ethanol for fuel

[theawfulone]

does anyone make ethanol for fuel purposes? is it worth it?

[Ben]

There is a subforum dedicated to it: viewforum.php?f=5

[Steve Broady]

I have not done so myself, so this may not be the most useful comment to you. With that said, from what I understand ethanol for fuel benefits greatly from economies of scale. Unless you just want to do it for the heck of it and to say that you did, you will struggle to make enough to justify the expense and labor. Having a free or ridiculously cheap feed stock will help a lot, as will having enough time and space to run a fairly large still.

As a data point, I work on call full time, easily putting in 80 hours/week. I have an 8 gallon pot still, and 15 gallons of fermentation space. With that, I have produced at most 15 gallons of ~60% alcohol (edit: in the last year). That’s a fair bit more than I can drink, but as fuel, I could burn it in a week or two. There are people here who have the ability to produce far more than I do, as I’m probably close to the bottom end of the spectrum, but that might give you an idea of how fuel production would fit in with your life.

If you do it, I’ll definitely be interested to hear about it!

[Ben]

As a data point, I work on call full time, easily putting in 80 hours/week. I have an 8 gallon pot still, and 15 gallons of fermentation space. With that, I have produced at most 15 gallons of ~60% alcohol.

15 gallons a week of 60% from 15 gallons of fermenter space??? You need to share your secrets, you must be finishing a ferment about every 8 hours?

[Steve Broady]

Yikes!!!! I apologize. I meant to add “in the last year.” That’s my total annual product, not one week.