Home Distiller

Heya,

i'm trying to do a nice write-up of the recipes in the tried and true subforum. (This thread might actually fit in there better than here in Recipe Development, but "tried and true" is locked. Mods feel free to move this around if you find a better spot for it!)

I'd love to collect the recipes in a single document, in a condensed, uniform presentation. Here's where it comes in handy that i should also brush up on my latex skills! The process is ongoing, so don't hold your breath for it, i only work on it whenever i have time on my hands and feel like it. Rest assured though that i usually finish what i begin, so the final version will be posted some time. With it, i will also post the .tex file (the source code so to speak), allowing for modifications and future additions.

So if the document will only be finished at some vague point in the far future, then why am i posting this? Two reasons:

• Motivation. Now that i have declared that i'll do it, i hope to find more impetus to get it done in a timely fashion.
• Feedback. Even from this first draft, you will get a good idea of what i have in mind. I value feedback, and receiving it at this early stage would allow for easy integration of changes. Also i'm concerned that with my heavy editing, some recipes might not be regarded as faithful anymore, if that should have happened then i'll be glad to be informed about it!

EDIT 2018-05-11: added the current version, "WIP2".

Great idea and contribution hefezelle!

You know what would be fantastic, at least I think? If we could get a photo of each T&T recipe's mash about 24 hours into the recipe. Maybe some of them some point in each thread have a photo, maybe not. Could we get a community effort to 'volunteer' for people to make each recipe otherwise and to take a good resolution photo of their mash 24 hours in to be posted next to/under the title of the recipe? It's sort of like a cook book, and in cook books you always have a picture of the finished product! Another great thing would be next to that, a picture of a bottle or jar of the finished product, after distillation and aging (or whatever treatment is appropriate per recipe). I think it would be amazing to see the title of each T&T and then see a photo of the mash at 24 hours, next to a photo of the finished product once distilled and aged off or whatever... It would make a really handsome PDF too.

distiller_dresden wrote: You know what would be fantastic, at least I think? If we could get a photo of each T&T recipe's mash about 24 hours into the recipe.
[...] Another great thing would be next to that, a picture of a bottle or jar of the finished product, after distillation and aging (or whatever treatment is appropriate per recipe).

Ha, this is exactly why i posted about my project this early! I love the idea of incorporating pictures, that's a brilliant suggestion, thank you!
Now i'm thinking about how to best achieve a consistent, uniform look in the photos as well. If no instructions other than "hey can you make a pic of your mash and product plz?" were given, i'd wager the result would hardly follow any consistent aesthetic. My guess is it'd be best to provide example photos which people can then try to emulate when shooting their mash and product. 24h in and the final product do seem like ideal photo opportunities. Maybe also the mash when fermentation has ceased. Here's what i'd love to see in the pics:

• All use the same vessel, eg. a mason jar filled to 80% with mash, and a generic round, tall clear glass 1L/quart bottle filled to just below the "shoulders" for the product.
• All photos taken outside, on an overcast day, yielding decent illumination without heavy shadows.
• The glass is standing on a table of specified color (white? wood? black?). The distance to the far edge of the table should be specified.
• The table and the glass vessels are clean and shiny, no grease, dirt and fingerprints.
• The background is green grass or green woods, heavily blurred (this would require a DSLR to do really well). Or maybe a matte white wall with specified distance to the bottle.
• Make sure the photo isn't overexposed, with a white object on the side (tat's gonna get cropped). This will allow for color correction, eliminating different tints on different photos.
• This one's tricky: Get the perspective right. This means to take the photo from the right height, but also from the right distance (which means using a camera with a large field o view will require heavy cropping, resulting in a low res image).

I like to do things as best i can once i'm invested, so please understand that my standard for the photos i'd like to use are high as well, that's why i'm telling you all this nit-picky stuff!

Well, your ideas are better than mine, I had the seed, you grew a forest!! I like it all. I hope you can get there, there are enough distillers we should all be able to, like even if you don't have a 'white' table, you got a sheet you can put on a table.

The mash, that'll be tricky because some use tubs, some use carboys. I actually like the look of the top of a tub once the mash has gotten going from above, but maybe it's because I use tubs. But either way that's what I was thinking of, the look of that foamy top either in the carboy or the tub, that'll be the thing someone recreating a recipe will look for, so a mason jar of mash won't help them. Now in the end, that will indeed, a jar of the 'cleared' wash, then the finished product, I love those three example photos. That's three 'steps' that will be points of reference for someone to definitely know they've done the recipe. For things like an absinthe it would really be helpful, I'd guess.

