Hello,

I just built a pot still as I mostly imbibe rum, whisky, and brandy. I attempted to share a picture of my setup, but the auto moderator keeps deleting it due to a shortened link being used. The link is generated by Google pictures. Any suggestions? I am looking forward to sharing ideas. I have made 3 batches of rum, 3 slivovitz, 1 apple brandy, 1 whisky, and 1 muscat grappa. I have degrees in chemistry, and I was a pro brewer for 15 years. I feel like a noob all over again, and I am excited to learn.

Was gonna try to make a grain based (whiskey) new make spirit with muck to see what happened so I added fresh backset and a portion of spent/fermented grains from ferment (strained before distillation bc didn’t wanna scorch grains in homemade pot still) and left it covered with a brew bag/cheesecloth for 2 days before covering with a lid and airlock (hoping I inoculated it a bit then sealed it such that co2 built up and made it less favorable for aerobic mold) but I got the idea (good or bad) to give it a little inoculation with a dollop of sourdough starter and splash of fermented hatch chili water with the hopes of giving a good bit of lactobacillus and potentially other favorable microbes. This is after about 6 weeks. Thoughts?

I have aged a few rums in medium toasted American oak chips; first round was 2 weeks with 1.5% by weight in glass bottles with plenty of head room. I did want some oxidation.

I liked the results and didn't think any of them were close to getting over oaked.

What I have started now is 2% by weight in Worthy Park Overproof (medium ester count). Monymusk (low ester), Barbancourt Haiti Proof and Don Q white rum.

The plan is to taste and collect a 50mL reference sample of each at 2 weeks, one month, and 2 months, then compare and decide if further aging is desired.

My friend mentions ultrasonic baths for accelerated aging, and I have heard of sous vide/elevated temperatures.

In doing online research, and reading about those methods, I don't get a sense of the relative merits, and the flavor effects of the various methods.

Do any of you hobby distillers have some favorite methods, or any beginner friendly references to share?

Edit: Also, to get a wider range of possible flavors, any other wood chips I should try, and what would be the effect of lighter toast or heavier toast or charring?

Longer story short, I spent about a week picking wild grapes at the farm, and I got almost no alcohol out of it. And Im kinda crushed.

I really want to do grape brandy. I was either thinking of buying box wine, or bulk cooking wine and distilling it.

Has anyone tried this before? How did it go?

I know cooking wine is adulterated with salt, but the underlying wine tastes pretty good.

Doing my first batch ever tonight. My sugar/water mix is completely dissolved and in the fermenter, and I’m just waiting for it to cool to pitching temp before adding the turbo yeast and turbo carbon.

Only problem is I didn’t think about needing a proper long stirring paddle until everything was already in the bucket. The spoon I have only reaches about halfway down.

How important is it to actually get all the way to the bottom when mixing in the yeast and carbon? If I stir as deep as I can and give it a good mix, is that enough, or should I hold off until I can get a proper paddle?

The sugar itself is already fully dissolved, so I’m only worried about getting the yeast and carbon distributed properly.

Edited, wording. Carbon, not charcoal. ☠️

I've started noticing when distilling high abv spirits in my reflux still, I occasionally will experience some light lung irritation. Like a little out of breath, the way you feel a few days after getting over a mild cold. Anyone else experience this?

Sounds like a stupid question, but it's part of a curiosity of mine. I'm fairly certain that when a commercial spirit says 40% ABV, it's actually 40%, no matter how it was aged and bottled. They don't use alcoholmeters like us hobby distillers, but a laboratory process.

So, that's what I'm wondering (and hopefully I made you curious as well), what meter reading do you get from a Jack Daniels at 40%? Should be lower than 40% because it will float from all the wood sugars. But what's the actual reading (please take temperature conversion into account if you do it now).

I don't have any in my house as all that I drink is what I make, lol :))

Hello,
I am not getting a proper hydrometer reading on my box wine, can anybody help?

Same as title

Does anyone know of any adapters that can be placed where the glass typically goes in a bubble plate sight glass? Looking at 4"x4"x2" tees right now and they're not exactly cheap.

I don't want to rely on a company to make my alcohol, I want to make it myself.

Mods I'm not spamming anything this isn't my account. Just curious for those of us who make pretty small runs if this is a real option or if this is something they might do themselves.

I only make rum. So we wouldn't even really be the right barrel for me since it hasn't already been used to age bourbon but, curious if a 3-month soak would do anything and if anybody knows where these are available or if they are just made in house?

Edit: So many great answers, thanks!

Some Maris Otter, pale chocolate, flaked oats, and either crystal 60 or 120. Probably decide on a coin toss or just blend. Shooting for 1.060 of 6 gallons of wash. And yes, I am a homebrewer so grain it is lol. Local maltster does malted corn, gonna snag a sack of that soon.

Got into this hobby about 5 months ago. Initially starting with an Air Still, hoping to get a half decent neutral.

Experienced failure after failure, had to improve every process from ferment to spirit run. People were saying it's pretty good, but I learned that I have an extremely low threshold for off notes.

Figured out finally that expecting a 25cm column with some random packing and air cooling wasn't gonna cut it. Got myself a 1.2m column with SPP packing, made specifically for azeotrope and neutral distillation.

Decided to do a blind test with a mid-range wheat-based vodka ($50 for 500ml, well reviewed). These were the very sophisticated notes I took during my trial:

L: Quite clean but has a bit of a yeasty note. Can detect some higher alcohols. Smell is passable. Likely the home made one. 
R: Way smoother. No off notes at all. Goes down well. Definitely the commercial.
Mine was R.
L: Smells tiny bit worse than R, but both are good. Yeasty note. Diffused burn on the tongue. Gross to swallow.
R: Virtually no smell. Typical vodka taste but it just rests on the tongue much easier. Goes down really nicely, nice mild burn but no after taste. 
Mine was R.

