Home Distiller

Good job :thumbup: A failed wine is what brought me down the rabbit hole in the first place. Save the feints until you have enough for an all feints brandy run, it's worth it. It'll be fruit wine season in another month or so and I've got ideas... And part of that is saving all the feints from frui...

What do you do with an old forgotten carboy full of red wine? That's right, you make brandy (and some sangria). This past weekend I was cleaning out the brew room and getting it organized for the fall when I came across a carboy I completely forgot I had. Red wine made pre-pandemic with a completely...

Thanks! I was debating keeping the feints at the ~55% that they came off at, but decided on 30% mainly because I wanted to not store anything too high proof with where it's being kept - call it an overabundance of caution. That issue is soon to be resolved though, so I'll keep it in mind for future....

I bet you could open up your brewzilla and add an SCR to the big element pretty easily. Also note that this won't give you any temp control, but will give you power control to adjust takeoff rate. I'm considering it, but given the trade I'm in i'll probably just build a full keg boiler. I know some...

This past weekend I was finally able to get my sacrificial and first beverage grade run done. Following the sac run, everything got a nice thorough rinse and I charged the still with 4.5 gallons of corn based wash - kinda a hybrid between UJSSM and Booner's, did a corn mash using enzymes at roughly ...

Thank you, ethyl acetate is what I meant not acetylaldehyde. I've gotten some acetone smell before in fores from quick fermentation (hand sanitizer runs), but never anything this noticable. It was really pungent. Definitely not only vinegar though, last time I ran vinegar in a new head it was defini...

Just curious, anybody noticed the presence of Acetaldehyde/Acetone in the first fores when doing a vinegar run? I finally got around to cleaning out my new pot head after the in-laws left on Saturday and did a 4 gallon 50/50 vinegar run using 7% vinegar. Given it's the first time I used this thing I...

Oldvine Zin wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 8:34 pm
Ha Ha I remember the first time that I put my wiggy on a 600 dc tap thinking that is was 240 ac, damn that was scary.

Stay safe
OVZ

Jeez, I work with 3ph and high voltage DC regularly. Touching 600v DC at anything over a few milliamps and you're lucky to still have a pulse.

Okay, so for thing is first: Household 240v is two hot wires and one neutral. Each hot wire is 120v when measured against the neutral but it's 240v when measured against each other. You don't need the neutral unless you have 120v requirements in your setup - the reason dryers and stoves have this ne...

Brewfather here, but that's just because it does all my calcs for me.

Well, I'm not going to doxx myself, but it's a small-to-medium size city in central Ontario. I'd not be the least bit surprised if most of those 'still' calls were really for things like turkey fryers, syrup making or regular home brewing; lots of nosy NIMBY big city retirees here. Doesn't really ma...

Just talked about this with someone who's fairly high up with the local police; I actually found out later the other fellow I was talking with was a crown prosecutor too, lol. So here's the gist of what I was told: The letter of the law and the spirit of the law are slightly at odds. Basically the c...

Malt extract has the same issue in beer brewing as distilling: unfermentable sugars. That's why LME and (to a lesser degree) DME kit beers taste too sweet. Someone with more experience than I might be able to give you an idea how much might work, but if it was me I'd just do a BIAB mash on the stove...

If you look into how to build a Liebig product cooler and have half the skills to do it then send it back. Get a beer keg and go from there. If you rather keep it, follow SS advice and keep looking for the beer keg. I'm gonna add onto this; A Liebig condenser is stupid easy to build, it's an easy f...

Hello everyone. I'm new-ish to distilling, but a long time home brewer. Been home brewing for two decades. My experience in distilling is a handful of neutral runs on a basic reflux column. Basically a bunch of stripping runs and a few spirit runs to get a nice, high grade neutral. After a recent mo...