The HD Noob Distiller's Oath
"I <state your name> promise to make a reasonable attempt to engage the forum Search feature before asking a question that has been asked a hundred times before. In exchange for this oath, long-in-the-tooth members will forgive me the occasion query when I just don't understand something. So help me, Uncle Jesse."
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Greetings from South Florida.
Noob doesn't begin to describe my level of distilling experience, but I hope to earn that moniker in short order. My interest in distilling was sparked from several different sources.
First, a fellow member of my little acappella group is from Kentucky and introduced me to real Bourbon about three years ago. We've been testing different brands and somehow he always seems to keep finding better and better choices. Now, a celebratory nip of bourbon at the end of a rehearsal has become tradition for the four of us. Before that, I had had a little Jack here and there, but still have a strong visceral response to the smell of Southern Comfort (thanks to a particularly rough night in college thirty years ago.)
Before discovering bourbon, I was strictly a single-malt Scotch (neat) or Beer man - with an occasional nip of a 1974 Armagnac I bought in Toulouse. I think I'm ready to broaden my horizons!Second, listening to Coast-to-Coast AM one night, I first heard about Alcohol Can Be a Gas and started thinking about whether I could run my mower and other implements of destruction around my yard. Bio-fuels from invasive plants, like the Brazilian Pepper I can't seem to kill, has a certain poetry symmetry to it.
Third, living in hurricane central, I'm very interested in being able to distill water when the public utilities falter like they did in 2004 and 2005. Boiling water is fine enough, but I'd like to be able to produce fully distilled/sanitized water if needed.
With these three things in mind, I realized there must be a place to learn about such things. Little did I know how much information was available right here on this one forum. I don't expect to actually start a project for a couple of months, but will endeavor to learn everything I can so I can make my own mistakes instead of duplicating the missteps of others. My first decision to make is build or buy. It's just too easy to call MileHi and order a full setup, but that seems like cheating when everyone is showing such creative ingenuity making their own stills. I guess it comes down to how much time and skill I have to invest. That, and whether Mrs. AKAAB will put up with me taking over the garage with another project. She's going to raise an eyebrow when I show her how I want to use the pool for a water source for cooling!
