First still :)

[Markme]

well, my still didnt come with any instructions because i had to buy the condenser separate from the boiler...

[Captain Morgan]

Ok. Here you go:

http://www.beernut.com/Web_store/25%20L ... Filter.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

http://stillspirits.com/webfiles/StillS ... June08.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow


Good luck

[Markme]

Distilling it right now,
ive got about 3Litres so far all of it is coming out at aroound the 90% mark give or take a percent.
it tastes kind of sweet i guess, if i filter this will it take that out and give it a neutral taste?
burns very blue, almost no orange beard
just waiting to hit tails.

[airhill]

Mark

Did you collect in small containers? Sweet at 90+ might be heads.

[Markme]

yes i collected into small jars, the whole batch had this kind of sweet taste, the heads more so than the hearts. but with the hearts i mixed some bourbon chips and some bourbon essence, left it for a day and filtered the chips out, gave it to my friend to try and he loved the crap out of it, i filtered the heads and the taste was almost gone.

ive started a couple more fermenters going, although an idiot house mate of mine, i gave him a bottle of rum that was 50%. He literally sculled the whole bottle in 30 minutes, started foaming at the mouth, passed out, ambulance came, he went all blue, i was out when that all happened so i got home really fast and pulled apart the still and hid it just incase the copes rocked up. apart from that fool my friends and i were perfectly fine, no hang over, nothing.

[LWTCS]

although an idiot house mate of mine, i gave him a bottle of rum that was 50%. He literally sculled the whole bottle in 30 minutes, started foaming at the mouth, passed out, ambulance came, he went all blue,

Forgive me for the chuckle

For heavens sake I hope he is ok.

Remember to measure your exposure (as I'm sure you now will).

[rad14701]

Markme, I certainly hope your mate, and everyone else, including you, have learned a valuable lesson... The spirits we make can be very deceiving as far as how harmless they may be based on taste alone... Perhaps there is something to be said for commercial spirits being a bit rough around the edges, as a means of warning us that danger lurks within...

[CletusDwight]

Markme, I certainly hope your mate, and everyone else, including you, have learned a valuable lesson...

Reading this thread is starting to make me feel uncomfortable...
There's an element of naive irresponsibility that shouldn't be there. Or have I simply forgotten what it's like to be young?

[ScottishBoy]

Markme, I certainly hope your mate, and everyone else, including you, have learned a valuable lesson...

Reading this thread is starting to make me feel uncomfortable...
There's an element of naive irresponsibility that shouldn't be there. Or have I simply forgotten what it's like to be young?

No Cletus, you are quite correct. When we were young, we would never willingly incapacitate ourselves like that. Great way to get rolled or killed.

If nobody else is going to say it then I will...
Markme I hope you will be VERY cautious in who you share your secrets with. If a person is imprudent enough to chug that much alcohol, who knows who they might mention it to?
Where I live alcohol poisonings are usually followed by an investigation. Its a college town. All someone has to do is mention your distilling activities to someone who bears you ill will and your life will suddenly alter in way you wont like. Law enforcement types love the idea of being able to say they busted a Still. Makes for good bar talk. Im quite surprised that you didnt get a visit from the police after your friend's alcohol poisoning. I would say take this "ever so subtle" warning to heart and start to be a little more discreet.

If he had died, you would have been liable as the supplier of the alcohol. At the very least you would have become an accessory.

Im not saying you are stupid or anything. Im just saying that its great that you have started to pick up the skill, but this is one of those skills its good to know but not advertise. So far, your local brew supply knows and THEY have called a few folks to get opinions. I would assume that all of your housemates know, and housemates can talk casually...or sometimes carry grudges. You may have mentioned this in passing to any number of people. The guy who taught me was big on keeping it cool. Im thinkin you need to tighten up before someone gets hurt.
Just my two cents.

SB

[blanikdog]

... When we were young, we would never willingly incapacitate ourselves like that. Great way to get rolled or killed. ...

I agree with everything you say about the dangers - both poisoning, driving accidents and cops - but I can remember doing very silly acts as a youngun and one of these was drinking to excess. We did it deliberately for some unknown reason. A mate and I once woke up in a room with bars on the windows and a whacking great lock on the door. Fortunately for us it was a small community and the cops in those days used discretion and told our parents to come and get us with no charges being laid. I think I would have preferred to be charged rather than face the consequences of my parents rage. They were rather pissed off!!!

I'm sure that Markme has leaned a valuable lesson, but to say that the youth of yesteryear were 'wiser' than those of today is not generally true. The problem I see with excessive drinking these days is the violence that seems to follow, but that's another social matter all together. However, this is just my opinion and I've been wrong before and will be wrong again as long as I allow myself to have opinions.

This post is NOT meant to condone excessive drinking - as I said, I agree with you - but, to say that the youth of yesteryear didn't do much the same as those of today is a very long bow to draw.

blanik

[airhill]

Two fingers to the French on that one Blanik

[ScottishBoy]

Not that I want to start an arguement, but I have to dissagree.
As a former psychologist I can attest to the number of rising problems with teens and young adults. If you need any further convincing, just Google "binge drinking rise" and watch what happens. I think it's fairly obvious that there is a definite rise in the act here. This is a clip from a recent study. You can find thousands more that all say the same thing:

(AP) Binge drinking is on the rise in the United States and is climbing fastest among 18- to 20-year-olds, who are too young to drink legally, according to a government survey.
Episodes of binge drinking, defined as having five or more drinks in a sitting, increased 17 percent among all adults between 1993 and 2001, and shot up 56 percent among 18- to 20-year-olds, the telephone survey found. The survey was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Now to clarify my statement...which some seem to have generalized to mean "everyone who was ever young"...
I grew up in a farmtown until I was shipped to high school in a city which was economically depressed and riddled with drugs and crime. This town hadnt seen anything decent since WWII. To incapacitate yourself to the point you couldnt defend yourself in that manner was pretty much the same as wearing a sign that said "Instant Victim". The "we" I refer to is the kids I grew up with and who I still talk to this day. The rest are gone.

