Home Distiller

With that setup I think you will be fine running 18 gal of recirc water starting at 70 degrees. It should be able to run up to 125 or more with just the recirculating water and you probably won’t get up to 125 with that much recirculation. No need for a cooler. At 5 gal maybe a cooler.

When running a potstill I could see there is significant flavor profile differences between yeast strains. There can’t help but be because their smells carry over. Would I use a Belgian or farmhouse? Probably not but makers mark and others ferment in large open air wooden vats that take advantage of...

Why does mama’s home made apple pie taste better than a pie from one that comes in a cardboard box a big grocery store?
Mama hand picks every apple that goes into the pie. The store buys pies from a pie making plant that uses year old canned apples from a 55 gal drum of sliced apples.

I have gotten pretty good at this of late and wanted to share a story. The trick to finding tails is being able to smell them and they don’t smell like wet dog or cardboard to me. What I found works is to take your inaugural sacrificial cleaning run and save it for posterity. If that’s 5 gal at 10% ...

You sound like a really handy guy. Someone that won’t be satisfied with either a pot or a reflux still. Consider something that is two vertical sections with a reflux condenser at the top. It can be used as a reflux or remove the lower section and water supply to the condenser and use it as a short ...

Like butterpants says I think it’s a combination of what goes into the drink along with the ethanol. Rum has flavors from compounds as does whiskey and those have consequences. Poor quality plays a big factor as does sugar added and dehydration. Garbage in garbage out. The good stuff doesn’t give me...

Wondering that myself.
Plates are a separator in a still. Feints are the low quality distillate that is returned to the still after a run.

Not sure what you mean sir...

What was the original gravity? What is the gravity now? Knowing both will tell you the % alcohol in your wash. You might be done. Won’t know unless we have those numbers.

Keep in mind pitching quantity is only part of the equation. You can make a starter of 12 oz of total volume and includes 1 tbsp yeast 1 tbsp nutrient, 1 tbsp sugar and the rest warm water. Let it sit and hour or two and when it gets good and foamy it will have a running start over dry yeast and a m...

You certainly can re-run alcohol. But don’t run it straight! It’s far to dangerous and flammable when straight. I cut mine significantly with a lot of water. One gal of feints to 4 gal or water. This may be overkill but I think I get better results.

If you really want to get into all grain you owe it to yourself to invest in a mash tun. Take a 5 gal water cooler and replace the push button spigot with a ball valve. Now run a line inside the cooler and drill small holes in it or buy a grain false bottom to help the grain tea leach out of the mas...

Oh keep in mind your elements are designed to heat x number of gal of wash and run well. Half that and you likely need to half the power supplies to them once the boiler comes up to temperature ie durning the run. At full power and half the design volume you can overdrive the process and get poor cu...

How small do you want to go? Your “15” gal capacity is total volume. Operational working volume will be less than that. 10-12 gal is pretty sweet and should suit the process well. Let’s say you run a 15% wash of 10 gal. When done you might have 8.5 gal of spent wash. At 5 gal you will have 4.25 gal ...

I don’t think so. The yeast is eating the sugar and making ethanol and CO2. It doesn’t care if it does so on a bed or corn or in a liquid solution. It just needs temp and ph to be right and the mash to be aerated. You can mash and sparge and discard spent grain before even adding your yeast.

Cool. Hope you don’t mind if I add one or two.

How about a little Steve Seagull thunder struck?

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Never hurts to have a few extra handy. I always seem to loose one and it will go rolling under the work bench. You are out of luck till you find it unless you have a spare and then you can look for it at your leisure.

Saltbush Bill is spot on IMHO. Charred oak is better for whiskey. Seems to work better with the corn while toasted oak can really add character and depth to all pot stilled liquor including corn. But it’s all you man. Try a bit of both! What’s the worst that can happen? If you don’t like it just re-...

So you are saying the potentiometer is working normally but the voltage is not ramping up or down and that It’s maxed out? That would indicate there is a short somewhere and your power is bypassing the potentiometer. Make sure your hot wire isn’t touching anything but the lug on the potentiometer po...

While I’m thinking about all this, I have a question on cooling water. The shed has county water which is really expensive. I also have a well that I use for outdoors watering etc. There isn’t a well line to the garage, so I’d either have to run a well line (which will be expensive), suck up the co...

Living in the south I know a lot about beating back roaches and palmetto bugs or cockroaches. They are nasty. I use ortho home defense. You can buy it in a 1 gal sprayer. Spray every corner, seam, edge and doorway in your home inside and outside once a week for a month and then once every couple mon...

Think about it...
We are replicating a process from the Caribbean islands. Jamaica is hot.
If you make rum in cold conditions like Russians making vodka will it be as nice as rum made where it’s warm?

Welcome to home distiller!

I have never tried that. It seems like it would work but sawdust has a really bad habit of collecting just about everything from machine oil and dust to animal droppings and lint. If I had personally cut or router milled some oak boards I would have no problem using my own fresh gathered oak sawdust...

You can stir it if you wish but you will always have some residual sweetness with sugar washes because they don’t ferment all the way out. Nothing to do or worry about it. Just the nature of the beast.

I use an auto siphon. They seem to last a couple years before breaking. You might have gotten a defective one.

The bubbling is only a “factor” fermentation because the co2 can stay in solution for weeks and you might get a bubble or two just from air pressure, bumping, closing a door. Anything that might disturb the solution and cause a little co2 to come out of solution.

1.010 only has about 1.3% potential alcohol remaining. If your OG was anywhere close to 1.100 I say you are good. You should have a yield of 13% total alcohol.

If your yeast is doing its job it will be actively effervescence and the bubbling will cause plenty of movement.

Congratulations from a newby. How do you handle those glass carboys. I have a couple and they scare the crap out of me. I am always worried about dropping one or bumping it and having it shatter in my arms.

To a degree... The only way to really know is to try. Don’t worry about the alcohol vapors. It takes a lot of vapor to reach Lower explosive limit. Open a window, have a fan and run the still up until you see vapor and shut it down. If all you get it condensate you are golden. A couple cubic feet of...