Home Distiller

Thanks for the answers all. I had initially planned to add a condenser, but never cared for neutrals. Will leave it as is.

I've been using a 3' column without packing for whiskey/rum/bourbon for a while and can't complain about the results. But then, I don't really have anything to compare it to.

Do you think a short neck would give better results? Am I missing flavor with this 3' column?

Laughing at the badmo video of charring the head "Grand Daddy has a flamethrower?!?!"

Any recommendations on charring without the flamethrower? I have a standard hand-held MAP gas torch, but wonder if it would char un-evenly and warp the wood.

How is everyone else doing it?

Thanks for your advice Otis. I went ahead and toasted some boards today for 96 minutes at 400F. I only toasted one side, per previous recommendations. I sawed off a sliver from the sides to see how deep the toast went. The toast only looks like it went through a couple millimeters. The boards are a ...

Thanks fizzix and pikey!

I have two 13.5 gallon stainless steel milk cans that I want to use as fermenters. There is a silicone gasket on the lid that makes it air tight. Do you see any problem with using the silicone gaskets in this case? If I'm doing smaller than 10 gallon ferments, the silicone should never touch the mas...

Hi Badmo, My lumber is almost to the 6 month stage. During the wait, I've been tooling up, building jigs, and practicing on pine 2x4's planed down to 1 inch. Question on aging: the top sides are all gray, but the bottoms look almost new. Should I flip them and wait some more, or is it ok to have new...

I learned a very hard lesson this weekend while running this recipe... I have been a bit lazy cleaning the tower on my pot still. Some kind of funk had built up. It wasn't noticeable while running, but after airing the whisky out for a day, it developed a very bad odor. I went to smell my column and...

I have a 12 gallon batch of this fermenting right now. I've never done a sugar head(adding sugar to the spent grains for a second ferment). Has anyone done a sugar head with this recipe? Is it worth it? I worry that it won't pick up much grain flavor from all the second run light flavored oats and w...

I recently made this recipe and the final result has no "fruity" flavors at all. My rum is has a fairly heavy rum taste, but none of the fruity aromas. The only thing I did different was skipping the "yeast bomb". I used good doses of DAP instead. I used a packaged Rum Yeast, ins...

It is very difficult to forget my first run at Ginger Beer - mostly because, 8 years later, I still find bits of ginger in random places around the kitchen... I bottled it in one big 1/2 gallon glass bottle with a metal lid. The wife and I went off to see a concert, and when we returned, the entire ...

I'm going to start with a test in a mason jar. I'm thinking I'll put all botanicals in a cloth sack and leave plenty of head space. Reason for cloth sack (wrapped several times) is that I would like the aroma to come through, but I don't want evaporation to drip back down and cloud the gin. I'm hopi...

Howdy all, I've been wanting to make some gin with hops and fir needles in the botanical bill. Knowing that hop oil can be a real problem to clean out of a still, I asked around about alternative methods. I'm told that you can hang the botanicals in a bag above the neutrals in a fermenter for a whil...

Howdy all, I've been reading this site nearly every night for about a year now and finally signed up. I've been brewing beer for 25+ years and finally got into stilling about a year ago. I experimented a good bit for the first 20 years but mostly just kept myself supplied in Rye IPA for the last 5. ...