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A farmer was sitting on his porch one day when a young man drives in and comes to the door. "Sir, I was driving by and noticed you had a lot of milkweed in your pasture. Would you mind if I went out and got some milk?" "You don't get milk from milkweed," the farmer replied. "Oh yes," said the young ...

i leave it a little more sticky than a dough mix, this way it sticks better to where im applyin it, something you could try is to take a lighter and to apply heat to where you put the paste before you start the run, this way you have a nice dry/baked seal straight away

Apples are great to work with one of my best wines/brandys was with a apple and blackcurrant mash although i forgot the quantaties i had a 25ltr fermenter bucket of apples and i think it was a 2ltr soda bottle of blackberrys (the bottle topped of with OJ for storage).

water is pretty much saturated with natural metals and the such u find in the tap water, if you distill or run it through reverse osmosis then the water becomes verry much more aggressive, eating copper pipes and leaching plastics? i actually use pirex glass in the microwave. plasticisers (used in p...

a guy walks into a bar with a monkey on his shoulder. The bartender approaches and asks "What can I get ya?" The guy tells him "Gimme a beer" When the bartender goes to get the beer, the monkey jumps off the guys houlder and runs down to the pool table. He picks up the cue ball, sniffs it, and swall...

but if the methanol yeild is higher than with grain and the beans have little (less) starch than the grain then you have to look at the costs vs output between the 2.

think i mentioned about beans here before i was a registered user, for the life of me i cant remember the answer, but there was some reason to not use them, maybe excess methanol?

basically if u have to hold the flame to it for some time then its under 50%, if u touch the flame to it and it burns its 50 or above

aidas i have 5 gallons of rose 7 day table wine that everyone loves, it was a kit, not as good as a pure ingredient slow ferment but it makes for a great drinkable every day table wine, most my wines take up to a month or so in fermenting and many of them taste just fine without aging for example th...

there damn near invisible in the daylight


look for the heat vapour and or pass ur hand a foot or so away over the top quickly to feel for heat

yep its aluminium baking foil, the shiny stuff in a roll you use around the kitchen :P my new boiler is a 33ltr stainless stockpot and im planning to weld a skirt around the pot, about 1 inch bigger in diameter, sealed at the top and extending down to reach the ground while the pot is sat on top of ...

i put shielding (baking foil) around the bottom with a few air holes


my new boiler will incorporate this into the boiler complete with a flue pipe out the back at the top

heat control isnt going to be as instantanious as using gas or electricity but i think it should be possible, iv been looking into a design using a Rocket elbow stove design in a old steel oil drum with perlite insulation and control (heat routing) flaps, rather than an open wood fire its more of a ...

aidas the process of converting oil into biodiesel needs the methanol/ethanol, straight oil will mess the engine up pretty quickly. currently biogas may work out around the same price as the pump gas even a little cheaper depending on the mash ingredients and not counting personal time put into it, ...

* 1 litre of new vegetable oil, * 200 ml of methanol, 99+% pure * lye catalyst -- either potassium hydroxide (KOH) or sodium hydroxide (NaOH) im guessing ur ethonal replaces the methanol, myself id drink the alcohol and keep the heads (meths) for making the bio, that or use the main body for running...

couple of alternate gasket ideas thought this was the best place to put it rather than tools of the trade,,,

as already said paper gasket

and what about a leather seal?

just gettin a 5 gallon batch ready to ferment only the shop ran out of mollasses :(... im using 5 * 1/2 kg bags of billingtons natural unrefined moalsses cane sugar and 5 * 1kg bags of billingtons natural unrefined golden granulated sugar. (http://www.billingtons.co.uk onclick="window.open(this.href...

doubt u will ever get that smell it one of the things with plastics

do u sterilise everything u use for racking just before u use it and also sterilise the keg just before u put the beer in, also using campdem tablets during racking, bottling and kegging can help keep the contams away when making wine and beers

if our preaching not to use plastics is of putting then that is a good thing, plastics should not be used and the fact it is bad and dangerous will only be used and taken advantage of by the laws to say stillin shouldnt be legalised because theres always some person who will go ahead and disregard a...

caramalised sugar is the way to go possum, with my limited n few washes iv found the darker the starting sugar u caramalise the deeper the flavour. just made a batch of rum flavoured with maderines and honey (that maderin rind flavour sure comes accross quick 4 hrs in and its a little to strong (gue...

ill bite my tongue from now on, my "common sense" tells me plastic is bad so i dont use.

we dont need to debate platics anymore i think myself and others have said all that needs to be said..


so from now on i take a role from tater..


One for the list

taint rocket science, i run a big garden water but 3/4 full of water, theres no way all that water is going to get to hot on a run, but just to be sure the return pipe is attached to the top of the bin so the water comes out and runs down the wall of the bin in a spiral motion, Granted it doesnt get...

i might be able to get a load of stainless bb's the sort used in draw runners the family business used to make them and the draw runners housing, (its the other half of the family tho) but im not sure they would work out better than copper mesh, as the copper helps take nastys out and makes for a be...

currently with my rums and apple n blackberry brandy iv cut the first 40ml per gallon of wash, but recently iv started to go a little more on smell taste and touch, ends up being between 25-40 ml per gallon, the yeast i use and the ingredients dont seem to chuck out to much meths and nasty flavours....

its the same theory for building ur still with lead solder, u cant taste it, u cant smell it u cant see it and theres no obvious signs of it degrading into the final product, but it is there and its lead poisoning and we all avoid using it.

My still is made out of glass, with a copper condenser and the outlet to the collection vessel is 1/2" clear plastic tubing. Havent noticed any adverse affects from the plastic, despite running over 6+ gals through it and ur a chemist to run the tests to check the effects the plastic had and what l...

personally i wouldnt solder something that handles liquid nitrogen tho

u can also get a type of bolt that has Grooves/lines cut into the bolt like they use for wheel studs, not sure if this would work (depends on thickness of the still metal) but its an idea. Id thought about this with the cork gasket myself, If u look at the gaskets there chipped pieces of cork, so is...

Also disagree with the volume point my very first still and i only just built my second was a 7 ltr stockpot in which i would run a 1 gallon batch making 1 bottle of output (rum) For me this was fine and made for a continous process, once distilled id start the next batch fermenting and by the time ...