Home Distiller

This is my first mash, I wanted some comments/opinions on what it is, how it should come out, etc. I'm still working on building the still so its still in the fermenter.

6 lbs honey
2 whole oranges, through the blender
~4 cups OJ (with pulp)
~1 cup brown sugar
tbsp or so of ground cloves

Threw it all in a pot and boiled with with enough water to make about 3 gal, boiled it for about 20 min. Cooled it with a wart cooler, added enough water to bring it up to about 5 gal, pitched 3 envelopes of regular bakers yeast.

It bubbled away for about 2 weeks, its pretty much done now, but since the still isn't built yet, its still just sitting there. I'm hoping it will clear up a little so when I rack it there won't be as much crap to strain out. It should be fine sitting there for another week or so right? Still have the airlock on there. Any tips for distilling this stuff, or what exactly it should be called? I started out thinking I was going to make mead, then changed my mind and decided I'd distill it when it was done. Sure smells good in the fermemnter though.

I love the way honey smells when it ferments. Smells like cookies baking.

With the amount of sugar you've got in that, it's not going to have much alcohol to distill out, though. If you check most mead recipes, they tend to go with about 3lbs of honey per gallon. With six pounds of honey in a five-gallon batch, that's going to be WAY under. Personally I'd advise, since the still isn't built yet, dissolving about nine pounds of honey or sugar into your must (if you use honey, separate out a gallon or so of the honey, warm it to better dissolve the honey, then add it back into what you have and give everything a good shake...that should wake up your yeast) and letting it ferment to a higher %abv.

So you think its stopped cooking because the yeast ran out of food, not because its reached its tolerance for the alcohol? I guess I can try throwing in a few cups of sugar and see if it wakes up...if it does I'll throw in some more honey to get it perking again. Thanks for the tip.

Yeah, there's no way that baker's yeast reached 14% (its tolerance) with the amount of sugars you put in there. I'd put more than a couple of cups of sugar into the mix...go with about two pounds to wake everything up. Two pounds of sugar in your wash won't be enough to overly sweeten your mash or damage your distillate, but it'll be enough to give you a significant idea of whether your yeast is done (a couple of cups of sugar in a five-gallon wash won't wake your yeast up enough to make any visible difference in the ferment).

I thought bread yeast was only good to about 6-8% abv?

Where'd you hear that? Bread yeast will go up to about 14% if you give it enough sugar to work with.

Ah, good to know. I added another 6 lbs of brown sugar, seems to be cooking up good again. Hopefully by the time this is done I'll be ready to distill.

Dang, that stuff sounds too good to distill. I'd rack it a couple times and drink it "as it" since it's more like mead then corn whiskey anyway.

Well, cooked it up tonight, not too bad for my first ever wash/distilling run. Homemade pot still:



Using a 20qt stainless stock pot, and a jacket-style condenser hooked up to the faucet. Seems to be working pretty well. the stuff coming off is pretty strong, I don't have an alcohol meter but I'm guessing around 65-70%. Tastes pretty good, but maybe a little harsh. I'm going to wait til tomorrow and try it again and get a better read on it. Anyway, looks like I'm going to end up with about 1.5L of distillate, from ~5gal wash.

You made my mistake - you forgot the width of the columm at the left when resizing your piccies. Nice effort for a suburban kitchen - did the wife appove of the results?

Haha not wife, but my gf slept through the whole process.

What do you mean by resizing my pieces?

Alright so now that its distilled, I need some advice on aging/finishing it. Can you caramelize brown sugar? Or should I just use a bit of molasses to color/flavor it up a bit before I proof it down to about 40%? Also, I just ordered some light toasted oak chip "teabags"...how long should I let these soak in there, just till it starts to taste better? I read some stuff on Tony's site, but since I really don't know what this stuff would be considered, I'm not sure which route to take, esp since this is my first time. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks.

sploke wrote:Haha not wife, but my gf slept through the whole process.

What do you mean by resizing my pieces?

piccies - pictures

If they are too wide they make the whole thread too wide to read. Scrolling from side to side on a picture is OK but it's a pain to do when reading text.

Oh, sorry...I didn't resize them, I let photobucket do it automatically, but figured they were fine since they fit on my laptop screen.

sploke wrote:Oh, sorry...I didn't resize them, I let photobucket do it automatically, but figured they were fine since they fit on my laptop screen.

Yes - I made the same mistake - I forgot to allow for the 'Author' column on the left.

Nice job!

Looks like a nice little setup there.

I'd like to build a pot-still set just like that to compliment the reflux at some point.

Let us know how the stuff turns out.

Well while distilling I took off aboug 150 mL of heads on about a 5 gal wash I guess. I got 3L if distillate before collecting tails. I got another 400mL of what I figured were tails. I got my alcohol meter in the mail today, my distillate is 60%abv, and apparently I could have gone longer because I only collected tails down to about 50%. It tastes kind of sweet but it definitely has a cistrusy smell to it. Unfortunately it also has a bit of a rubbing alcohol smell, but I dunno if thats just me imagining things, and maybe it will go away once I bring it down to about 80 proof.

I got a few bags of lightly toasted oak chips, I'm going to try aging it on those a bit to mellow it out, and maybe sweeten it up a little bit with some molasses. We'll see how it goes.