Home Distiller

Unless you are worried enough about leeching to remove all food from your diet that is packaged in plastic, I would just ferment in plastic as is (otherwise buy a glass carboy from a HBS and bottle in empty beer bottles). I would guess that 99% of the food I have consumed since I was born was packag...

Why bother with the carbonation drops? they're just an expensive way to buy table sugar. Bulk priming is faster ,more accurate and there are calculators to give you the exact weight of sugar for your volume. Also a secondary greatly reduces the amount of sediment in the bottle (improved by the use o...

got kegs of fantastic english pale ale, cider and a fat yak clone all on tap

I'd say you've got the right idea, put down a couple of extract brews then move on to all grain if you enjoy it. http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17822 Thats a link to a post on my first experiments with all grain beer. You really don't need much equipment and if you're alread...

I think you're stressing too much, just chill, sit back and enjoy a drink while the yeast does its work. The temps all seem fine and if you're not seeing bubbles, I would say that the vessel is a bit leaky and that temp is on the low end for an ale, making it a slow ferment. Most ale yeasts ferment ...

just out of curiosity, what was the process you used and which hops did you use?

yeast strain is very important when making beer as it has a huge impact on the final flavour. You will also need some hops to boil with the malt powder. It will most likely make something resembling beer rather than beer. Here beer yeast can be had for about $5 AUD a pack and can be reused 50 or mor...

If you're using kits, you're fighting a losing battle, more dextrose should help though. I struggled to make a good beer from them for a long time but eventually gave in to all grain brewing (I put up a post recently). It really allows you more flexibility and produces a beer faaaaar greater in qual...

oh and btw flip, most homebrew shops can crack the grain for you for a small fee. Hope that helps

When making whiskey, only a small amount of the grain is malted. The malted grains provide the necessary enzymes to convert the starch in the rest of the unmalted grains. Distillers malt is only dried, not kilned, so as to maximise the enzyme content. With higher enzyme content, you can reduce the m...

Also, you could try mashing at a higher temp like 67-70C

Thanks for the comments guys. funnily enough, aussiehomebrewer was where I originally posted this. For the time being I've spent quite a bit getting that plate chiller, so I'm happy to stick with the corona mill. So far, I've only gotten one stuck sparge which was last brew when I tried a finer crac...

Hi all, Been a while since I've visited round here as I haven't really had the time to do a lot of distilling. I was always interested in getting into brewing beer from scratch rather than the kits but was intimidated by the extra complexity from distilling. I ended up designing a brewery for a uni ...

Hi all I've got a practically limitless supply of wheat and barley and wanted to do some all grain neutral stuff. I've given malting the barley myself a go a long time ago but with only limited sucess. Just wondering if the dry beer enzymes have everything required to fully convert the starches or i...

I just made some apricot brandy that turned out quite nicely from throwaway apricots. Same principle with the mangoes. I mixed in a big pot the 6kg of flesh (no seeds), 3Kg of sugar and enough water to dissolve it all, boiled it until everything was mushy then hit it with the food processor to mash ...

hey punkin, found this old post looking for a chocolate liqueur recipe. not sure if you're still interested but I posted my experiment on this this 2 years ago under the title sabra. Unfortunately after a couple of weeks the ingredients separated out and went solid. The orange concentrate is not the...

One of the major problems (besides the actual soldering part) I had when I first used a stainless bowl was that the solder cracked off of the bowl fairly quickly and started to rust, then finally broke. Through Uni I have since learned that stainless becomes damaged when heated during soldering with...

They're not all finished yet and I intend to make some sort of handle for the spoon.

So I've just come back from working at the farm for 3 weeks where I knocked out some stuff in my spare time that I've been wanting to get done for almost a year now Firstly my big pot still mkIII for strip runs and such that fits on my 50L keg (not the one its leaning on the photo). It started out w...

Thanks. Will hopefully remember to take pics so I can do a full report on how it went.

Well uni break is coming up so I've finally got some time to distill again. I'm helping Dad out with harvest again this year so I've got practically limitless supplies of malting barley, wheat and oats. I'm hoping to make an almost completely from scratch alcohol (the yeast being the only thing I di...

surely producing loads of vapour for the same amount of energy input, must be good for purity, ie the loads of reflux you would get. :?: Like I said, the more vapur you produce, the higher the pressure in your boiler. A still with a partial vaccum will boil at a lower temp, require less heat input f...

i was interested to know if you would get the same amount of vapor off a smaller surface area as you would for a larger liquid surface area, with the same heat input applied? Yes, As liquid vaporises, it changes to a higher energy state and as such, removes a little energy from its surroundings. The...

3/8ths has worked fine for me. It was all I had laying around, harder to wind but has been able to handle all the gas power I can throw at it. Surface area isn't the only factor when considering a condensers power. Having a larger flow rate will effectively keep the condenser at a lower temp and the...

I used to use bungee cords but now i don't bother. Its a struggle to separate the keg and column after a run. I actually have to run a knife around the flour seal before removing it. I figure if i cant even pull the column off, theres no point securing it down. The copper disc has a fairly nice fit ...

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Photo0094.jpg http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Photo0095.jpg http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p132/rangaz/Photo0093.jpg As you can see by the muck on the bottom of my column, its been a fair while since I've used it. Might have to give ...

Wow, this place has really changed since I was last here. Anyways I pose an alternative to the stainless steel bowl idea for connecting the column to the keg (I apologise if this has already been done). I don't know about anyone else but I had trouble getting the copper column up to the right temp w...

Blanik, one of the Aussie hunting forums that I frequent is exactly like that. It's always a good read when I get up in the morning

Don't mind me. I'm just mad cause my still head fell over in storage and is gonna need some panel beating and welding. It's gonna be a full 4 weeks before its operational again

so you are asking whether its possible to collect the CO2 and then sell it on? personally I wouldnt bother because it is quite cheap and would have to be highly compressed to get it to liquid form. I think it would only really be worth it on an industrial scale