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Tony's Steps to Making Homemade Alcohol
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- Check that its legal to distil in your country (it probably ain't).
- Make sure you clearly understand what you're doing.
- Make or buy a decent still. Only use a
POT still if you intend on making whiskey/schnapps etc (ie flavoured by the mash). Use a REFLUX or
FRACTIONATING still to make neutral (tasteless) alcohol to flavour up later.
- To prepare 18-20 L of wash for use ....
- Whiskey : Heat 4 kg cracked or crushed malt with 18 L of water to 63-65oC, and hold there for 1-1.5 hours. Heat to 73-75oC, then strain off and keep liquid, using 250 mL of hot water to rinse the grains (should have an initial specific gravity of 1.050).
- Vodka : dissolve 5 kg of sugar & 60 g of nutrients in 20 L of water
- Rum : as per vodka, but use some brown sugar or mollasses, to give an initial specific gravity (SG) of around 1.06 - 1.07.
- Cool the wash to below 30oC, then add hydrated yeast.
- Ferment the wash at a constant 25oC until airlock stops bubbling.
- Let settle for a day, then syphon carefully into the still.
- Bring up to boiling temperature (start the cooling water through the condensors once you
get to about 50-60oC), then once it has started distilling;
- Discard the first 50 mL's (this may contain some methanol),
- Collect the next 2-3L of distillate.
- Segregate the distillate into 500 mL containers as you collect it.
- Stop distilling once the temperature gets to 96oC (else the flavours get nasty).
- Set aside any distillate which smells of tails/fusels. This can be added to the wash
of the next run, and cleaned up then.
- Turn off the power, then the cooling water. Open the lid, so that it doesn't create a
vacuum inside the still & crush it. Wash up the still, dry it well, and then store/hide the pieces.
- If you've made a neutral spirit, dilute it down to 30-50 % purity,
then soak it with carbon for a week or two to help clean up
any flavours still present.
- Dilute it down to drinking strength (20-40%), then age and
flavour the spirit, using either commercial essences, oak chips, fruits.
- Find a comfortable spot to sit, put on your music of choice, then sip & enjoy with the ones you love.
- If you have any questions, ask them on the Homedistiller Forums.
This is a very active group of people, and questions are answered rapidly.
