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[quote="Uncle Jesse"]Glass carboys are fine, but leave them in a dark place while fermenting.[/quote] is darkness all THAT important? What's the result of too much light? (I ferment in a room with only a small north facing window so there's not alot of light, so I wouldn't think it makes t...

I have a pair of boilers feeding my condensor (~36qts total volume) and I am using 10 ft of 3/8" copper tubing jacketed with some vinyl tubing like the counter flow wort chiller used by beer makers. The wort chiller link is basically the design I used as inspiration. I find it's a fairly elegan...

[quote="The Chemist"]I would think and food grade ceramic with a non-porous glaze would be fine for high-proof spirits. Next time I'm passing through Texas, I'll stop at the pottery in Marshall, and pick up something to test. If their stuff is okay, they probably will ship anywhere.[/quote...

[quote="outlawokie"]You can still buy them new they are sold for drinking water and other beverages I also would not use a used jug that I did not know the history on[/quote] that may be true, but I wonder if the glaze can sustain a high proof liquid and still be food safe. (I am thinking ...

You may see lots at fleemarkets etc, but I would be seriously concerned about what had been stored in them previously. I can't imagine being comfortable using a jug that may have been used to store diazanon or something worse, even if it was washed well. God know what people put in old jugs sitting ...

I second waht fourway said...I made a thumper at first because I liked the idea of efficency, reusing the latent heat etc.....but like Fourway said, you dramtically increase heat up time, it causes WAY more leakage points, you have to pay WAY more attention to the heat inputs, you have watch that yo...

My local Co-op farmers supply store has cracked corn going for $16 for a 40kg bag......that's pretty damn cheap as ingredients go.....

I tend to add a little blackstrap molasses to my dark rums, but be aware that black strap has some sediment in it, so you have to filter it a little when you;re finished aging. To filter out the sediment, I just use a couple of cotton balls in a funnel and that takes care of most of the blackstrap s...

Hey all,

I just finished my 2nd run through my pot still of Uncle Jesse's sour mash recipe (1st mash run). I am now looking for suggestions for aging hwta I made. I have a largish aging bottle (133floz's) and I was thinking of some oak sticks to start, but what else? Anyone?

Thanks

ok, last question. I am probably going to run my first corn wash today and I am prepped to put the 2nd wash on, but I want to know how long does a fermented corn wash last in storage? The problem is that while the sour mash method sounds interesting, it would tend to produce WAY too much alcohol for...

[quote="Virginia Gentleman"]OK, now it's all making sense. Understood about the fractioning column, Jesse, and I think the new paragraph in the Wiki looks pretty clear. Of course I'm full of questions, so will post anything that gets a head scracth. Hope your kid gets better, we had two si...

this one;s for Jesse: I was looking over your recipe for sour mash again and then I saw the section on the different pot stills. You mention a pot still with a column that's cooled. Isn;t that a reflux still? If not, is an example of a cooled column pot still on the site? Just curious, that's all.

[quote="Virginia Gentleman"]Good deal, swpeddle. So that may answer the third question, which is what's the %abv of the first run (in a pot still). If the graph below is correct, seems like it would be about 61% if you start with a 13% mash. And a second run would up it to 83%, if you're s...

[quote="Virginia Gentleman"]Hi all, VG again. Hope I'm not asking questions that are already answered on forums or site, but I've searched and can't find these. What's the average % abv you're able to get after 3-4 days with the no-cook sour mash recipe? Finally ordered 2 hydrometers (1 fo...

[quote="knuklehead"][quote="swpeddle"] sounds like you hit the same sale at Shopper's Drugmart that I did last year.....I felt like a felon when I bought 24 bags of sguar and nothing else. I commented to my wife that I almost thought it was a sting operation to figure out who the...

[quote="knuklehead"]I just bought a 40kg bag of sugar at Cosco. Cost me $0.73 Canadian per kg. Some times I can get it at the local drug store for $0.50 per kg but then they limit how much you can buy sice the sale is just ment to get customers in the store.[/quote] sounds like you hit the...

personally, I would prefer to stick with copper....seemns to me that it would be cheaper and much easier to control.....Form what I remember of my high school chemistry, it would seem to me that if you were to use peroxide, you'd have to determine the molar concentration of the aldehydes and ethyl a...

I was reading the section on aging in the Artisan Distilling Book, and in it, they describe the oxidation as an essential part of the aging process. I have no problem with that part, but then they continue on and describe adding a catalyst in the form of a clean copper sheet to aging brandies for a ...

ok, I am very jealous now. I asked my wife for a cask for xmas, and all I got was the response: "There's no way I'm getting that for you! What am I supposed to tell people when they ask what I got you?!? I can't tell them I got you a cask so that you can make rum!!!!!" Apparently, her aski...

Uncle Jesse,

That makes sense......I totally forgot that the corn wasn;t malted so there's no source for the enzymes. DOH! thanks for the enlightnement.

Steve

ok....I have a couple of quick question for Uncle Jesse.....you say that you use the backset to boil the corn when you boil your mash, so are you saying that you boil the corn in that simple recipe? Similarly, would just pouring the boiling backset onto the corn be sufficent? or does it not matter w...

[quote="Uncle Jesse"]i used the simple sour mash method to learn. briefly, for 5 gallons: 7 lbs cracked corn (6-8 pieces/kernel is the proper crack) 7 lbs sugar 5 gallons water 1 tbsp yeast Put them into a fermenter and let it go. It will ferment on it's own over a few days. when it's done...

ok, it sounds like I am basically on the right track with this......although I am using nutrient instead of paste, it shoudl work out to be about the same......however, my question about pH still stands. Do I really need the lemon juice? Anyone else? Steve PS maybe my taste buds are dead, but I woul...

Anyone here ever try fermenting blueberries? I found a gallon of them in the deepfreezer, but they turned out to be a little freezer burnt. I got me to thinking that rather than throwing them out, why not try to make some blueberry based brandy or whatever you call blueberry booze? So my question is...

I suspect that even though Alabama prob has high taxation on liquor, I'd bet that liquor princing is somewhat higher up here in Canada. ie in my province, a 26oz bottle of plain jane Captain Morgan Dark Rum runs CAN$23, which is WAY too high for what I would call a very ordinary mixing rum. Plus mos...

While I don't call my self a PSP, I would make the suggestion that you may want to skip the thumper. I tried out the thumper route at first as well, and while I found that using a thumper was interesting, I also found that it wasn;t worth the effort. The first thing I discovered was that doing this ...

I've never heard of multiple layne arms for one pot still before, but I have heard of multiple potstills runnin' into one HUGE coil (usually this is only done on large moonshine operations). That's kinda what I do with my setup.....I have two stock pots as my boilers. One feeds into the second and ...

...... I can see where multiple columns would work for a pot still, you could apply more power to the boiler. Someone jump in and correct me if I'm wrong here. Ok, I am confused here. Why would you have multiple columns on a pot still? It sounds like to me that you;re talking about multiple lyne ar...

I second that.......a gallon of fancy molasses and a 2kg bag of sugar give a pretty good tatsing product and a pretty good yeild.

you could go the disappearing still route, which is bascially free. It'll probaby be better than raw alcobase, but it doesn't get you a very high quality prodcut compared to a pot still or even better a reflux. And as THM said you can make a still for very little $. My first still was a SS stockpot,...