I've brewed beer and wine before, and lost interest with buying kits quickly, played with DIY brewing until I had more beer than I could give away, so I eventually stopped that.
A friend and I had been talking about trying to plant wine grapes and make our own wine, but we quickly found that our northern climate didn't lend itself to anything we'd like to drink. One evening we were sitting on his patio sipping a few cocktails when the conversation turned to distilling. I'd read the Foxfire book and a few others over the years, and as we took inventory of our collective apple, peach and pear trees, talked about planting an acre or so near the house that are set aside right now in some old heirloom corn varieties for mashing we started getting excited.
A few more cocktails and we were up to opening a micro distillery and just producing stuff to age for a few years before starting to sell to the public, I do some business with a california winery and we joked about taking my next payment in used barrels and driving out with a truck to pick them up... Good thing is we know each other well and that past the 2nd or 3rd drink we know we're mostly talking @#$%.
I've downloaded Pinto's pot still plans and am trying to decide if I want to test my sheet metal banging skills from a 20+ year ago shop class or if I apply money to the problem and risk importing a pretty still from http://www.copper-alembic.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow.
I suspect for the variety of what we're wanting to do we'll end up with both a pot still and a reflux still, but with whisky, rum and fruit brandies being the first things we thought of, we want to start with a pot still.
Just thought I'd say hello before I start asking questions...
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It is fun to think of turning a silo full of corn worth $3-4 a bushel into whiskey worth a whole lot more though.
