Home Distiller

My initial batch that I pretty much washed the kitchen floor with is still bubbling away happily. The beer smells great, has both the sweetness of the corn and the almost floral aroma from the buckwheat. At this point, I think it'll distill just fine. Set up one more batch last night. Ground up the ...

Hi All. Set up my first batch of Carolina Bourbon last night. Or, rather, a recipe inspired by the Carolina Bourbon: 7 pounds yellow corn 1 pound roasted buckwheat 3 pounds 2-row malt I ground the corn and the buckwheat with my hand-operated mill (it was a bit of a workout even with this little of i...

What about something like this? Would it work?

http://hambydairysupply.com/xcart/produ ... uctid=1947" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I'm thinking that buying a milk can from a dairy supply place isn't putting me on any list, right?

Ok ok. Point taken. I don't really have a good reason to complain about yield anyways. Just the engineer in my trying to over-optimize. What I do need is a bigger boiler. 4 gallons is just not doing it for me. Doing 3 stripping runs at 3.5 gallons each and one spirit run in a single day completely a...

And by "bad" I mean "awesome" but a frustrating amount of heads.

Would adding some pectase help with the heads? I got a lot of acetone from my pears and the previous apple run was pretty bad too (though not as bad)

I'd love to experiment with a no-boil method. Can't be good for taste, right? Is sulfates pretty much the only option? I do have plenty of copper mesh on the vapor path...

Ok. Done blending after giving 'em a few hours to air out. Just under 2.5 liters @ 70%. Two of them are ageing on oak (french, heavy toast) and half a liter's staying white for now till I figure out what to do with it. Tastes absolutely wonderful. Thanks, everyone, for your help. Over and out.

I'd double distill, then put it on oak at 62.5%. I have done single runs for friends, but never been impressed with the results. You could try some on pear wood. Just wanted to sat thank you for this advice! I'm getting to the hearts of the spirit run now, and what's coming out is pure magic at 140...

Arright, starting the spirit run now. The low wines were at 35 percent or so, diluted them down a bit to below 30 and they're heating up as we speak.

The low wines (I wound up with about 1 and 1/3 gallons have a nice aroma to them. We'll see what I get when I re-distill.

Ok. Done with second batch, on to batch #3. I threw out the foreshots, and kept the tails in till I got to something like 60-proof this time around, since I'm gonna be re-distilling it anyways. Got about another half-gallon all in. Don't know if I'll get to the spirit run today - then again, I'm stu...

Advice taken. I've sped up this run to get through it faster, since I'll be double-distilling anyways. I figure at this rate I'll end up with something like 80 proof low wines. Then I should dilute it down to what 40 proof? 60 proof? with tap water and run again. Am I getting this right? I'm worried...

Hi all. New guy here, been figuring out this whole distilling thing for the past few months. My intro thread is here if anyone's curious - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=54913. In any case, running the second batch of pear brandy through right now. Here's what I did: Went to...

thecroweater wrote:try aging some calvados old old dry apple tree wood if you can get some. You will be very pleasantly surprised how the fruit wood affects the flavour. I found the oak is not the best suited for this particular spirit

Will do. Won't be hard to get my hands on some apple. Thanks!

Welcome! Carolina Bourbon is a great recipe for inspiration, I think it was my first. Such a great recipe thread, so much great information, such a great cast of characters. Curious about the pan-seared buckwheat. Is that something that is done for a flavor that carries over to the spirit? How woul...

I have friends with lots of apple, peach, and plum trees. Just gotta wait till summer's here. I think I'll be doing grains till then.

Holy shit, the all-grain is goin' at it. Just had to unwrap the blankets - it was beginning to overheat. Crazy.

For what it's worth, coming from another relative newby, it's not hard to get started as long as you can follow directions. The first thing I did (after spending days reading up on everything here) was run a bunch of cheap red wine. Do that a few times and you'll get to know your still, roughly figu...

Peaches. Mmmmm. Never tried a peach brandy, but will absolutely make some this summer. Mind sharing your recipe? Do you age it or drink it white?

Thanks for the advice. It's much appreciated. I swapped out the top rubber plug for a wooden one I made, but I didn't think of the gaskets. Guess I was doing something wrong after all. Who would have thought :) I'll just use flour paste next time around. The corn/buckwheat combo is fermenting like c...

Thanks! Reading all that and more was the first thing I did.
I'm pretty sure I'm not doing anything dangerous.
Famous last words, I know.

What's your address?

Oh, forgot to mention. A few days in, the pears started stinking up my house with the smell of rotten eggs. I did a bunch of panicked reading and tossed in some tomato paste. The rotten-egg smell went away and the awesome pear-cider smell returned pretty quickly.

Hi all. First post. Here's how I got here: A while ago (2 or three years) my wife kept talking about making absinth. She talked about it enough that I looked into what it would take and, for her birthday, got her a still - a 4 gallon milk-can with a column from Mile Hi. She never made any absinth. A...