hey

[raybren]

Hello everybody,
I am Raybren, and I live in the great state of Louisiana. Longtime beer brewer, I started being interested in stilling several years ago. I purchased a brew shop CM still and, not really knowing what I was doing, ran it a few times with pretty poor results. It then got put in the basement and flooded during a hurricane. Within this past year, I dug it out and found out the cooling tower was corroded and unsalvageable. I remade it into a simple pot still and started experimenting and researching and discovered this site. I'd like to thank and congratulate everyone who is involved with this site. It truly is an amazing piece of work and fueled mainly by the generosity and goodwill of its members. Back to my story: On this simple still I made some pretty good rum and distilled mead (anyone know what that is called?) but my interest was peaked by this site for bigger and better things. With your help, I have just finished completing and running a test/cleaning batch of my new pot still (15 gal sanke keg with a 3 ft leibig 3/4 in 1 in run on propane, soon to be natural gas) and am waiting for my ss ball valve in the mail to complete my valved reflux still (4 ft 2 inch tower that runs on the same leibig, and thanks Hookline for the reflux condenser). I've read vast amounts of this site, and now that I'm really underway, I wanted to thank you and to join in the active community.

Raybren

[rubber duck]

Welcome aboard, happy you found the site and that we have successfully converted another beer brewer.

I haven't done a honey distill and I don't know if there is a name for it. I'm thinking about doing one how did it turn out?

[Dnderhead]

http://www.dolmen.arbre.us/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow check it out?

[raybren]

@ rubber duck- except for the high cost of honey, I highly recommend trying it out. it had a really sweet smell to it, and tasted nice. i aged it on oak chips and vanilla bean, and a lot of people compared it to a sweet, smooth whiskey.

@ dnderhead- thanks for the link, i find it pretty interesting that someone is producing that commercially, you can rarely even find mead commercially available where i'm from. more power too them, i'll have to try and get a bottle somehow

[Dnderhead]

ya different even though it is one of the world's oldest drinks nobody makes it . all l found was honey "flavored"
From what I found out their is no name for it other than "honey brandy" some with spices some with out.
apparently the only ones that make it are granny in the back yard. so that ones the first and only?

[raybren]

yeah, so far. it was a batch of mead i made that got stuck. so, i ran it through the still, took the dunder, diluted and refermented the rest of the honey in it, and ran that through as well. then, combined the two runs on a final run. i'm not opposed to making more, but honey is really expensive, and mead takes a really long time to make. my next project (after getting the stills running full time) is beekeeping. so, hopefully in the future i'll have plenty of cheap honey to experiment with.

[blanikdog]

I've had bees for twenty five years and yes, beekeeping is a way to get cheap honey, but it's a lot of work if done properly.

blanik