home brewer is adding Distilling to his list of hobbies

[suburbeer]

Hello Gentlemen,
I've been lurking for the last few months and bought the "Moonshine" book about a year ago. Played around with the double boiler/wok distillation with horrible results (expected). I am a Home brewer that does all grain batches unless I am feeling especially lazy and speed through an extract kit. I started to buy bourbon to soak oak chips for some barrel stouts and decided that bourbon is tasty. My hope is to make a sipper bourbon that is heavy oak and smoke while letting the grain show through. I see me running 5-7 batches a year on a retired stove in my garage. I have access to some freerange white oak in small quantities from my mother-in-laws back 40. I am interested in quick aging what ever is drinkable from my efforts.
I used an all grain recipe from this forum that is bubbling away now and saved my pennies to buy a Mile Hi mighty mini rig with the 13 gallon boiler. It is the little one. I was buying the milk can for brewing and intended on building a head out of copper but for only an extra $149 and no more shipping, I think it will be a decent starter still head that will let me do flavorful low proof pot still stuff with the occasional high proof enamel remover run. My father-in-law and friend are scotch guys so I am learning more about scotch. I want to just have fun with little batches i hide from everyone except the father in law and buddy. I am realistic and expect to start off with near tragedy, injury and rotten egg/ paint thinner flavors and get better from there. Thanks for all the posts as I have learned a lot form others mistakes and expect to contribute many mistakes of my own to guide others.

[Prairiepiss]

Welcome aboard. Sounds like you are off and running. You should look at NCHooch's bourbon recipe. I would think that will make a good starting point. It's in the tried and true section. You can then branch off from it. Tweaking it to your taste.

And what is up with all the homebrewers joining up lately? Is beer going out of style.

Good luck be safe and take your time.

[suburbeer]

Good call on the NCHooch recipe!
That's the one I did except I used flakes maize instead of regular corn (available at my home brew shop) and used a really good trappist yeast that ferments up to 12%+
I was supprised how thick the beer was that went into the bucket. Like thin oatmeal.
Smelled so sweet it reminded me of cotton candy.
Brewers I think are used to the idea of "taking it further" more hops, bigger beers etc. Distilling is just a natrual next step.

[Prairiepiss]

Just remember to leave the hops out. They have no place in distilling.