ammonium sulphate). It has a best before on it and it's way past that (by about 4 years).

Does this stuff go off? Is it worth testing?

Cheers guys. There's plenty to follow up on in there. The mashing bit of grain drinks always put me off making beer and it's kind of the same for whiskey. When I get a bit more time and money I'll get a mash tun and take it from there. Rum I guess is next. I live in a rural area and so hopefully I c...

Hi there. I've just started distilling (been making wines and that for a while) and have made some neutral spirit using a reflux still. I can also set it up for pot distilling (it's a brewhaus one). The results are really good (except for the first batch, which tasted like hell) and I can't tell you...