Traveling still

[humbledore]

I work with a French guy, nice guy, who was telling me about growing up many years ago in France. He said that in October of each year, a large still would make the rounds of all the villages. In each one all the locals would bring out their stuff to distill, mostly the remains of grapes used to make wine, but also other fruit. We talked a bit about the government and taxes, and how that lifestyle is probably gone (my comment). He then found this article from 2001 on something similar, apparently it is still going on in various towns and villages. According to the article at the time (2001) it was legal to make up to 10L of pure alcohol or 20L of 50%. Anyway, I found it interesting even though the article is old.

http://www.cavelife.net/columns/2001Feb21.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[LWTCS]

That's been here somewhere lost in the anals.
Thanks for the reminder.

[humbledore]

He sent me this pic and said that in his memory the setup looked a lot like this. Pretty steampunk.

[LWTCS]

I'm pretty sure the pic ( buried deep within) here shows a still on a wagon with a covered roof? Maybe even a motorized truck?

[Johnny6]

Those French travelling stills were actually my first introduction to "amateur" distilling. Some family friends, with relatives in France, brought back some carefully cherished bottles from their summer trip. It turns out that grandma still held the rights to ferment some number of gallons per year. They had a lemon liqueur and an orange liqueur, (which I now have concluded were flavored after distilling, rather than citrus ferments.) Good stuff.

Here is another site that I found with more information on it, and even a video: http://www.wineterroirs.com/2011/12/mob ... gundy.html

[emptyglass]

looks like a continuous still for making Armagnac

I'm making one

[humbledore]

That is an outstanding article, thanks for the link.

[HookLine]

Some videos on youtube about these travelling stillers. At least there was a year or two back. Most were not in English, so search foreign language ones as well.

[carbohydratesn]

lost in the anals

hehehe

[Nutmegmooner]

I love that picture. Just sayin...

[borntofli]

we need to bring this to american modern culture............... it's ridiculious we can drink it, buy it, but cant make it......



just sayin....

[goinbroke2]

So here I am in Yugoslavia in March of '92, war is still on and in the middle of it all I meet Franco, a guy who is running a still mounted on a trailer. He was running his plums, making what he called slivovich..i called it sleep in the ditch. He used a small glass jar inside a big one, when the small jar was full they collected everything after that as slivovich. Now I know it was the fores, but at the time I thought "What the heck are you doing that for"

That one was owned by the town and was towed from farm to farm and had been that way as long as anyone can remember.

[Brutal]

He sent me this pic and said that in his memory the setup looked a lot like this. Pretty steampunk.

dsc04709-alambic1_scaled.jpg

The more I look at this picture, the more I fucking love it!!! Would love to watch it go and manually pump that cooling water! Thank you so much for posting!

[Bushman]

I am not sure how it works in the US but several years ago (maybe 3) a wine club I belong to started selling brandy by distilling their wines that were either out of date or did not meet their standards. Along with that they started making apple pie brandy. I am not sure how their license worked but I know to sell it they had to open a separate tasting room for the brandy that was higher than a certain abv. Also their license stated that it had to be made on site, so they hired a distiller that brought his setup across the mountain from the east side to run it for them. I tried to see the set up but I think it was pretty low key and they did not want to show the operation. How they were able to do this legally in the US I am not sure.

[humbledore]

The more I look at this picture, the more I fucking love it!!! Would love to watch it go and manually pump that cooling water! Thank you so much for posting!

Ha, Brutal you are probably like me and stared at that damn thing until you had it figured out. Pretty ingenious design for the times, if you ask me.

[Sungy]

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you for that video....loved it.

Picture was added to my screen saver......

of copper porn and.....

really cool stills.