It'd be cool to get a mod to announce the project somehow so you could have 'photo submissions'.

Fantastic effort and clearly presented .

I will definitely be printing a copy of this when its done .

Absolutely love the metric version . Will there be an imperial version ?

Only suggestion might be links to the original ( not that matters because you have done such s splendid job ) but also to the discussion on each .

Impressive work to be commended!
Thank you for adding to the community!

Awesome work buddy and very clearly written making it a breeze to read and follow. Will be printing off a copy of this and have it laminated once you finish. It will live on a hook in my stillin room.
I hope you are going to include Uncle Jessie’s Sour Mash!!!!!! #1 recipe in my book!

Love this to much hey
Maybe a picture for page first, some ideas
This was the search terms: site:http://homedistiller.org/forum drink


viewtopic.php?f=11&t=37594
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=48146
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=32496
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6975

Cool...

Thanks everybody for the kind words!
It really does help the motivation to see that one's work is useful and appreciated.

Yummyrum wrote:Absolutely love the metric version . Will there be an imperial version ?

Yes, my current plan is to finish the metric version, polish it up to its final state, then create a variation with all measures converted to US units, which shouldn't be too much of a hassle once i have the metric version. I'm not sure whether i should do an imperial (as in British imperial units) version too - which would be different from the US unit system, as i found out only yesterday
Both versions will be posted as .pdf, in both A4 and letterpaper format. And i'll post the .tex files, as promised previously.

Yummyrum wrote:Only suggestion might be links to the original ( not that matters because you have done such s splendid job ) but also to the discussion on each .

Good idea! I've included hyperlinks to the ongoing thread in each recipe now.

Copperhead road wrote:Awesome work buddy and very clearly written making it a breeze to read and follow.

Thank you, this (along with comparability of recipes) was my core concern, and why i started with the project in the first place. As is always the case with text that a single mind writes, it is bound to be unintuitive, confusing, too brief or plain wrong in some spots. I try to minimize this, but i greatly value critique if it tells me where to be more concise!

Copperhead road wrote:I hope you are going to include Uncle Jessie’s Sour Mash!!!!!! #1 recipe in my book!

Rest assured you will find it in there! For now i'm planning to include every recipe in the "tried and true recipe book" forum, and possibly more, but i'll see where this road takes me once i'm on the end of it. Starting with the sugar washes, i've included the rums by now, and am proceeding with cereal and corn. Grain mashes will come after that, then gin maybe, leading over to cordials/infusions/etc. Each recipe starts on a new page, so everyone could individually exclude any number of the recipes when printing their copy.


I'll post the current version in a few moments, as i've included some good suggestions, expanded it, and tinkered with it a bit.

Mashins what is that in the picture of beside the test cylinder and hydrometer, ??? The large container with thing on an angle?
It’s been doing my head in trying to work it out lol

Copperhead road wrote: It’s been doing my head in trying to work it out lol

Mine too copper

Copperhead road wrote:Mashins what is that in the picture of beside the test cylinder and hydrometer, ??? The large container with thing on an angle?
It’s been doing my head in trying to work it out lol

Maybe it could be something that gives an indication of the gravity of the wash using vacuum and the density of the liquid????????

johnsparrow wrote:

Copperhead road wrote:Mashins what is that in the picture of beside the test cylinder and hydrometer, ??? The large container with thing on an angle?
It’s been doing my head in trying to work it out lol

Maybe it could be something that gives an indication of the gravity of the wash using vacuum and the density of the liquid????????

Hi no, not mine, from a thread(just above picture) by GingerBreadMan. No idea sorry

Ok for whatever reason i can't edit the original post anymore, even though it worked twice before.

So contrary to the all-caps statement at the top of the first post that now has become a glaring, blatant lie, i'll attach the current WIP version to this post. Mainly there's more recipes added, and the "contents" section looks less messy. As always: Critique is welcomed!

Hey mashins for Deathwish wheat germ it is one packet of Redstar champagne yeast per 16oz of wheat germ/batch, so however that scales up for the 2kg from 1lb/16oz, I assume it would be several packets of Redstar champagne yeast.

