What made you do it

[S-Cackalacky]

She hasn't been too supportive of my logical progression.

[Bigbob]

Gotta ask you S-Cackalacky, are those your drawings in your avatars?

[Brutal]

Gotta ask you S-Cackalacky, are those your drawings in your avatars?

I want to know too. I bet I could pick you out in a crowded room..

I love to think and learn. Most folks are zoning out watching tv in the evening, I'm kicking google's ass an reading about subjects of interest. Thinking of why things work the way they do and new ways to do things.. I was hooked when I started reading about reflux distillation! How interesting that subject is! Funny thing, I run pot stills now or a thumper.. I got interested in this about 2 years before I registered here. Somewhere along that line I did see "that show" and thought just like everyone here did "if these folks can do it I damn sure can."

I don't think I have any cool family history about it. I'll have to check one day. I am the descendant of poor Irish immigrants so who knows.

[Bigbob]

If it's poor and Irish, your in!

[bearriver]

If it's poor and Irish, your in!

Now that is a natural progression if I ever seen one.

My Irish wife drinks more of my booze than I do...

[HDNB]

If it's poor and Irish, your in!

Now that is a natural progression if I ever seen one.

My Irish wife drinks more of my booze than I do...

aye. recently found out me granpappy was born in Ireland (always thought he was a brit)... the old man did some bootleggin' in the 50's...maybe it's genetic.

[GrassHopper]

No denying the fact that "The Show" (head held down in shame) was a major influential factor, but there were others as well. Timing played a big part of it as well. We were now under a new President and administration who appeared to be flushing the Country down the toilet and "prepping" seemed in order, to counter the inevitable fall of Freedom and our God given Constitution. A natural offshoot of prepping seemed to be......how on earth would I survive should I not be able to buy my nightly shot or two of "Jack?" So, I ran into a guy I know and was voicing my opinion bout' it all and somehow "the show" came up and he said, "wanna' borrow my still?" I did.......and I made the worst, nastiest stuff you ever smelled or tasted. Then, I found this site and never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to make something like I make now. Life is good.....real good, thanks to this site. This topic is like a 25 year school reunion where you find out you all could have had her if you woulda just knowed how to go bout it.

[Truckinbutch]

THE Lord created whiskey so the Irish couldn't rule the world .

[cranky]

Like Jimbo, I'm a cheap bastard with expensive taste and I like to be as self sufficient as possible. I did a lot of research into making stills back in the 80s but had long forgotten that info. For many years my wife and I had bounced around the country kind of aimlessly. I have always had trouble finding anything in a liquor store I liked and we both were real fans of Canadian icewine, actually we got started with icewine back when you could only get German icewine. Anyway, in about 06 the price of icewine went up and I was too cheap to spend $50 for 3 glasses of wine so we stopped buying it. Eventually I accepted a transfer out to Seattle and I noticed all the blackberries. I love blackberries and would collect them on my way home from work. Then we managed to buy a house at the exact time the housing market bottomed out and that gave me a garage. I hadn't had a garage since we left Kansas where I not only had a 100 year old blacksmiths shop but a spare house for storage (haunted) but a complete lack of free fruit. But here I had a garage AND an abundance of free fruit and remembered my dad used to make blackberry wine, so I decided to see if I could make some blackberry dessert wine that could substitute for icewine. I mentioned this to one of the guys I work with when I did some metal detecting for him and he told me he used to make wine and beer and loaned me a carboy. I succeeded on my first try and made an absolutely fabulous wine that could rival the best dessert wine but eventually had a failure. That's when I remembered my research from the 80s since I hate to waste anything and couldn't bring myself to pour out 5 gallons of wine so I started researching and here I am. I still make the dessert wines and still think most of them are better than anything I can buy but I like the whole making and drinking my own hard liquor, I can finally find something I like to drink, I just have to make it. I also like the creativity of it all and not having headaches after drinking make it worthwhile.

[bearriver]

THE Lord created whiskey so the Irish couldn't rule the world .

Yes he did.

Old man Mcgregor on me mums side would drink a fifth of whiskey with his eggs every morning before work. My kids are over half Irish. Oh man...

[Truckinbutch]

I posted what made me do it . What made me keep on doing it was the fact that I prefer what I have learned to make here and what other members have shared with me over what I can buy off the shelf .

