Hello everyone

[Topfueler]

I’ve been lurking and educating myself for a few weeks, de-bunked some of my grandfathers theories, after all”you can’t learn nothing about making likker on a computer” and “that’s not the way we did it in Ireland”. So I already owe more in tuition to this site than I could ever pay.

I am an Engineer by trade, retired “the boss made me” drag racer, father of three, grandfather of two, and current partners in a drag car (that I am not allowed to drive), hence the username. My wife claims I only retain my common sense between the hours of 0600 and 1800 Monday through Friday and Saturday by appointment , after that all bets are off.

Distilling, like racing, is in my blood, my grandfather introduced me to, what I didn’t understand at the time, but was told to never speak of, a copper,cobbled together wreck, he called Sally in the mid 70’s.

His brother, my great uncle, passed away the day after Thanksgiving this last year, at the wake my grandfather said something along the lines of a tradition passing along with his little brother. When I asked him about it later he brought up the, what I now knew, was a still from that day, 40 years prior, Through a lot of hellabelue and bs I finally ended up with what still appear to be a small fortune in copper scrap. With the assistance of this site, my ddw, and few friends I’ve ran about 40 gallons of mash through it, and to be honest I have a lot of room for improvement.

With not one but two shops with every type of welding machine imaginable, tooling that rivals any machine shop in my area, a scribbled recipe, two men with more ingenuity and drive than most could ever fatham, and the assistance of the members of this little community, I hope to make something that will do 200 on the salt flats, even if it is only in my cup holder.

I’ll try to keep the post shorter in the future, but thanks again for all of the knowledge handed down here.

[acfixer69]

Welcome to HD. We do drinkin likker here mostly. Some of my early stuff was fueler grade but I've gotten better. Enjoy the reads here.

[Bushman]

Nice intro and welcome! Would love to see some pictures of that old still as history to many of us is very interesting.

[raketemensch]

The general reaction to my first few batches was, “this tastes like jet fuel.”

Fast-forward a couple of years and I have Blantons fans begging for jars.

Keep reading, keep learning, definitely keep asking questions.

Oh, and also, keep writing. This was entertaining.