It's called "Redstar Premier Blanc" and there are 5 grams per packet - so that should help you figure out the scale up for the book recipe. Looking fine! I just did that one so that's how I'm specifically familiar with it.

Copperhead road wrote:Mashins what is that in the picture of beside the test cylinder and hydrometer, ??? The large container with thing on an angle?
It’s been doing my head in trying to work it out lol

To me it looks like a Smooth carboy (or Gallon jug) with racking cane in it.

hefezelle wrote:Ok for whatever reason i can't edit the original post anymore, even though it worked twice before.

So contrary to the all-caps statement at the top of the first post that now has become a glaring, blatant lie, i'll attach the current WIP version to this post. Mainly there's more recipes added, and the "contents" section looks less messy. As always: Critique is welcomed!

Looking good bro

Update on the current version!

I've added a few more recipes, and decided to include some basic theory and better introduction, meaning i've restructured a little at the beginning and will include some more non-recipe-specific tips that i gathered on here. Got my work cut out for me, but it's good fun i'm having doing it, and good golly do i feel like i've learnt a lot already! The best way to understand something is to try and explain it to someone else, after all!

My plan for the near future is to include the remaining recipes and write the obvious TODOs, then i'll think about the best way to get pics in there.

As always, give me a holler if you find anything worth correcting or amending, there's bound to be chance for improvement somewhere by now!

Update on the current version!

Some of the all-grain recipes have made it in now, but mostly i've filled out the missing parts in Universal Instructions, and corrected typos that friends have pointed out to me.

hefezelle I owe you a drink my friend. this is a very nice undertaking. thank you.

Hefezell,

many thanks for contributing, a wonderful product. Could I add another twist please. This PDF could be used as a revenue stream for HD. If the mods and UJ made it a downloadable PDF with a small price attached so people could buy it then your idea would have a long lasting beneficial result. For those of us already here let it be free if they stumble across this thread but any of us reading this are already in the bowels of this Web site right here, how many people will dip in and never dive in or contribute? Let's trade with such transient visitors, their few bob for this information.

Following on from this if some of the masters on HD would do a short video (possibly as easy as temporarily uploading a utube video so it could be burned onto a DVD) on various aspects of our hobby, such as mashing, fermenting, yeast growing, yeast harvesting, running different the different types of rigs, ageing etc etc, we would end up with a wonderful library that would benefit all and put UJess on a better solid footing vis a vis income to sustain this Web site. Think of the first time each person stumbled on HD, there are plenty of us who would gladly have parted with a reasonable sum to get a library of quality material. There is a roaring unserviced demand for such information.

As I type this there is another PDF waiting to be made arising from the fundamental first readings we all were correctly hounded into reading. There have to be loads more PDFs awaiting.

There is an encyclopedia in the making here.

Come on folks, get the creative enterpreunarial thinking hats on. We have information bursting out of this site, waiting to be formulated into commercial products. I just hope some horrible bastard does not steal this wonderful info and essentially steal what has been freely and benovently available to all of us. If the mods want to deletes this contribution in case they are already working on such a product, please delete immediately. I write this solely for the good of HD.

Let me repeat - for those of us in the depths of this Web site let the information be free, but for the transient visitors let's trade. A quality product will bring them back to get more involved - the satisfied customer will return!

Jim D.

Jimy Dee wrote:Hefezell,

many thanks for contributing, a wonderful product. Could I add another twist please. This PDF could be used as a revenue stream for HD. If the mods and UJ made it a downloadable PDF with a small price attached so people could buy it then your idea would have a long lasting beneficial result. For those of us already here let it be free if they stumble across this thread but any of us reading this are already in the bowels of this Web site right here, how many people will dip in and never dive in or contribute? Let's trade with such transient visitors, their few bob for this information.

Following on from this if some of the masters on HD would do a short video (possibly as easy as temporarily uploading a utube video so it could be burned onto a DVD) on various aspects of our hobby, such as mashing, fermenting, yeast growing, yeast harvesting, running different the different types of rigs, ageing etc etc, we would end up with a wonderful library that would benefit all and put UJess on a better solid footing vis a vis income to sustain this Web site. Think of the first time each person stumbled on HD, there are plenty of us who would gladly have parted with a reasonable sum to get a library of quality material. There is a roaring unserviced demand for such information.

