Home Distiller

Hello All,

I am looking for information on making quality eau de vie. I am a huge fan of good eau de vie and in particular I have been enjoying the stuff that Saint George Spirits is putting out. In addition, I know that they are using a Bavarian Holstein still.

I have been working with a pot still and a fractionating still. In addition I have been reading “The Complete Distiller” by Michael Nixon and Michael McCaw. After playing with these two stills and reading this book several times I can't figure out how to make a top quality eau de vie. Don't get me wrong I have made some tasty stuff but nothing like the commercially produced eau de vie's on the market.

My questions are:

What type of home made still is best suited to make a top quality eau de vie?

My guess to the question above would be to build a compound still. But my next question comes from viewing the Bavarian Holstein website the maker of the still that St. George Spirits uses. Their website talks about plates that are used in the still. From reading “The Complete Distiller” this brings up a question wouldn't this produce a similar results to a compound still with the elements separating at the plates?

This leads me to, what is the best way to make a fractionating still with plates that best represents what they are using?

Thank you all for any help

It's always the same, if you want taste, use a potstill

select good grapes. Crush the grapes and ferment the pulp, seeds and skins. The pulp will disappear, the skins will float to the top and make a cap. Distill twice in a pot still and water it down to drinking proof. This is how good eau de vie is made. Typically eau de vie is not aged and is clear. I make a lot of this stuff because it is one of my favorites also.
Two weeks agos I went to pick chardanelle grapes just for the skins. The grappa I will make in the next week is very much the same flavor as the eau de vie. Without adding water, just yeast, 400 liters of skins made 120 liters of juice that fermented really nice. The juice is very dark for white grapes because of all the tannin from the seeds. This should make a flavorful drink.

pop em dont crush em. if you talkin grape brandy. put em in a sack an
pry em to the bottom. take that sack out no longer that 2 wks an let it work on off. use all juice or just enough water to melt suger if you usein
suger. you aint pleased with it get you some of that frozen concentrate
an put it in your doublein keg an turn the wick back
so im tole

Thank you to everyone who has responded, I appreciate your help. I’m aware that a pot still is often best for retaining flavor in a spirit. What I was trying to do though was to understand how some of the commercially distilled eau de vies are made.

I was trying to better understand how the commercial distilleries do it by understanding the stills that they use and figure out what would be a home version of these stills.

try and set up a double boiler and put some fruit and yeast in there on your low wines run. Big flavors, no scorching.

id be lookin on jug of that stuff you talkin bout an look up distillery.
if they worth a dern they proud of there outfit.
they havein to worry bout botom line

Yeah, like Goose said, check out the web for the distillers site.

I know Clear Creek Distillery has a webs site and talks about their still and process, though not in complete detail. They make pear brandy, and sell it in bottles that contain a pear. Pretty neat.

Yes, as I mentioned above I have been to the Bavarian Holstein website. I knew that they used a Bavarian Holstein still from reading the St. George Spirits website.

My question was asking if anyone had any specific insight into these types of commercial stills? The still has a rectifying column and I was wondering if anyone had any specific info on how best to replicate this process in a home setup.

Most commercial distilleries talk about how their product is made but none in great detail because their not going to hand over their specific processes. That’s why I was trying to just figure it out.

Most of the commercial distilleries are using bubbler plates with no caps or weirs. They are just plates with holes. The pressure from the rising vapor keeps some liquid suspended on the plate but some of the liquid falls through. They overdrive the columns like crazy and the ABV that comes off is around 40%. Some of these stills are continuous design but typically run in very large batch mode. A batch can be very large like 40000 L at a time. I don't think they have the capability to do very good cuts. Most of the commercial plant double distill. The huge column for stripping and a large pot for finishing. The pot generally have a very large goose neck or a short column of the same construction with perforated plates. They also over drive these and the final product is about 70%. They can make good cuts here but most will allow a lot of tails to come over. This is where most get their distinctive flavor. The heart cut is pretty weak in flavor.
I have hung around several distilleries enough to have tasted the product at all stages. One of the distilleries is a very massive commercial plant(vodka from grain). 2 others were medium sized( corn and malt liquor), and one very small rum plant.
There was not much difference in their process and equipment except for the rum plant. The rum plant used a large pot still first and a column second. The Rum was very, very good.
These processes are very hard to duplicate at home because most of us will not consciously allow ourselves to make as bad cuts as the commercial ones do.

These processes are very hard to duplicate at home because most of us will not consciously allow ourselves to make as bad cuts as the commercial ones do.