[aceswired]

It was somethin I'd thought about ...don't know why. But a chance discussion with a stiller at a medical conference for my daughter sort of sparked a background curiosity, so thought I'd give it a go.

Plus, I'm a cheap basted with expensive taste.

[apdb]

...stolen from my intro years ago...

I'm a chef by trade ( I've changed careers since then) and it seemed almost natural to want to expand my skillset into something I love as much as food. Man, when I stepped in here I was ready... or so I thought!
An old guy i worked with got me thinking about a still idea that he claimed he thought up. Thing was amazing. It was totally covert. It sat right there on you counter and no one even questioned what it was. Well he lent me his and gave me a couple quick directions about how to run it. See it was easy... what you did was take this $10 bag of this yeast stuff that claimed it produced 15 - 18% of booze and mix it with sugar and expensive Tropicana orange juice. Few days later you throw it in this machine thing.... 1 gallon at a time. haha dumb
This thing fired out clear potent firewater. If you mixed it up with even more orange juice you could almost drink a glass without gagging on it.
Well I phoned around town here and found this contraption at a health store. It was designed to clean up skanky water. I had a brilliant idea to attach a dimmer switch to the power supply so it wouldn't boil and run the fan on top directly to the wall with an extension cord. Damn I'm smart. Now I could make some decent moonshine and be the life of the party.... or so I thought at the time. I didn't even know what a foreshot was....
That was back in 2004...
After numerous failed attempts,my Airstill ended up in a box in the basement and forgotten about. Yep I was done with white lightning. Then one day I accidently caught myself tuning into those retards Tim & Tickle. The show was a farce, anyone could see that, but it did get me thinking about why my science experiments were such a failure. I had lots a free time now and started researching the old histories of distilled spirits. I was hooked again. I started learning about the pirate trade and old George Washington. I was fascinated by stories of early settlers here in North America and how they were able to make a living distilling corn and grains.
My digging finally landed me over here on the HD parent site and I've never left. I read someone say (maybe RAD) that at least 200 hours is required reading here. I'm pretty sure I'm over the 1000 mark. I've read, reread then reread again some concepts that took time to sink in to my "grey matter." Looking back, man I didn't know the slightest thing about distillation. I think now I can say with confidence that I get it.


Thanks again everyone

Aaron

[Hound Dog]

Shine has always tended to come around in these parts. Coming from different people it was always a crap shoot as to what kind of quality you were getting. Then I was watching the show......... Like many, If those morons can do it, I can certainly make something good.

[Sungy]

My fascination started with the TV show MASH. Thought that glass still was "cool" when I was a kid. Skip forward and Im having a beer with the new neighbor and he said " wanna try something special". Not to be rude I said sure...and out comes a green bottle and a few shot glasses. He said it was 35 year old brandy his dad made. This was smooth. Not like any of the other home made spirits I have tried.

The wheels got turning and I started researching and found this Incredible resource and my newest addiction. Prairypiss challenged me to build my first still from a concept valve plate I designed to a finished still.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this great community and helped me to create some wonderful spirits.

[S-Cackalacky]

Gotta ask you S-Cackalacky, are those your drawings in your avatars?

The last couple are/were. My paranoia tells me to be careful not to post things that may be posted elsewhere. The previous one was a self portrait of sorts. This current one evolved from a series of flesh eating flowers that were intended as preliminary drawings for a surrealistic painting with a diabetes theme. I'm not a teddy bear/cuddly bunny kind of artist.

[Danespirit]

My parents made beer and wine back in the 70's.
The beer was some very potent stuff, as i found out...i nicked a bottle of beer and drank it.
So the "natural beerdrinker" was born..
In my younger days we always sat a couple of guys and had some beer in the weekends, before we went to town and had a party.
I never liked booze that much..i guess the crap in the store discouraged me from further drinking.
My natural curiosity for "How stuff works", had me in trouble more than once..well my teacher aborted my attempt to make nitroglycerin.
So sooner or later i wanted to find out how alcohol was made.
Fermenting some terrible crap back in the 80's, i gave up on it..thought distilling only was for professional distillerys.
Zapping around on the internet, i came to the HD parentsite, and couldn't take my eyes off it again.
As i saw drawings and stills that others had build, a idea came to my mind.
I am a blacksmith and welder, so i can make anything with metal.
Lurking around on the HD, reading about those fine results achieved by the members in here, i wanted a still..
Took almost a year before i had gathered materials and a boiler for my build.
The time was used reading this forum, until i finally decided to join in.
I want to thank all those fine people in here for sharing their knowledge with me.
Learning the art of distilling is a long and rocky road, thanks to HD some big stones were taken off the road for me.

