Home Distiller

Mr Goose eye Sir,he he,great chatting to you.Here's my problem,the revenue service guy's were here and when I asked them about building a small still to practice on they told me NO NO NO don't have the license for an add on still.It's gonna cost me some but I'm about to do a run of 5 buckets of Citrus as the oranges are ready,when I say 5 buckets,its 5 like the one in this photo.Hell school's expensive but I gotta do what I gotta do.I have a notebook I found written in the original owners handwriting and I'm going to follow the instructions to the T.
Now I understand one can't brew from a book because there's more to it than that but here we go.
Something I'd like to know from anyone is about adding the yeast.I was shown to make yeast mix in a 1 gal bucket then add it to the fruit mix and stir it through.Will that work or shouild I make the yeast add it to a smaller fruit mix allow to ferment then add that to the large mix.The big question for me is once a mix begins to ferment,as in say 2 gal. can one then go pouring that into a larger mix without damaging the culture.
I guess one could cover all these questions with an answer to:

Do large quantities of fruit mix need to be yeasted gradualy or can one yeast full from the get go?
bleeding hell I can ramble on thanks Damian

rangitang wrote:Great posting Damian. Would that be a "making a living still"?

Oh I get it.....not a chance will I make a living from this still.Fortunately I am on a dissability pension which pays my living.I put a whole lot more into this still than I'll ever get out of it.It's a hobby,it may have made a living in the past for the original owner but it doesn't anymore.I get your point nice one.

I'd like to add here after reading Uncle Jesse's "rules by which we live" and specificaly point no.9

9. It is the hope of this forum to promote the legislation of home distilling as a legal hobby here in the United States. One of our goals, is to prove a quality product can be done safely by the home distiller for personal use only. So any discussion of selling bartering or trading any distilled liquor unless by a licensed distillery will not tolerated. Such post will be edited, deleted or locked.

I am not attempting to discuss bartering or selling of anything,what I am interested in is making a good safe product,when one reads Uncle Jesse's post about the 40 000 Russians who alegedly died from foul alcohol it is pretty frightening what can go wrong.
Am I a leagaly registerd still? You bet,...try distilling anything in this country withou a liscence.Every 1 liter of 100% proof is taxed at the equivelent of $67.50.Just try and slip past the liqour board,rather you than me.
I hope the kind folks who have been so helpfull up to now will understand.Now I've got 90 kg of citrus fruit to run,see you all later Damian

Just remeberd,my spirit has to,and is,sent to a laboritory at the university in Stellenbosch for testing,Im awaiting the results of my first carrot run.

DamianRyan wrote:Mr Goose eye Sir,he he,great chatting to you.Here's my problem,the revenue service guy's were here and when I asked them about building a small still to practice on they told me NO NO NO don't have the license for an add on still.

snip

Damian

Hi, Damian, I hope your enterprise is going well.

I just wondered; given that your distillery is fairly big, could you tell the revenue people (quite correctly) you need a LABORATORY still (not an 'add on' still) for testing recipes and processes and so on.

I would think that would be pretty much a standard thing they would see in any distillery and they would very possibly agree to it.

Maybe you could get some correspondence from the University that does your testing, to support your assertion. I'm sure they would agree that a laboratory still is needed.

Good luck!

Thanks for getting back to me Mr.Baker,I will certainly look into that.I am in the process of preparing a 400 liter wash of citrus and low and behold in just short of 2 weeks the SP has gone from 1.050 to 1.010 so something is happening.
I think the problem with the last wash I prepared was the temperature of the water.The water was bloody freezing,I could feel it in the pain it caused in my arms as I stirred the water in a 90 liter drum to disolve the sugar.
So here's hoping it works this time arround. Once again thanks for the response Damian

Oh by the way the enterprise is dead in the water but I'm having a wonderfull time learing this craft.

Hey there Mr.Baker hope you get this.My wash looks good in 3 weeks it's gone from SG1.060 to 1.000 so I'll be getting some alcohol from this wash for sure.Damian

Bump for PP

[quote="DamianRyanEvery 1 liter of 100% proof is taxed at the equivelent of $67.50.[/quote]

$67.50 per 1 Litre - bloody hell that's steep!

Is that tax on per L sold, or produced . . .

Need six characters

maybe it doesn't cost that everywhere

frozenthunderbolt wrote:[quote="DamianRyanEvery 1 liter of 100% proof is taxed at the equivelent of $67.50.

$67.50 per 1 Litre - bloody hell that's steep!

Is that tax on per L sold, or produced . . .[/quote]
http://coinmill.com/USD_ZAR.html#ZAR=67.5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Thats about $8.25 USD not all that steep.