As I type this there is another PDF waiting to be made arising from the fundamental first readings we all were correctly hounded into reading. There have to be loads more PDFs awaiting.

There is an encyclopedia in the making here.

Come on folks, get the creative enterpreunarial thinking hats on. We have information bursting out of this site, waiting to be formulated into commercial products. I just hope some horrible bastard does not steal this wonderful info and essentially steal what has been freely and benovently available to all of us. If the mods want to deletes this contribution in case they are already working on such a product, please delete immediately. I write this solely for the good of HD.

Let me repeat - for those of us in the depths of this Web site let the information be free, but for the transient visitors let's trade. A quality product will bring them back to get more involved - the satisfied customer will return!

Jim D.

I like where your head's at, unfortunately monetizing anyting draws attention to it. Donations don't draw the same attention.

As for the videos I would love a way to learn from some of these old timers but I think I'll stick to the forums. I would never create a video and put it out there for sale about my distilling and I would expect the some of the guys on the website that I would want to learn from will be even more adverse to it.

Jimy Dee wrote:This PDF could be used as a revenue stream for HD.

You bring up a good point, but i fear i'm thinking of something very different to your suggestion. Up till now i've tried to include references to the parent site and especially the forum whenever it makes sense, in the hope of people coming over here, learning to appreciate it, and eventually donating if it is within their capability. I think i will now explicitly mention that this site runs on donations, and that people enjoying the pdf should show their gratitude by donating here, if they want to.

But i am very much against charging money for the document, that would go against my nature. I am not much of a capitalist, and too much of an idealist to hide the valuable information that was provided to me on here by all of you behind a paywall. People from all over the world, even those with little money on their hands, should be allowed access to the wealth of knowledge gathered here (and consequently in the pdf). Those that appreciate it, will give something back in return, much as i do by writing the pdf and providing it to the community. There are many ways to show gratitude, and money is not always the best mean to do so, not for all of us. Even if it was provided for free only for menbers, or members who donated, it would not feel right to me. Capitalizing is too much of a slippery slope in my opinion. Furthermore the pdf will be spread over the net for free anyway (at least i like to hope it will be spread ), so i'd rather call to the good will and sense of fairness within each individual.

Sorry for the lengthy elaboration, but i wanted to make myself understood as best i can.

Hefez, this is truely a fine piece of workmanship. Would love to see the original recipe authors fill in the blanks to complete you work (i.e. "An unspecified amount of ...."). Please keep it up!

Hefe & Jon, what ever is best for HD is foremost. I was only tring to ease financing this site. I take both your points on board. JD

Update on the current version!

Only 8 more recipes to incorporate until the (picture-free) metric version might be considered done, yay! I've tried to get some kind of flow to the order in which the recipes are listed, grouping them by similarity - but i'm not quite convinced i've found the best structure yet, so tell me if you feel some other sequence might feel more natural!
Additions are more recipes, a paragraph on donating to this site, and some minor fixed typos i believe.
A fairly recent thought i had is: It might be of value to include with each recipe the time frame that it takes from beginning to final product. Will play around and see how that looks for the next version.

Wonderful and beautiful work, hefezelle. The annotations and links make this a lively, valuable document.

Looking really good hefezelle.

There's a bit of an ambiguity in "density" top of page 9 where you say that a hydrometer is sometimes knon as an alcometer. They are slightly different versions of similar things,, as I'm sure you know, (if alcometer = what I know as "alcoholometer" ) I suggest you either explain the difference or just drop the "alcometer" reference.

Hope you don't mind me mentioning this

Pikey wrote: There's a bit of an ambiguity in "density" top of page 9 where you say that a hydrometer is sometimes knon as an alcometer.

Good catch, thanks for pointing that out! "Alcometer" seems to more frequently be used for breath analyzers, so i actually meant "alcohol meter". But the word "hydrometer" seems to be the more general term, so i changed the sentence to

A hydrometer can be emplyed to measure buoyancy, and therefor the density of the surrounding liquid. The correct use and interpretation of measurements from a hydrometer are more advanced than one would think, since factors such as temperature, mixtures of more than two components, air bubbles, or cohesion to a glass wall will skew the readings.

So i also added the "mixtures of more than two components"-part, since that seems to be something many newbies aren't aware of. Better like that? Again, thanks for the feedback, this is how the document gets more correct, precise, and useful!