Home Distiller

Welp, this is embarrassing then. Off to buy more yeast!

Just found these at walmart. They're a long but not very wide electric blanket type designed to give off a decent amount of heat. If it gets cold, I can wrap one around my fermentation vessels and keep it at a cozy 80-90 degrees, and my yeast keep going strong when its below 30 outside! The best par...

I've got DAP and that Brewer's yeast in there. Is that too much of a supplement? Will the 1/2 cup put in a bunch of unwanted flavors?

Went and bought a pound of Brewer's Yeast from GNC. Started a batch of WPOSW with them yesterday and they haven't done a thing, it appears there is 0 production, and a sugar head has definitely not formed. Is this yeast dead? What's going on? Any ideas? I pitched it at 90 degrees.

Looking for a little advice, I started WPOSW about a week and a half ago. Over the past few days it has slowed down and has completely stopped at 1.020. It started at 1.077. Any suggestions? Is it done? The BLG is 6, and both have remained unchanged over the last 3 days.

After making what feels like every rookie mistake in the book, i've finally gotten my first run of apple through my pot still. It came out at a decent 140 proof. I then diluted it and added some more flavor to turn it into apple pie moonshine. Turns out it was incredibly good. Can't wait for my WPOS...

Edit: Nevermind

Sounds great, putting on a coat and heading there! Just sprinkle the DAP in, and give it a few shakes? Should I add any extra yeast?

So I was pretty hungry the other day and decided to hit up the buffet at a local Pizza hut. When I went up to grab a dessert, I noticed they had these fruit with syrup on top pizzas. After talking to the manager, I found out this is what they use: http://www.knousefoodservice.com/Products/i/30283CF....

I didn't put any DAP in. Should I go fetch some from the brewery and drop it in?

I need to move to pint jars instead of quart jars... make my output look bigger!

Just throwing an update, I haven't bought the electric blanket yet, waiting on the next paycheck. But I wrapped a blanket around it and sat it next to the space heater I keep on while I watch TV or study. Seems to have picked up a bit, it stays around 80 degrees when I have the space heater on, but ...

My first thought would be to run a lot of water through it, collect a sample and send it to a lab to be tested if you're that worried. It would be $20-$30 for lab fees and they don't have to know where the water came from!

Great! Thanks for the explanation Braz! I might as well redo the joint with solder and not use compression coupling, use a threaded one instead, that way I can screw and unscrew it for portability

That's the thing though, it's a copper compression joint so its squeezed down my pipe smaller, meaning if I take it off i'll have to hacksaw off pieces from both ends going into it, then deburr those, then buy a new compression joint, then do it again, then solder (if I solder at this point.) It kil...

Alright, so i'm using a pot still with 3/8" copper tubing. I was distilling a batch of some wineo's sugar wash today when I saw drips coming from the copper compression fitting. put my finger on it to get a drop, and it was definitely shine. Stopped the still, moved it to the off burner. (Using...

What would be the best way to raise the temperature? Blankets?

You can't take ABV readings of your wash with a hydrometer. There is a thread in the must read new distiller reading lounge. What is the temp of the ferment? Thanks for the pointer! Temp of the ferment is about 71 degrees F. I use one of these on the side of my carboy. http://www.petco.com/product/...

Since it's peak of apple season, I decided to make a batch of apple shine. I made a wash out of 4 gallons distilled water, 15 pounds apples (cut, cored, peeled, and mashed) and extracted the sugars and apple flavor by heating it up in a bowl of water. I then strained the apple chunks out since they ...

Also - I used just regular feldman's dry active yeast. A whole ounce of it. Hoping that there are enough nutrients in the apple wash for the yeasts to be happy!

Thought about playing classical music for them like babies, haha.

Yeah mine is slowing down quite a bit too, i've been shaking it every day to keep them going. Not sure if it's the cool weather here (I do keep it room temp, 76 or so) or it's just slowing down. Did you strain the fruit out of yours? I did mine in the beginning, I heated the water up quite a bit the...

Alright sounds good, thanks! I was curious how the different fruits work if you made a wash out of them and if it would flavor the shine.

This is insane! I was just about to post on here about my bubbles slowing down after 2 days. The only difference, and I mean only, is that you used 10 lbs of granny smith, I used 15 pounds of Gala. Let me know how this turns out for you so I can know if i'm doing well comparatively or if I need to f...

Hey y'all, I'm looking for some good fruity-type recipes, or neutral then fruit flavored afterwards recipes. I live in a college town, and as i'm going to be stuck here until I graduate with my Ph.D, I am hoping to have finally found a hobby I really enjoy, and that so far is distilling. Anyway, I k...

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Hey y'all, I figured I should go ahead and register here and make a post or two introducing myself. I'm pretty new to this whole shining business. I've semi-successfully made one batch of the Sweet Feed. I wanted to thank you all for all the knowledge that is provided on these forums so that curious...