Home Distiller

Thank you for such a positive response. I will certainly post my results here. Afterwards I also intend to add some local (Madeiran) botanicals as they have in Cape Town where they have included Fynbos a very local Cape bush in their Gins. I also intend to find a similar taste from here. Sorry to Od...

MAKING GIN What I (KWM) intend to do is to use only 5 Botanicals to start, lightly cracking the Juniper Berries and the Coriander Seed first in the following amounts. Juniper Berries 40 gms Coriander Seed 20 gms Angelica Root 4 gms Liquorice Powder 4 gms Sweet Orange Peel 4 gms The basis of our Gin ...

Hey Jimbo,
Those shaped ones are only for randy tourists visiting the Island. We just use plain wood ones which are the ones usually used everywhere.

PONCHA.jpg Hi from Madeira, Born in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, lived for 33 years in South Africa, and now 7 years in Madeira, Portugal. A great mixed drink here is Poncha. The true Madeira Poncha features sugar cane “aguardente” (firewater similar to white rum), lemon and bee’s honey, even though now...

Thanks NZ Chris

Thanks NerdyBrewer, I hope it goes OK. I still have to distill the Cider which I should do in the next week or so. In my original post I said that I had coloured my Grape Brandy with Glucose, but that is incorrect. The glucose is another smoothing agent, and had I wanted to add some colour I would h...

Hi All, I have successfully aged and smoothed ordinary Brandy when I distilled grape lees. However, I have now distilled my crop of apples into Cider or as the Americans say, Hard Cider and now am going to distill it into Apple Brandy or Calvados. Does anyone know whether it is possible or advisable...

Hi All, I am new to this Forum, but not new to distillation. Some years ago I contacted Tony Ackland directly, and he introduced me to the site of home distillation of alcohol. I bought a small potstill, about 30 litres capacity, added a thermometer and started distilling wine lees. A number of loca...