Needless to say, very happy with the results. I did another trial with my first run on the still (wash made with raisins, wheat and oats), and this one failed, tasted worse than the commercial. So I guess wash is very important, will be sticking to this one.

the recipe im following cooks the wash in 5 gallons of water the pot i have only holds 3 so could i cook said wash in the 3 gallons of waterer and add the extra 2 ones my bucket or nah

So made some apple pie moonshine today. I've done it a few times in years past and just used regular apple juice and cider but this time I used some cold pressed unfiltered apple juice and when I added my everclear it turned out like big white ish cloudy clumps in it that don't really settle but stay suspended. Normally I have a brownish cinnamon type sediment which is fine. But this time ! strained it which got most of the cinnamon sediment which is cool. But I was reading that this may be pectin from the unfiltered apple juice? I just tried to buy a ultrafine nylon mesh strainer which should be here on Wednesday but any thoughts?

I've used this refractometer for sugarwashes before. It is an alcohol ref. 0-80% abv. yes i calibrate it. it also has atc. I typically use it to monitor my progress trough a run, to know when to stop distilling.

here's the thing: my current wash im running is 3.5kg sugar, 700g store bought grain products for flavor. thats for 20 liter. At the very end [of my stripping run] im getting a reading of 25-30% and i know by taste that it doesnt have any more than 4% abv at most.

could it be fusel oils in late tails of my stripping run?

[EDIT]

We had a couple very late fronts, and it cut our normal aple production to a pittance. It was so bad that I didn't bother spraying. I can probably collect 100lbs but I expect them to be very buggy.

This year was to be my fist year using our apples and pears for distilling. We didn't get any pears. How do you more experienced distillery deal with waste fruit. I understand if the advice is to cut bait until next year.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

I had this custom built by North Georgia Still Company a couple of years ago and have been in love with it ever since I received it. I worked with them over a couple of months to make the vision a reality and it's a true one of a kind work of copper art. They added several custom touches to make it incredibly special and it really was such an amazing experience; they really went out of their way on this.

I designed it after learning and researching for almost a year. They refined it and made it proper based on actual knowledge vs theory.

It's a 3 gallon main boiler with a custom cap. 2 x 1/2 gallon thumpers with infusion ports. 1 gallon condenser with about 10 ft of copper coil in it. Full tri-clamps at every connection. I use the 4x 6 gallon conical stainless steel Ss Brewtech fermenters for various batches of mash. I wrapped the thumpers with Reflectix to help insulate them from heat loss and produce a more even temperature once things start flowing from vessel to vessel.

I actually don't drink much, considering the investment, but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE giving out impossibly unique gifts for various occasions, that could never have existed if I hadn't produced it myself.

Just wanted to share with this community what I've been sitting on and maybe make some friends and learn more about what others are accomplishing with their setups. It's apple season right now and brandy is on the menu next. Cheers!

Made an adapter to use a glass cup to keep the fruit flys out of the parrot, but it fogs up even though the offtake is cold...

Does anyone know how to prevent the condensation?

Also so far it works like a charm in keeping the fruit flys away from the offtake.

About 3 months ago I started an experiment where I tried to replicate the traditional baiju fermentation and production process, and one ended up working, the other got very infected and ultimately pitched instead of trying to run it.

Took an airstill, 5 cups of water, a crudely made stainless steel mesh basket (to separate the grain from the heating element) 1,000g of the fermented grain.

I ended up collecting 350 ml of ~23% , it started coming off at about 50% and I stopped once it was coming off at 10%.

I tasted a few drops (and spit it out due to how I steamed the grains) and it didn't taste as bad as the actual baiju iv tried in the past...

Ultimately id count this as a success but so far only on a small scale and if anyone wanted to scale it up they would have to figure out how to steam strip a large amount of grain efficiently, not sure how to do it with my equipment at any rate...

What I learned was that AYLY works just fine for a solid state fermentation yeast/enzyme additive. The other one I tried was the rice wine yeast balls you can get at any Asian market, those initial didn't seem to be doing anything (by smell, where the AYLY was smelling very boozie at the same time) uncovering the fermenter and covering with cheese cloth seemed to help l... Untill it got infected...

It took me 3 months to run the project not because it took that long to ferment but because I didn't have time/ forgot about it for a while.

If anyone wants to try this out in I would highly recommend as it's very interesting and produces a very interesting flavor profile. Also I'd be very interested in anyone else's process and/ or results.

Has anybody bought a still from Moonshine Distiller? If so, what are your thoughts? I can't find any YouTube reviews, so I'm asking you--

They're a company out of Colorado making stainless steel stills.

Mile Hi Distillery raised their prices, so I'm looking at MD's 13 gallon pot still.

(I don't want to make my own.)

I’m trying to do my first distillation this weekend. I’ve gotten everything prepared and been doing a lot of research, but then it hit me, I’m at a mile elevation, which should lower the cuts for heads, hearts, and tails. I scoured the internet to no avail. Does anyone have experience distilling at this elevation that can share general cut temps, just to aid me in my first distillation?

Edit: Thanks everyone for chiming in! All of your advice is sincerely appreciated!

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I want to one day distill alcohol to start my own business, but I'm too afraid to do it because toxic alcohol causes blindness (Yes, I'm overreacting).