Home Distiller

Hey all.
 
I have been making wine for 7 years and brewing beer for 6. Not to brag but I only had questionable results once in all this time. (Lack of Yeast Nutrient in an experiment making apple wine)
 
I have made two stills in the last two years. The first was a pressure cooker rig that worked well. I used it with the failed apple wine and made some really flammable stuff that when watered down had an okay flavor. This got me hooked on distilling.
 
Last year I made a 2nd still out of copper stuffed with stainless for the tower. Worked really well but slow. 12 hours to make a gallon. I would have modified it to run faster  but the boiler  had what I perceived as a safety issue… I had a problem making a perfect seal around the lid. I had it tied down and slathered with flower and water paste and it was probably okay but I didn’t have total faith in it.
 
Now I have a Mighty Mini from Mile Hi mounted on an 8 gallon keg. Should run much faster and safer then the ones I made, especially being Ill be running it as a pot still only.
 
I have been reading a lot here and am getting ready to start a batch of beer/mash for my 1st run but I do have a question…
 
A lot of info here on cutting and blending and I do see the need for it. However, my thinking is if I make a very strong “beer” using grain, 15+ pounds of sugar, Champagne Yeast, and a little extra yeast nutrient just to be safe, Ill end up with something around 17-18%. By letting it settle out, racking it, letting it clear out, etc, just as I would making a good batch of home brew, I should end up with something drinkable with good flavor before I rack it into the boiler.  
 
So if it’s clean, and good before distilling why bother cutting and blending? Couldn’t I just let it go until what I had in the collection jug had Proof I was looking for? Say 90-100 proof.. or just do some math and say out of a 5 gallon batch of beer let it go till I collected around 2 gallons.

I know I'm real green and have a lot to learn and my theory could be compleatly wrong.

You are concentrating higher alcohols in distillation, and lots of other nasties that come out in higher concentration. You need to make cuts.

so your a wine brewer... you ever make one of those wines one or two oz and it was headache city?
thank of that only multiplied 10 or 20 times.

Papa Bear wrote:A lot of info here on cutting and blending and I do see the need for it. However, my thinking is if I make a very strong “beer” using grain, 15+ pounds of sugar, Champagne Yeast, and a little extra yeast nutrient just to be safe, Ill end up with something around 17-18%. By letting it settle out, racking it, letting it clear out, etc, just as I would making a good batch of home brew, I should end up with something drinkable with good flavor before I rack it into the boiler.  
 
So if it’s clean, and good before distilling why bother cutting and blending? Couldn’t I just let it go until what I had in the collection jug had Proof I was looking for? Say 90-100 proof.. or just do some math and say out of a 5 gallon batch of beer let it go till I collected around 2 gallons.

I know I'm real green and have a lot to learn and my theory could be compleatly wrong.

What you are proposing is roughly the equivalent of turbo yeast. Turbo yeast is covered here ad nauseum. Read up.

I would be tossing out the first 150ml.. Will this get rid of the nasties or are there more comming off in the end? Thanks for all the info btw.

Papa Bear wrote:I would be tossing out the first 150ml.. Will this get rid of the nasties or are there more comming off in the end?

Thing is, the higher the abv of your wash, the higher the percentage of non drinkable alcohol you'll make. So you really don't gain much by making a high abv wash. It seems counter intuitive, but collective experience confirms this. Good luck.

It is a quality issue. You can collect and drink everything that comes out of the still - ever had Raki or a rough Slivovitz? Trouble is that you get a nasty headache.

Scotch whisky distillers don't bother with a heads cut, but they leave it in wood for several years during which time there is considerable evapouration of higher alcohols. If you were to take a bottle of freshly distilled spirit out of a newly filled barrel of Scotch and dilute it to drinking proof and drink it, I bet you would have a really bad headache the next day.

By doing good cuts you are saving years of time before you get a drinkable product. You don't waste anything by doing cuts, as you can recover the alcohol that is in your 'feints' later. The more you push the fermentation to higher ABV the worse any headache will be.

Papa Bear, please don't let the greed factor cloud your judgement in your quest to make good quality spirits... Making fuel is one thing but making potable spirits is yet another... There is good reason why you don't see members here striving for such high yields... But you can take our word for it, based on experience, or learn for yourself if that's what it takes... Sure, high yields can result in decent spirits but you never know whether you'll have that luck or not because there is a far greater chance that you won't...

Thanks to all for good advice. I will be cutting and won't be Greedy when I start messin with the thing. I'll boil up some wort this weekend and in a few weeks light her up. Let ya all know what I end up with....

Thanks again.