Cuts when distilling wine?

Boots · Post by **Boots** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 12:47 pm

I want to practice by distilling some cheap box wine from the liquor store, I was just wondering if I needed to make any cuts, or has everything bad already been removed by the company that makes the wine? I don't want to drink this stuff any more than to just taste that I've done the process correctly, but I also don;t want to take a big swallow of any methanol or anything like that.
Thanks

junkyard dawg · Post by **junkyard dawg** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 3:58 pm

Keep readin buddy... you're almost there. You need to make cuts. This is discussed alot in the theory section of the parent site. When wine is made, all the products of fermentation are in there. If you drink some wine, then you might drink a small amount of methanol or whatever else is there. When you put that wine in a still and seperate some of the components of the wine then you have to be careful that your still is actually seperating those components and not just concentrating them. With your turkey fryer you need to go slow enough that the methanol and lower boiling point compounds can be removed first, then the hearts collected, then the tails collected seperately. You're going to use a lot less gas than your water only trial run. Remember to take your time and touch, smell, and taste your way through the process. It'll take a lot of runs, but your senses will tell you whats going on with your still.

Boots · Post by **Boots** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:20 pm

Thanks, I must have missed that in the theory sction, but I'll go back and re-read.

junkyard dawg · Post by **junkyard dawg** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 5:44 pm

That exact question is probably not addressed there... its more of a big picture thing... I found when I started reading this site that I had to read it many times as well as actually run my still before some of the concepts made sense. If you have a working potstill then prepare to learn/understand a lot in a short time...

Just take your time and be careful. You'll be making good whiskey in no time...

Post by **theholymackerel** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 7:34 am

I just made this post explanin' the subject recently (the search function is yer friend and will make ya seem less lazy):

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... t=#6706391