Home Distiller

Banana blossom gin. I've got a banana flowering now, so it won't be long and I'll have one to use. What parts of the blossom did you use? Banana blossoms.jpg Rinsed and removed the stamens of every individual and immediately dropped them into some high proof spirit (still went brown). It was a fair...

IdahoShine wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 19, 2021 8:16 pm

will it still work if the vapor just comes in the pot and but the liquid?

No. Sounds like a Slobber box. A picture of your still might lead to a more informed answer though.

Usually a little more soda water than gin. 2 to 3 times as much.
Most commercial tonics I find too sweet and not bitter/sour enough for my taste.

2 oz gin (45%ABV) 1 oz tonic syrup, ice and soda water.

Clae wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:06 am

7.5 Liter minimum fill level of my new mini-still...

Clae wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:45 pm

It's effectively the same as Otis' Mini Still; 10L mini keg fitted with an element roughly 2" from the bottom.

It doesn't sound fit for purpose. Did you make it or buy it?

Hi, Yes I have been drinking with the same tonic, well I also made my own tonic but did not like the taste, I will give the recipe below, if you could share your recipe I would be more than happy, this is the one that I made: https://pinchandswirl.com/homemade-tonic-water-for-the-ultimate-gin-and-t...

You cannot have a 40% ABV wash. Not without super yeast... A wash is what you have in your fermenter. It ceases to be called wash when you strip or spirit run it.
'Low wines' would be the common term around here for the first pass through (strip) and 'spirit' if its a finished product.

Today is day 12 and I had 2 glasses of gin and tonic again, luckily today I did not experience that odd feeling, either I get used to it or it continued to mellow and got better, Have you been drinking it with the same tonic you showed on the first page of this thread? I did a quick look at the web...

Get a mirror or a piece of glass. If you have vapour exiting your condenser, then you'll be able to clearly see it.

Banana Rum spirit run. No shortage of banana, but still waiting on the molasses. Hopefully will show up in the later hearts.

The Bananas this year were a disappointment. Sweet enough, but horrible chalky taste that coats the mouth, making them completely inedible. I'm not one to waste free sugar though, so I mashed them all with some fancy molasses, cut up sugar cane from the freezer and some dunder and used a German whea...

ratdog01 wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 14, 2021 12:38 am

not sure if being used for sherry it will be any good for aging spirits

Right now, there are literally hundreds of millions of litres of Sherry cask maturing spirits that are quietly sitting on the same continent as you are...

My first rum was a small charge. Less than a third of what I'd usually ferment. I stripped that and used the dunder to make up a large wash. The low wines from the first strip were added to the low wines from the bigger batch and it all got spirit run together.

What you need to understand is that the element itself, which is embedded inside that cast iron plate, is designed in a way that when it heats up, it separates (bi-metal bridge) and effectively breaks the circuit. You cannot get to it to modify it. Its a built in safety feature. When the plate is to...

Seanjohn19 wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 09, 2021 12:31 pm

You had the same hotplate? And heat controller? And it didn't work?

Same hotplate. The controller was different, but that doesn't matter. It won't bypass the built-in issue with the plate itself.

If you guys think it will work and can give me some insight on how if possible to use the heat controller with it your help would be greatly appreciated. I had one. Now scrap. It is booby-trapped. I suspect a bi-metal switch that is part of the element and cannot be defeated. I made a few gins with...

Welcome to the forums.

Sounds like you've got yourself setup for just about all you could ever want. Took me a while before I had more than my main pot still and still haven't sorted out a reflux solution.

Scotch distillers will literally pump an active ferment straight from the washbacks into the wash stills in order to keep to their schedules. They don't care about those pesky washes that don't finish, because the volumes that they are working with will nullify any variation/anomaly. Many have a fer...

I've racked up a decent amount of fortified wines (Sherries/Ports/Madeira etc) through all my oak treatments, so I combined them all for a cleanup distillation. One or more of them has been dosed with sugar and last night I noticed Ants were swarming the carboy. I'm doing the stripping run in my lit...

Fine. I had some leftover HDPE vinegar containers when I started this hobby (cleaning runs) and I've stored most of my fores in one of them for the last 5+ years. Don't use it if you plan to re-use the fores for cleaning the still again though. Most of my mixed fores have got rum and gin and peat ev...

+1

If you find a way that doesn't either vanish or taste like fly-spray, let us know.

Welcome in.

If you haven't already, get yourself setup for fermenting 3-4 charges worth for your still. 25L is a lot of beer or wine, but its not nearly enough for whiskey or brandy.

If making a flavourful spirit (Whiskey, Rum etc), then you would aim to run the strips until the final collection is between 25-32% ABV. Also assuming foreshots are taken and excluded. With that in mind, you would want to work backwards to determine how big your fermentation needs to be in order to ...

I don’t collect all in one jar as most may do so the collection went to 20 proof but much of that wasn’t added to spirit run. Why wasn't it added? What was it set aside for? I removed fors each strip run and anything that was below 80 proof from what was kept for the spirit run. From each of the th...

Thanks for being patient and for all of the advice. Three batches were stripped. Fore shots removed each time. Stripping runs collected until the proof of the collection jar was down to 20. All three runs were combined into one spirit run in addition to about 15 L of left over wash that didn’t fit ...

It sounds like you are mixing up the concepts of 1st generations/runs with 1st distillations. Odin tweaked his recipe because he was getting too much rye spice flavour. That does not imply that he didn't double distill it. He even states in the OP that he did "Two distillations". Stop drinking your ...

Well done. I'll have to take some inspiration from you when I finally get around to building my thumper.

Gin Mare.

Product website tells me nothing about the rum in their coffee infused rum. Just lots of talk about coffee beans. Its no doubt sourced. They are bartenders/mixers, not distillers.

Its quite delicate, so I hope it sticks around and doesn't vanish out of the jar. Another 180mls or so to go.. If its any good, I'll have to wait again for next years harvest. Most of them went into salad and I wasn't a big fan. A handful got macerated, so if its any good, I'll use the lot for gin i...