I did some pretty stupid things when I was young too ( and it may just be that "stupid kid stuff" is better documented nowadays...), but I SEEM to see a a bit more "risky" behavior among the teens I see today versus what we were into. BUT! If I talk to an older generation person and one after that, they all seem to tell the same tale. Every succesive generation has its own challenges and they may seem riskier to us because they arent the same ones we faced.

That comment was from my generational viewpoint and does not represent anything other than my own personal experience. Yes, its a long bow to draw, but I observe that every generation does it... oo\/o

My only concern was that we seem to have a bright, well meaning guy here who may have been close to making a life altering mistake and I didnt want to see that happen.
Call me crazy, but I think its our duty to protect and nurture this as an art, and to protect and nurture our artisans as well.

SB

[Markme]

thanks guys for all your concern. Even though it may seam that i do not understand the magnitude of the situation that i almost put myself in, i fully understand the weight of it.
Biggest learning curve that my friend and I have made is to perhaps not serve our strong alcohol to friends at all, especiallly not my house mate... never ever again.

I do believe that the biggest issue today is the binge drinking, for one it raised the taxes by nearly 100% in australia on ready to drink beverages and a carton of beer is about $40 now, compared to the $25 two years ago, which is the main reason i started making my own stuff.
But its also sort of a business venture for me, my friend gets to keep his half of the alcohol and do what ever he wants with it, i research take notes and just redo it over and over again until perfected and then im going to start my own recipes and hopefully eventually sell them commercially.
i think out of the first batch i only kept 3 700ml bottles at 40% one of rum, vodka/neutral and bourbon, all for aging.

Back to binge drinking, from my point of view it just seams that my generation of people love drinking in excess soo much because a majority of them have been shown that alcohol is some sort of taboo that you can only indulge in once you reach legal age and then you go nuts. So what happens when you cant get something all the time, you do stupid things, drink stupid amounts, there is exceptions for this ofcourse.

i am greatful that the members here do care so much about the safety of others and i thank you all for it , i will be hanging around for a long while.

I personally drink for taste and not for intoxication, ive been allowed to drink my entire life, so i got the "get smashed" faze out of the way in my early to mid teens.
For the fool who almost killed himself he has had pins and needles in his foot since then, im suprised he didnt die, he apparently skulled the whole bottle in 20 minutes, did shots of some ones stronger vodka, tried to fight my friends, smashed some bottles, tried to smash a table, tripped over, got up, fell over and passed out, started foaming at the mouth, went blue, ambulance came.. stayed passed out for something like 18 hours, woke up didnt puke.. and just complained alot about being sore, his eye brows were shaved off and he didnt remember anything for the last 24 hours.

he was truely an idiot

[olddog]

Friends like that you can do without, they are the types that will blab their mouth off about the strong likker they got and where they got it.

[ScottishBoy]

With friends like that, who needs enemas?

[rad14701]

Markme, don't take this offensively but young folks today don't drink any more than us older folks did when we were your age... We were just matured at a younger age... We carried far more responsibilities at an earlier age and weren't pampered, spoiled, catered to, or allowed to slack off like kids today... If we went out and got drunk we still had to go about our regular tasks, whether hung over or not... And even though I'm currently pushing 50 into the ground I can still drink amateur young folk under the table and manage to function normally... Never got wild and stupid, but I've had friends who did and more than a few of them are dead because of it...

If you can't handle alcohol, don't drink - at all... I've separated far too many friends bodies from mangled automobile parts, watched some die before my eyes as I tried to save them, placed them in body bags, dealt with their grieving families, attended their funerals, and drank to their memories... Some have managed to drink themselves to death from one alcohol related ailment or another... All died at far too young of an age and some left behind very young children... Some even took other peoples lives, along with their own...

And people wonder why I drink... Sometimes it's the only way I can get the visions of what I've seen out of my head, kinda like PTSD... I consider my self young at almost 50 but I've seen far more in these years than anyone should have to see...

I'm just sayin...

<<< This post is toned way down from the one I decided not to post last night >>>

[ScottishBoy]

I remember my friend John and I went out one night, got hammered and came in pretty late. So Dad got us up at the crack of dawn and we put a new tounge on a wagon, then proceeded to make hay all day long. Not the wussy bales either. Im talking old fashioned loose hay making. We stored almost a half winters that day and Dad worked us til we bled. John threw up once and I did too. The horses got water first and lunch was cold dried beef sandwiches. Dad thought he had us broke when we finally stopped about 7 that night, so he offered us each a 16 oz Pabst Blue Ribbon. John and I both remember that day as one of the best days of our lives...not because we beat the old man, but because he taught us that there is a price to everything. If you wanna act like an adult, you work like an adult.

Today if someone did that to a kid in America, some friggin guidance counselor would be crying child abuse and the kids would be seperated from their parents.

Hopin your flatmates will smarten up a bit..

[plumber77]

man i had to chuckle.. it seams the world is polluted with dick heads everywhere you may be..

[ScottishBoy]

man i had to chuckle.. it seams the world is polluted with dick heads everywhere you may be..

It's like a Zombie epidemic...except more subtle