[Danespirit]

Gotta ask you S-Cackalacky, are those your drawings in your avatars?

The last couple are/were. My paranoia tells me to be careful not to post things that may be posted elsewhere. The previous one was a self portrait of sorts. This current one evolved from a series of flesh eating flowers that were intended as preliminary drawings for a surrealistic painting with a diabetes theme. I'm not a teddy bear/cuddly bunny kind of artist.

I liked your selfportrait better S-C...

[MichiganCornhusker]

I'm not a teddy bear/cuddly bunny kind of artist.

Unless the cuddly bunny has the mouth of a venus flytrap?
I would had guessed that your last one might have been a self portrait.
I sure wish I had some of that artistic talant, I would think it could make a nice pressure release of sorts at times.
I have to settle for just trying to understand it.

It occurred to me this morning that part of what made me get into this was this forum. I had seen the parent site before, and seen some youtube stuff, but it was when I discovered this forum and got the hang of searching for info in it that I really started to get interested. It wasn't just the info, though, it was the shared experiences and the obvious passion people on here had for what they were doing. When I started out I was trying to find out how to use corn, which led me to posts by BigR, NCHooch, Jimbo, Dundrhead, and many others, and if you don't look at the post dates, it can all feel like a current realtime experience. That is a heck of a lot of creative energy to soak up at once, and it's hard to not want to be a part of it.

[Jimbo]

I'm not a teddy bear/cuddly bunny kind of artist.

Very nice drawings Cack! Learn something new about you guys every day. Post some more if you can. Im not a teddy bear cuddly bunny kind of guitarist either LOL.

I was thinking some more about the question posed here in this thread. My answer below is accurate, its a very true statement, I'm self sufficient, do my own auto and home repairs, make things for myself whenever I can, grow some of the veggies we eat, and I enjoy expensive drinks like Calvados and good whiskeys. I think the tipping point for me was a spell of frequent travel to France. I put together an engineering team there because the kind of talent we needed wasnt available here, I cant say what we were working on or Id give away too much. Anyway, drinking and eating on the companys nickle I fell in love with good Calvados, made a decent attempt at drinking every one I could find and even made a trip to Normandy where most of it is made. My first still was comical, come to think of it the second one was too, it wasnt until I found this place that my gear made a dramatic improvement. I did read a few books on the topic, but they dont get into building much. The first thing I distilled was apple brandy. And it turned out really nice. I was hooked. That was '95 and all I did for a long time was fruit. Again, this site and NCHooch's recipe and tips from BigR and others showed me a great bourbon is within our reach. I was double hooked. LWTCS and PrairiePiss were other early mentors, especially on rum. Anyway I know this isint a name dropping thread, but those guys are honestly why I do it, or at least why I do what I am doing today, which is a lot more than I was doing before HD. Cheers friends.

Edit: Posted at same time as MCH. Funny we both brought out names, same names even, in our responses here! Guess we're on the same wavelength.

[MichiganCornhusker]

Posted at same time as MCH. Funny we both brought out names, same names even, in our responses here!

Ha, yes well when you are slogging down a murky path paved with hot corn mush for the first time you don't forget the ones who held the brightest lights for you!

[ga flatwoods]

Gotta ask you S-Cackalacky, are those your drawings in your avatars?

The last couple are/were. My paranoia tells me to be careful not to post things that may be posted elsewhere. The previous one was a self portrait of sorts. This current one evolved from a series of flesh eating flowers that were intended as preliminary drawings for a surrealistic painting with a diabetes theme. I'm not a teddy bear/cuddly bunny kind of artist.

I liked your selfportrait better S-C...

+1 I as well. This one wreeks of psychoticism and hellish nightmares.

[Hound Dog]

Gotta ask you S-Cackalacky, are those your drawings in your avatars?

