Home Distiller

you can always use the moonshiner method - plastic milk jugs.

I believe they use a food-grade molasses pump.

Things have really taken off again after the conversion to the old message boards. It's good to know the hours I put in don't go to waste. Keep it up!

not too much is lost. Revenoor suggests you insulate if you wish. My 10 gallon copper still is very sensitive to big dips in ambient temperature. copper conducts almost too well at times.

those are food-grade fiberglass fermenters.

Won't it work on ethanol just as well?

They make these systems to sell for alcohol fuel. Let's face it, you can run a lot of farm equipment on corn whisky! Or you can make your own professional hooch with it as well.

http://www.revenoor.com

I use a food grade plastic fermenter and it works fantastic.

If you don't have a hydrometer, you can learn to do it by taste. Mix a few drops of your distillate on a spoon with an equal amount of filtered water. Sip it throughout the run. You can taste when the heads stop and when the tails start with some practice.

This is an electric system, so that box contains an electric heater. The Revenoor system circulates hot mash while it's running, draining from the bottom fo the still and depositing back into the top, which functions as a pre-heater. No heater inside the still itself unless you opt for steam coils. ...

This is a Revenoor 50 gallon continuous setup, designed to do two runs of corn whiskey per day. http://flag.blackened.net/daver/pics/setup.jpg Notice all the individual elements of the system, and also the quality work and trick setup used. You have a pump which pumps liquids to the various vats. Fr...

don't use duct tape. go get a threaded male and female connector set and do it right. it will still detach easily enough.

I wait until the "crust" drops and the violent ebullation stops, letting my mash clear just a bit.

Remember, any solids which go into your still will most likely cook onto the metal, so you don't want any suspended particles in your still.

am i the only one who has never done a sugar wash or neutral spirits run? am i missing out?

we're short on bandwidth and are doing our best to fix that problem. hopefully it wont be so slow for more than a few more months...

why on earth go through the trouble and expense to open a legal distillery, then use plastic?

carbon won't strip all the flavor, but it will remove some, to be sure. it also removes the smell of the fusels.

some whisky manufacturers use carbon/charcoal filtering to hide the fusels in their less-than-stellar products.

how fast was your stripping run? you want a nice clear liquid to pour out quickly, but not cloudy and you certainly don't want to run so fast that you get blue nastiness in the product or have dark liquid coming out. sounds to me like you didn't gain all that much heat during fermentation. next time...

My mountain tap water doesn't register on my PPM meter which goes down to about 100. Nice clean water! I don't filter it.

You have to be far more careful about your temperatures. I'd run it with some scrubbing if you can. If not, just be very careful about your rate of flow. You want drips, not a solid flow. I believe brandy cuts are a bit different than whiskies, anyone know? If you are using a pot still, I'd run it 2x.

Caol Ila is a good substitute, but not the same. I have a local liquor store which stocks over 300 single malts so some of these mothballed malts are still available.

Make sure your column dimensions are right. I believe there are charts online. Also, flow the water to your worm from the bottom of the worm, taking the hot water out the top. Flow cool water to the top of your column, taking water from the bottom. You can use one water source for cold water in and ...

What do you mean by bubbler? A thumper/slobber box type unit?

First, there is little oxygen left in distilled water which makes it taste a bit different. Aerate it and it will taste better. Second, I have never distilled water without an odd taste. It's far cheaper for me to filter some water though 1 gallon filters than it is to distill it.

How many gallons are we talking about? Fermentation creates heat, to be sure, but not _that_ much for small batches. For larger batches glycol systems are used to keep temperatures reasonable. Be sure to cool your wort down before pitching your yeast if heat is a problem.

Met a farmer the other day and have been given enough kiwi for a few runs. I've never fermented a fruit-based mash, any suggestions?

This should be interesting.

should I split "mash/ferment/distill" into separate boards?

for me it's Ardbeg or Port Ellen.

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from the old message boards: LeftLaneCruiser (stranger) 01/27/03 08:09 AM subject: malting I am fond of making my whiskies the traditional way, e.g. I malt all the grains at home. I've read on the site that home-malting of oats and rye is unsafe to do. But what about seed of sunflower? Normally I so...