Home Distiller

I'm not interested in counterfeiting or selling or anything like that. Just curious as to what is it that they can detect in a commercial product that they can't in homemade? If you making something with exactly the same process only on a different scale how does theirs end up different?

jayka wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:07 pm Just curious as to what is it that they can detect in a commercial product that they can't in homemade?

Heads.

Corsaire wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:14 pm

jayka wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 11:07 pm Just curious as to what is it that they can detect in a commercial product that they can't in homemade?

Heads.

Seriously?

Nah.

The big commercial boys have gcms and other goodies and know what their hooch is made off.

I think if someone wants to make counterfeit johnny walker for example they'd do it on the cheap.
So lab analysis would show more colorants and no barrel extracted compounds for example.

Ok cool so the fact ours missing these distinguishing features is actually good. Means ours is cleaner, more pure.

So much miss information. For the last 40 years I've worked as an engineering chemist for a manufacturer of The pinnacle of chemical analysis today, the Mass Spectrometer. ( Google Sciex) there are many types of Mass specs ranging triple quads to maldis. In the opening statement we speak of the The "Authenticator", a portable Ultraviolet Spectrophotometer or a TUV detector. I can assure you a triplequad MS, be it LC or GC could not perform an analysis to quantify every compound in a whiskey, there are tens of thousands. Its like looking at the night sky with you eyes, do you see everything? No, now look through a telescope so much more to see. How about an observatory, now the Hubble. The more sensitive you are, the more you see. Comparing a TUV to a Mass spec is like Comparing one of those rubber band balsawood air planes you played with as a kid to an F16.
Now think about the process and the Variables. The grains, the water the tree that any Specific barrel was made of. At a molecular level thinking someone could say this is authentic is laughable even with the high end mass specs like a Triple TOF MS.
Fact of the matter is we consider counterfeiting wrong but at its core, it is Intellectual property , I figured out how to do this 1st. So its mine. In the part of the world I grew up in, I would agree with this.
I don't do it because it's wrong not because I'm afraid of some madeup tech.
But I'm a realist, counterfeiting spirits happens because its profitable and the definition of "legal " changes depending on lines on a map.
All this rambling can be distilled to, do onto others as you would have done to you.

Triplequad!

Way back in 2009 (page 1 or 2) I posted about what we were doing with tanks and the soap analysts for the engines. Good to hear someone else with real experience with spectrometers/etc. (Not that what I was doing was even in the same ballpark as you)

great post!

I don't think many people would go threw with it all especially the research and cost of initial setup..

Seanjohn19 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:27 pm Is my neighbor making spirits ..... I don't think many people would go threw with it all especially the research and cost of initial setup.. kinda scary I'm new to the site used it for alot of researching but it's alarming now are people leaving?

Seanjohn , found that post a bit too cryptc for my poor brain . Can you explain it a bit clearer.

Sorry I miss read it and I was joking about my neighbor she's a little old lady. I hope that there's nobody on here using the information on this site to counterfeit spirits and sell it. If people start doing stuff like that and the get caught and tracked back to here it would suck for the site to get shut down, not only that people will start to frown upon the people just doing it for hobby...

Wonder if the equipment they have is a nose that can pick up the reek of turbo yeasts

I read where Ohio was trying to pass home distilling legislation where you could legally home distill 100 gal of spirits a year. Any other states like that out there? I don't know if it ever passed.

SteadyStills wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 8:04 am I read where Ohio was trying to pass home distilling legislation where you could legally home distill 100 gal of spirits a year. Any other states like that out there? I don't know if it ever passed.

States can pass laws, but federal law prevails. However, enforcement is moderated by financial and resource availability. So, hobby distillation exists and proliferates as a hobby. But when you attempt to sell the spirits without a license, the taxman gets involved and suddenly you become a priority to the government.
ss

Last i knew it was about $13 excise tax per proof gallon of liquor to the state. Yeah, to go full scale op you gotta file with the feds and the state. And you can still get denied approval. And getting denied is worst case scenario because even applying, they know you're making liquor now.

And that's the other thing. I would gladly pay excise on very small batch if it were less complicated.

SteadyStills wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 8:04 am I read where Ohio was trying to pass home distilling legislation where you could legally home distill 100 gal of spirits a year. Any other states like that out there? I don't know if it ever passed.

Try this.

Only takes a few to spoil the goods for the many. Kudos to the moderators and those reporting what must be a constant stream of attempts to skirt the law.