Home Distiller

SandyCrack, You better post a picture of your rig....it sounds potentially dangerous. A needle valve vapor take off on a potstill just don't jive. Plus, a "whistle" will be venting hot alcohol vapors under pressure! Please don't run anymore until this dilema is resolved. ss I'll post pict...

Builder claims he used the valve because he didn't have Union when he showed me how to run it, when we ran sacrificial boil. He said it is already eliminated, replaced with union. It is a great design, 46 inch column/reflux, 2 piece, stores inside boiler when put away. Small pot/ whiskey attachment,...

No, it is a pot still. Not open. Bring to temp, start water flow on condenser in discharge, open valve to allow flow at end when pop-off starts to whistle, usually about 10 to 30 minutes, let it go till taste bad. This will be my second run on the new attachment. Worked very nicely first run of sac...

Will actually be very easy to eliminate the valve. It is only a compression needle valve.
i could easily replace it with a union.
When I was shown how to operate the pot attachment, that is how the builder instructed me to run it.

No, it is a pot still. Not open. Bring to temp, start water flow on condenser in discharge, open valve to allow flow at end when pop-off starts to whistle, usually about 10 to 30 minutes, let it go till taste bad. This will be my second run on the new attachment. Worked very nicely first run of sacr...

I always let the pot sit at temp 30 min before opening the valve....
Column still gets more than an hour to stabilize.....

Don't pitch the lacto until the ferment is done or almost done. If the lacto is too early it will kill yeast. Rack a couple of times to remove solids and distill. It won't be perfectly clear. Slow heatup will add flavor. If your normal heatup is 45-60 minutes make it 90 minutes. Good advice.... I h...

17 gallons clean water 1 gallon heavy, un-sulphured blackstrap molasses 10 pounds Panela 10 pounds white sugar 3/4 ounce acid blend potential alcohol at 1.085 White labs Belgian style yeast wlp550 pitched at start temp of 80 degrees F. White labs lactobacillus brevis wlp672 pitched on 3rd day of fer...

raketemensch wrote:Done and done. A gallon of Kriek vinegar is now aging in a dark corner of the basement. One year and two days from pitching the yeast for the beer, it's now settling in with its new mother to become a Belgian tart cherry vinegar.

SAWEEEET!

S-Cackalacky wrote:Necessity is the mother of invention - in my case, old age.

I think this is more correctly stated as,

"Necessity is a mutha..."

My wife just fired up a batch of kimchi made with Braggs, it's bubbling away right here. We watched a YouTube video last week about a woman who makes her own mothers from stuff she collects in traps she puts in trees to catch "vinegar flies." There's a lot of stuff that we take for grante...

rockchucker22 wrote:Damn great idea I just dumped 20 gals of Apple dunder into my garden, would much rather made vinegar.

Apple wine vinegar is usually foolproof and disappears very quickly!

I am interested to know what uses the board membership has developed for their dunder. Saved for thumper? Added to wash prior to fermentation? Fertilizer? Sent down the crapper? I have found a novel way to reuse my dunder from fruit based, and malt based first run wash. I make vinegar out of it! Dun...

I guess I just have to ask myself why someone would want to "Hurry up" the natural process of aging? Preview: If you are making a product that is new to you, you can get a fair idea of what you have without having to wait a couple of years. My reactor does 1.5l, only a fraction of the tot...

I have tried birch in wine, it imparts a mediciney, rootbeery type flavor. It works well with some fruit, overpowering in others. Has anyone here tried toasted mesquite? Not mesquite, but I have used another good "smoking wood". I did one whiskey with some hickory. It is way too "sha...

I'm not such a traditionalist that I won't at least try something new. There are a lot of threads in the forums that go against the grain of tradition, but I don't see disrespect in expressing that difference of opinion. The only customer we have to please is ourselves, so why not experiment and lo...

Not being disrespectful, Your not being disrespectful.....this is iron sharpening iron here. I think we all have a lot of ideas to offer each other and we get to look at our own circumstances and ideas through the prism of someone else's shot glass. So you think attempting to speed mature your spir...

I have tried birch in wine, it imparts a mediciney, rootbeery type flavor. It works well with some fruit, overpowering in others.

Has anyone here tried toasted mesquite?

As some of us start to get a little long in the tooth here Sandy, and we would love to fool ourselves that we would still be here in twenty, thirty or even fifty years. Letting great kegs of our hobby age along with us. The truth is ...speed is everything, if we want to enjoy what we make, while we...

Citrus wine is great, and easy to make, well.... almost. I make a Cara-Cara wine that is wonderful, but it is a heavy desert style aperitif. I also make a lot Seville Orange wine (wild sour oranges, native to Florida) wine. The seville wine is VERY sour, but it is a STELLAR cooking wine, is incredib...

Mango wine is one of our perennial favorites. My wife and I have spent hundreds of dollars in fresh mangoes getting the wine right. In the end we have found the recipe to be one of our easiest, and most treasured wines. Our basic recipe starts with 60 pound of fresh, very ripe, mango. We prefer the ...

I have not been at this end of the pool for very long, but correct me if I am wrong.... But isn't the flavor imparted by the aldehydes, isoamyls, and acetals a necessary component of the flavor profile of ALL spirit drinks, with the notable exception of white devil raw alcohols, vodkas, and other su...

SandyCrack, sounds like you have a lot to add to the knowledge base here. There are many threads here related to aging spirits. This is a more recent one that your process may contribute something to - http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=58087 . That thread is a spin off from thi...

still_stirrin wrote:Funny name...it's reminiscent of youthful days on the beach...sunshine, a bottle of Boone's Farm and a girl to help consume it.

Welcome aboard.
ss

BINGO!
Give this man a virtual ceeeee-gar!

This is the color obtained with the aforementioned technique...

I might have a wee bit of advice to add to this thread topic. I have been using oak products for aging alcoholic drinks since the 80's, to flavor beers, wines, ciders, mead, and vinegar. I have used them all; barrels stave slices, blocks, beans, powders, chips, liquids, spirals etc. They all produce...

First off, let me just say thanks to all of those who have provided SO MUCH information here for reading, and advice! I have been reading this forum, and two others for more than two years, and between the three forums I have learned so much that I decided to give this hobby a go! I have been an ama...