Woo hoo, first still run.

[tools]

I, too, have been homebrewing for years (over 20 with a long hiatus in there somewhere though). As mentioned in my welcome post, I got a 15.5 gal keg based pot still with a thumper (or doubler). It's all homebuilt, but really nice with all tri-clamp fittings and stainless (all the way through the condenser even).

It's fired over the classic cajun cooker propane burner, so I thought it was gonna be tough to control. About a week ago we made up a simple sugar wash (very close to Wineo's, but with less additives and some honey and molasses) kicked off with dry distiller's yeast. It's bubbling away happily, we'll rack to secondary in a few days and allow a week or more to clear.

In the mean time, we bought some really nice glass jugs that came with a gallon of free wine... a Chianti.

Tonight we set up the still and put 3 or 4 gallons of water in it and fired it up, with nothing in the doubler. We could practically see the heat move up the keg, over to the doubler, in and out of there and then to the worm and down into the cooling water. Right on cue we got distilled water.

Throttling up and down the propane was like a direct valve on output, with changes being nearly instant. It was pretty cool and made us feel good about distilling our wine.

So, we let it cool down and after an hour or two we decide the water level is about right for how we want to dilute our wine for a decent amount of liquid in the boiler. We pour in all our wine and I realized I meant to keep some out for the doubler... wups...

Right then I realize I've got a fifth of really cheap horrible gin (and I hate good gin) upstairs so we pour the (rather smallish) doubler about half full and fire it back up.

Again, the heat tracked along nearly visibly, it was cool. Right on cue out comes some distillate. We immediately get some liquid out but determine it was left over water still in the worm. Isn't much longer and the jar smells like the gin. Then right on cue, out comes the distillate. It smells pretty good, and we collect about 1/2 pint before we switch to a second jar. The second jar smelled REALLY good and had a really good flavor, but we only fill it half full. We get another 3 or 4 half full pint jars and the smell drops quite a bit, the taste gets more alcoholy (is that a word?) but it's REALLY good. The first stuff has a nice flavor, but a bit too flavorful if you know what I mean. It was then I decide I'm in the hearts and the first half pint was probably half or less foreshots and some heads. We collect another pint or so of hearts when the flavor and smell obviously change again. The smell wasn't great and gradually got stronger but the taste was simply weaker and weaker. I finally decide we're well into tails and shut her down after about 8 or 9 pints total. We sat down did a lot of smelling and tasting and wound up keeping 5 pints. Tossing the first half pint, using all the heads and keeping 3 or 4 pints as tails for the doubler on the next run.

It was awesome. We never did cut down the heat and maintained a high trickle to small stream throughout the run.

It was so fun, we went back to the liquor store and bought a couple more gallons of chardonnay this time. After a good cooling down, we dumped it right on top of what was left in the boiler. We dumped the doubler (it was light yellow and tasted like plain old water) and put in our tails and what was left of the gin (about 3/4 to 1/4 mix there) and fired it back up.

We pulled 1/8 pints when it started and found a very obvious break between the foreshots and heads this time. We collected a fair amount more this time, I think because the old wash still had some alcohol left in it? I broke out my beer hydrometer (goes down to 0.990, easily interpreted down to 0.980 which I think indicates 20%?) and took tails down to there to use in the doubler next time or redistill.

Overall it was A LOT of fun and much easier than I thought it was going to be. Starting with a water run then wine I think was a really good idea, one that I got here by the way.

Now we're getting impatient for the sugar wash to be ready and are going to get another one fermenting so we'll not have to wait too long after this one is ready (nice to have lots of carboys and such from the beer brewing).

Cheers,

Tools

[Wasserwerks]

Tools, nice to meet you. Welcome aboard, hehe
I didn't throw out the foreshot or separate any of the product except for what I assume was the tailings. I knew the flavor was coming through and the alcohol level was becoming less pronounced. On hindsight I should have let the boil finish through, maybe, and save more of the tail for another batch.
It's still a learning process, such as making wine was long ago.

[NcMoonLight]

Welcome and very nice job!

Reading storys like this, with the amount of excitment and just the overall vibe of your typing just shows the sheer energy and emotion you put into it while typing it. You can see how you are doing somthing that you enjoy alot, and thats a great thing.

I hope that it tastes as good as you made it out to be, Also are you going to do any of your own Washes/Mash? Or only bought wine? If it was up to me, id make my own then you get the pure satisfaction of knowing from step 1 to the end product it was all made by YOU!

-NcMoonLight

[tools]

Oh ya... we've got a sugar wash fermenting. Going to do a couple of those, then graduate to some fruit, and eventually feed corn, then we're gonna GROW the corn. I've got far to go!

And ya, HAD A BLAST. I really wanted to build the marble column still by Gingery but this still just sort of "came along" with the beer stuff. I was very skeptical of it, but wow, wouldn't be without it now. The flavor was REALLY good and while I don't know a lot about moonshine, I've sipped from many a mason jar and don't like many of them. And it operated really well.

Now it's start playing with recipes, see if I can't get this thing to kick out some really high test stuff as well as more of the one run brandies like I just made.

A little back ground on me... I've got a OLD 48" circular sawmill and I make furniture. I've got a machine shop and am currently setting up a forge and a foundry. I LOVE making things from scratch!

Time to make another sugar wash.

Cheers!

Tools