UKC

Continuing one from the Home brew beer thread, which is excellent.

Has anyone had a go at home brewing spirits?

Can you pick up a kit from Wilko's?

In reply to goldmember:

Apparently . . . . Yes.

http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/High_Alcohol_Liqueur_and_Spiri...

In reply to goldmember:

I freeze distilled some mead once and it was lovely, until I realised I'd become blind.....(methanol, propanol etc)

In reply to goldmember

A friend of mine distills his own alcohol. He read a few books, bought a load of copper pipes, thermometers and a tea urn and set to it.

As far as I can tell, there are several important things to consider:

- not boiling the alcohol off to quickly. To get around this he uses a voltage regulator hooked up to the tea urn (so that it is just lightly simmering)

- getting a constant flow of cold water round the condensing pipe (to condense the steam). Kitchen tap on half flow for 6 hours is a lot of water!

- having a valve at the top of the condensing tube to regulate the flow of alcohol

- knowing the dew points for the bad stuff (ethers) and the good stuff (alcohol) so that you don't go blind (basically you chuck away the first xx ml of liquid.

- Having enough base liquid to make it worthwhile. he uses sugar yeast and water for his simplest stuff, but has been know to distill beer mixed up with the dregs of all his old bottles of sherry, port, bells whiskey, etc.

Tastes like shit on its own (think very, very cheap vodka), but can be mellowed out when put in an old whiskey cask for 3 years (thank you Bruichladdich, he says) and/or turned into gin.

Oh, and it's illegal. Fine to own the kit etc, but illegal to actually distill it - bit like growing cannabis I suppose, all fine until you get to the bit that actually counts.

Enjoy!

In reply to edunn:

Good points. Also distilling once will only get the ABV to around 20% so you'll need to distill at twice to get to spirit strength.

In reply to nastyned:

Are you sure? You can get alcohol tolerant strains of yeast that will pretty much get you to 20% and my memories of fractional distillation from my school days were that it's significantly more effective than you state. Also I don't recall any of the distilleries I've been to double distilling the majority of their product. They do strip off the first and last fraction which goes back into the next batch but it's perhaps 20% in total of the volatile compounds, is that maybe what you're thinking of?
jk

In reply to goldmember:

ive made rice wine which was 18%
Distillation i.e. moonshine is illegal and not particularly safe, i wouldnt try it personally

In reply to goldmember:

I make my own gin via a reflux column still.

Brew shops will sell spirit kits that usually involve adding some flavour or essence to a bag of 40% neutral alcohol. They usually taste awful.

Although it is not illegal to own a still it is illegal to operate one without a license from HMRC although there does seem to be a don’t ask don’t tell attitude to things if you are just a hobbyist making a few bottles a month for personal use or to give to friends. HMRC and the police are more worried about you flogging it to the pub or counterfeiting.

There are plenty of very good online resources (mostly US and Australian sites where there is a thriving cottage industry) detailing how you can build your own stills from beer kegs or whatever but I ended up buying an off the shelf reflux still. I can produce a 96% pure neutral spirit, from that I pass the vapours through a basket of botanicals (juniper berries, coriander seed, star-anise, orris root, lemon peel etc) to get the flavoured spirit, i.e. gin before diluting it down to 40% with mineral water. To get the ethanol you have to be very careful to discard the foreshots and heads from the still which are the first low boiling point elements (methanol and acetates)that get produced, they are basically poisonous. It is a process that involves carefully controlling your heat sources and monitoring the temperatures so that you are drawing liquids off at the correct boiling points. It is potential dangerous as at the end of the day you are producing rocket fuel so you need to give it your full attention during the 4 or so hours it takes to turn a 20% wash into a pure spirit!

In reply to edunn:


Don't a lot of the kits just contain turbo yeast. It gets you to about 20 - 25% alcohol before the yeast is killed off.

In reply to ByEek:


Pretty much, also, with turbo yeast you may get a high alcohol yield over a shorter time but there is also a high risk of lots of nasty tasting byproducts.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

WHy is is illegal?

In reply to goldmember:
Never did it myself, but very shortly after arriving in Saudi in the 80's I met a man who knew someone who did.
How the authorities never got to him is a bit of a mystery, cos you could walk past his villa on the compound and knew instantly if he was running another batch.
I tended to stick to home brewed beer and wine. You could buy non alcoholic beer and grape juice in the supermarkets - and strangely enough they also sold sugar and yeast! The german Rauch grape juice came in remarkably useful glass bottles with a Grolsch type stopper - and were much prized. The non alcoholic beer never sold well - mostly because it tasted crap, and most expats would wait until the supermarkets were selling off the stuff that was date expired at a discount. There was the wonderful tale of the guy turning up at the supermarket checkout with 4 cases of out of date Lowenbrau, 3 kilos of sugar and a packet of yeast - only to be told by the checkout operator that he needed more sugar!

In reply to Cú Chullain:

The thing I've never understood about the whole 'it'll make you blind' and 'there's loads of toxic stuff comes off argument' (which I appreciate you haven't made but might be best placed to answer) is that the cider or plum wine or grain liquor you start with can be drunk as is yet the distillate is commonly considered dangerous.

I appreciate the presence of ethanol influences the rate at which the body processes methanol into whatever it is that's toxic to us (some sort of aldehyde?) but presumably if you thoroughly mix the distillate rather than bottling a time/temperature series it's no worse for you than the liquor it's made from? The distillation process actually offers up the possibility of removing some of the unwanted byproducts of fermentation. Is it just that it's relatively easy to do so people who haven't got a clue cock it up?
jk

In reply to goldmember:

https://www.gov.uk/distillers-licence-plant-approval

"Fines and penalties

If you manufacture spirits without a licence, you may be fined up to £5,000. Spirits, stills and other utensils and materials used in the manufacturing process may also be forfeited."

Until the chaps who make Sipsmith gin came along a new distillers license had not been issued in London for over 200 years and they had to fight for years themselves to get a license issued. Its a bit of a sham really as the legislation is clearly aimed at big commercial distillers. They are relaxing a bit now as there is a gin revival going on but it is still a bit too discretionary for my liking!

In reply to jkarran:

I was thinking of Scottish malt whisky which is distilled twice. The wash is only 8 or 9% ABV so it's distilled twice which gets it to around 65% ABV.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Agreed it is a shame, but it is also there to protect us from folks like this:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/five-killed-after-explosion-at-suspect...