Home Distiller

I'd give anything to see the video of him actually running that.

Hello all. Not new to our hobby, but new to propane. I'm looking to leave my kitchen (and my 4 gallon pot) and start doing things on a slightly bigger scale, probably in my garage. I have almost everything I need, and I was admiring some metal stands I'd seen people had built, but I don't know that ...

I've been using a modified All-Bran recipe using Cinnamon Toast Crunch for a few runs now - I had really good results the first time I did it and that's why I stuck with it a bit, but lately I've been struggling with it producing a very small bit of hearts before the tails kick in. I ferment five ga...

Yeah, I'm not going to try to do two pots like that for a spirit run, I'm just going to start knocking out my stripping runs with them.

I'll go back to one pot for my final run.

So after many months of thinking about it, and many more runs under my belt, I decided to try out the double pot setup. Worked great. I used two identical sized burners on my stove, filled the pots to the same level, and mixed my wash between the two really well so that each pot contained the exact ...

But every time I start to look into something a little better, my head starts spinning. They all just seem so complicated.

Which one would you recommend I concentrate on building first? Which would be the easiest?

I wish I had more friends like you, I'd be more than happy to come over and test it out for you. Of course, I'd have to drink a lot of it, you know. Just to make sure it was ok. 300mL... you may not have a whole lot left when I'm done though. Really though, throw out the recommended amount of fores,...

So after doing the stripping runs on the 10 gal. How much product, and what proof did you have for your spirit run? Stripping runs resulted in about 2.75 gallons, I had to put just a little water in to get to just under 40%, and that's what I ran. This is how I usually do it with, say, the All Bran...

Could be raisins in general, could be the raisins you used in particular. Some dried fruit has shit added to it, like oil. Could be that. Could be how you ran it. Shit happens. Put it down to experience, and/or play around trying to fix it. Yeah, I've heard of raisins having sulfites, but the raisi...

I try to stick to recipes where I only have to do one stripping run and then a spirit run. If the spirit run doesn't work out well, I'd have about a 50/50 chance of re-running it again, or throwing it in with my next feints run. Depends how the flavor is doing. If the flavor is something I'm interes...

Is that something that happens with certain recipes? Is there something I could do to prevent this? What it is, I was playing with a raisin sugar wash, doing five one-gallon batches at a time with different methods and amounts of ingredients, trying to track differences in the fermentation process c...

I have a pretty standard pot setup, coil in a bucket and all of that. I do pretty small batches, ferment 5 gallons at a time and I only have a 3 gallon pot, so that means the first stripping run I do on every 5 gallon ferment I actually have to do two of them - 2.5 gallons at a time because of the s...

I'm guilty of using a plastic funnel as well. I don't collect into it though, I just use it to dump my collection jars into my jugs.

Still, I need to get a stainless one.

I do something similar to sekkid but without the welding. I'm running right now so I'll get the best pic I can. The wire mesh is pretty rigid, I had to use a lot of force to bend it around circular, and then I wired it together. Then I made my worm around the outside of it, and wired it to the mesh ...

Fire starter, that's a good idea.

I was thinking that there's still good alcohol in there, but if you keep re-running it, the bad stuff will just accumulate..

I never use an airlock on my 5gal bucket, I put the lid on loose, even. I generally do quick ferments. When it's actively fermenting, it's going to produce its own layer of CO2 over the top of it that will keep the air off of it as long as you don't have wind blowing on it or something. I don't thin...

Oh man that looks crazy. I've never seen that before, does that happen a lot?

how did the mead turn out? Ive got several batches of mead and variations of meads that I like just fine but I am curious about how they'd be after a run through the stll. It's not my favorite, but it's not awful. I wouldn't turn my nose up at it, but I prefer the recipes that were prepared specifi...

That's how I got into it, batches of mead that didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

No one has really answered my question, but..

Hell with it I'm going to try it. Worst case scenario I'm out a can of apple juice concentrate some brown sugar and a cinnamon stick and I throw it in with my next run like I would have done with it anyway.

I have about two pints of fairly high proof.. 140ish (from a pot still spirit run) that were too tailsy to make the cut for my main stash. I thought I'd read that there isn't really anything in tails that causes hangovers, that the hangovers come from heads and the tails are just non-desirable becau...

People here are going to rake you over the coals for using that turbo. As for your question, I would think that it's almost done. You can get a hydrometer that will let you take readings on how much alcohol you have in your mash/wash, that's really the only way to know for sure. I'd let it sit for a...

It was kind of lame if anyone wants to know. They really only covered running a car on ethanol, and exploding stills.

Discovery channel, 8/7 central. Should be interesting.

Thanks for all the info. I actually do have a hydrometer that I got from my friend who brews beer, I just am kinda at a lose how to use it because it didn't come with a test tube to fill the mash with :?. The temperture in my apartment is at a constant 70 degrees.. Is this way to cold for the yeast...

You didn't have any kind of nutrient for the yeast. Your recipe is very similar to the "Birdwatchers" recipe that's floating around here, although yours (and the ones I do) was scaled down to five-ish gallons. The part you were missing from that is tomato paste. If you had mixed in about 3...

Most people don't start out with trying to invent a new recipe. That part's probably the least forgiving piece of the whole process.

Well, the simple answer is that you're not going to get much from a 6 quart pot. I use a 16 quart pot, and I'm considered the extreme small-side of the hobby, and I have to agree that any smaller and I'd be wasting my time. You're going to get a very small amount from a six quart pot. And it's not l...

I use the 16 quart stainless pot from Walmart and it does just fine so far. And I use electric (stove in my kitchen) and I don't really have any gripes about it at all. Simple, small pot still like this, I don't see how someone could be having problems with an electric burner. With a larger pot and/...