The last couple are/were. My paranoia tells me to be careful not to post things that may be posted elsewhere. The previous one was a self portrait of sorts. This current one evolved from a series of flesh eating flowers that were intended as preliminary drawings for a surrealistic painting with a diabetes theme. I'm not a teddy bear/cuddly bunny kind of artist.

I liked your selfportrait better S-C...

+1 I as well. This one wreeks of psychoticism and hellish nightmares.

Yep, kinda reminds me of years gone past.

[HDNB]

i like drinking.
in 1992 my daughter was born. i had just bought my first house and had 1000 in my bank account the mortgage was 800.mo.

so i needed to economize...made a wash, i believe from applied knowledge found in the encyclopedia brittanica... circa 1969 edition. it was spring water, brown sugar a few 1/4'd lemons and a bit 'o molasses. it fermented out nice and slow in the cool basement and about 2 weeks later i got a pot, a bowl and some ice, floated the bowl in the wash, inverted the lid and put some ice on top when it started to boil. maybe i saw that in a prison movie or something.
it made *alcohol* i use the term loosely. i understood that it got better with age, so it sat on the shelf and i'd taste it from time to time, and about 5 years later i threw it out.

fast forward to 2012-2013. my daughter is dating this army fella. he must have watched the show. he often got involved on the ranch doing DIY projects and constantly harped about making shine. "i could sell all we could make on the base in a minute" he would harp...being a serial entreprenuer i started researching and after about 6 months fell in here, lurking for 4 more months. found "don't yell, don't sell" started looking for laws, who gets busted and why...and decided i wanted nothing to do with selling booze to army bases...but craft distilling interested me.
the army boy eventually fell out with the daughter, and having clear unfettered access to my shop again, with no one looking over my shoulder i decided to start testing the waters, find out how hard this is and if i could make something palatable.
now i am seriously considering cashing in my chips and going full metal jacket on my next career...
'cause i'm a cheap bastard with expensive tastes.

[S-Cackalacky]

I liked your selfportrait better S-C...

+1 I as well. This one wreeks of psychoticism and hellish nightmares.

Yep, kinda reminds me of years gone past.

Well, I changed it back to the self-portrait, but don't be gettin' the idea that it looks a damned bit like me.

[Bigbob]

I liked the hellish nightmares

[robb]

Good thought Woodshed. Must have been my inherent lifelong dislike of authority, government, etc. My family originated in the Smokey Mtns of NC. But I think most were either too religious or lazy to run a still. But finally had both the time and dollars to try. Then found this site to improve. 'Cuz if I can't make something good I ain't gonna make it 'atol.
Thanks to everyone on this site!

[DAD300]

Well I too have the cheap ol' bastard thing, but that wasn't the total.

I think anything you do yourself is better than all most anything you can buy. It's proven it's self over and over again. And booze is just another example.

Drink your own for a few months and then try a shot of commercial...

When's the last time your home made gave you a headache? The Big Boys could take the fores out, but why don't they?

That's a derogatory rhetorical type of question...because they don't give a squat and don't want to loose the percentage!

[Danespirit]

You sure got a point there DAD...the profit plays a keyrole.
It would be very easy for the big distillers to make quality spirits, instead of the shit one can by at the local shop.
But also (at least here) the damned government, allows this crap to be in there.
One is supposed to work and pay taxes, not to drink. Them with the big money, can afford the expensive quality stuff.
If you got a hangover from the shit they let pass in there, you don't drink that much.
That was probably the main reason for me to start..i knew i could make a better quality, that would cause less harm to myself.
Still i drink responsibly..no need to overindulge, just because there is plenty of it.

[Jimbo]

Whats really frustrating is the cost of raw materials is NIL. I can make bourbon for $1.75 a bottle. At $4 a bushel market price for corn, the big guys are paying a fraction of that. So they could toss 20% and still be paying nil on the materials, 20% of nil is nil. But theyre so damn greedy, they HAVE TO HAVE that extra fucking nickle a bottle. I deal with the same shit in the big company I work. Its enough to make you want to puke. Ive grown to despise big corporate think, companys with layers of bean counter and hedge fund manager type 'leadership' so far removed from the product they only know 'quarterly numbers'. Fuck off.

sorry, someone musta put a nickle in me.