Hello all,
Lovely to join this group of people. I'll admit I've already used your site as a resource and it's been invaluable. Since I find myself using the site a fair bit and have distilled a little, I decided maybe now is the time to join you all as hopefully I have gone through a little of my teething phase and have questions that don't require basic answers.
Here's a bit about me and what I've done in this hobby so far.
I currently reside in New Zealand where distilling is legal and decided that while making beer a bit in the past, my enjoyment of alcohol has always been skewed towards the spirit side of things and maybe it was time to give it a bash.
On a second-hand website I came across a Still Spirits brand air still (their term not mine) for 50 dollars and thought as a price of entry I wouldn't do much better than that. I read online that Still Spirits turbo yeast was absolutely terrible so I'm my typical fashion I had to find out why people were complaining about it and gave a sugar wash a go as per Still Spirit's pamphlet instruction. So yeah, not for me. Only made worst by the tiny air still that smeared heads into hearts into tails.
I was however pretty hooked by this stage so bought myself a copper reflux collumn from Still Spirit and gave that a go. Again following their turbo yeast recipe so I could have some comparison between the stills and who knows, maybe it'd taste alright this time. Nope, still terrible.
Then I made my first Teddy Sad's fast fermenting Vodka wash, got myself a pot still head to my boiler to do stripping runs and then dumped the low wines in for a spirit run and something drinkable came out! Pretty ester-y, I figured due to the "anything that says bakers yeast" approach I took to yeast selection. I polished this to get rid of some of the nasties and raided my local lemon trees and make up some limoncello which I figured would hide my mistakes and indeed it did a good enough job of just that.
Back to the drawing board. I bought some Angel distillers yeast, repacked my reflux collumn with spiral prismatic packing which I got from a local maker, hooked my electric boiler up to a voltage regulator this time to have some control over the electric elements and did my spirit run. Let my cuts air out for 48 hours and blended accordingly, them filtered the result. It's my best product yet and have started to make some gin (that little air still actually is becoming pretty useful after all)
And that's me till now. Most of my revisions are suggestions made by members here already so a big thank you!
Greetings!
Moderator: Site Moderator
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- Novice
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2022 11:11 am
Greetings!
Last edited by Bewildered Hobbyist on Mon Oct 03, 2022 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Greetings!
Learning all the time, sounds familiar….. and Welcome BH
Re: Greetings!
Welcome!
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- Swill Maker
- Posts: 160
- Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:37 pm
- Location: The Mitten
Re: Greetings!
Welcome Aboard , Always learning here too/////
Re: Greetings!
Love your handle. It's definitely the right word for a hobby that certainly be bewildering.
Welcome.
Welcome.
“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren’t as good as others.” – Raymond Chandler
Re: Greetings!
Love your handle. It's definitely the right word for a hobby that certainly be bewildering.
Welcome.
Welcome.
“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren’t as good as others.” – Raymond Chandler
- NorthWoodsAb
- Swill Maker
- Posts: 330
- Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2019 2:56 pm
- Location: North Central Alberta. 55.470996,-114.787297
Re: Greetings!
Welcome to the forum. Indeed there is a lot to learn in this hobby.