I noticed we have a lot of homebrewers here. This thread should serve to be a place to share your methods, ideas, recipes, and general DIY experiences. I don’t have a setup yet, but i’ve always wanted a reflux column.
Tagging the ones I know do this: @horribleherk56 @Mr.Sparkle
Feel free to jump in! ANYTHING to do with home distillation is welcome.
Ive always wanted to try this, but never have. Im in 
Especially if there is a cheap, easy way to recover the EverClear I use to make RSO. That would be awesome!
So glad to see this thread. True Cannabis Absinthe has been my goal for a long while, and without distillation it’s just a Green Dragon, not Absinthe.
To whomever this may concern: What type of liquor do you usually/prefer to produce, Whiskey? Brandy?
I really would like to get into making a few varieties.
Obviously just really high proof for extraction purposes.
A nice brandy.
Someday I’d like to try my hand at scotch. I LOVE scotch but can’t stand paying so much for a bottle. My favorite any occasion is Lagavulin 16 year. I really like the 30 year but it’s spendy.
I’ve been in destilling stems and male plants for essential oils, the outcome is very small, but you will have some of the best.
If doin it with a small one you’ll be buying acetone for removing the last bits of oils out of your destillery, but of course some alcohol with good MJ-terps can be very interesting. Hmm maybe Ill try that out…
hey jelly thanks for the home & ive built my setup pretty much from thrift store items been doing this for about a year & starting to generate some tradition style grain /fruit hybrid spirits that don’t generate the rubbing alcohol flavored stuff that tears your head off I’ll soon be doing a sour mash run that has been fermented for a month you’ve given me a nice place to share the experience I’ll be explaining my equip (simple) method , ingredients, as well as the process & outcome all based on traditional pioneers inspired stuff I’m in cali but my ancestors came from Oklahoma
Been off and on distilling now for a decade. Had a few setups, currently im running a 2" Bokakob Reflux head that i made as a dual coil directional condenser with a cold finger.
And i run it on a 24quart pot and run it on a stove had the same pot for a decade now, but i will eventually upgrade to a 7-8gal SS milk vessel with internal heating element like the picture below. Here i was borrowing the boiler from a buddy to give it a go.
Hard alcohol of choice is Rum typically mixed with Coke, eventual plan that ive had for ever is to make my own Sodas/Pops as well and make my own mixed bottled drinks for fun.
I also enjoy sipping liquors, such as fruit brandies or maceration’s which i typically make when it’s fruit season. And enjoy rye whiskeys and lighter flavored whiskeys as well but haven’t made too many.
Have some good recipes for amaretto, bailey “Irish cream”, strawberry liquiers and few other i will share in time.
I will say head over to homedistillers.org for getting into the hobby as they have everything you need to know or want to know.
But feel free to ask me any questions, and i’ll help out how i can.
Just brewed up a batch of a New England IPA yesterday, hopefully be ready in a couple weeks. Citra, Mosaic & Amarillo…
I’m wanting to make a prickly pear/rice mash as soon as the cactus down in the sj. Valley start putting out fruit
I’d love to make my own gin!!!
Base info about distilling.
Distilling all it does is strip the alcohol out of a low % wash/beer/wine whatever and condense it to a higher %. The process is done through evaporation and condensing. Ethanol “alcohol” has a lower boiling point “78C or 173F” than water “100C or 212F” so in the process one will boil off the alcohol before the water will have a chance to change to a vapor aka"steam". Then we just condense that vapor back into a liquid through cooling getting a condensed higher proof end product.
Still types, you more or less have two types. Potstill styles are where all vapor produced is pushed over to your condenser and made back into liquid, they are great for flavored alcohols, rums, whiskeys, brandys, anything where you want the flavor of your wash “starting batch” to transfer over into your final product. The other type is reflux/fractional stills where you condense your vapor and send some of that condensed liquid back down your column to be reheated to become vapor again. That causes the vapor to stratify and separate out so you will only have pure alcohol vapor at the top of your column. The advantage of this is you can make really high proof alcohol in a single run if desired. Where as a pot still will take many runs and some flavor does come over to get almost the same high %. So they are awesome for neutral spirits such as vodka, and or neutral spirit bases where your adding flavor afterwards such as liqueurs.
Reflux columns are usually the best starting point as apart from doing high proof neutral spirits they can also be run in a potstill style operation where you off take all the vapor you condense. Pot stills have to run it multiple times to get high proof stuff 80+%, but they are great for the flavored stuff.
Alcohol which is Ethanol can only be distilled up to 95.6% as it creates a covalent bond with water. You can further chemically dry or use molecular sieves to make it 100% but it will literally put water out of the air to bring it back down to 95.6%.
Your starting wash can be made from literately anything that has a starch or fermentable sugar that yeast can feed on which in turn produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, plus a whole bunch of minor things. Myself i typically make rum batches literally composed of Water, sugar, molasses, and yeast. The molasses typically provided enough nutrients for the yeast to have no issue, its no different than out plants. But you can literally make washes out of just water sugar and yeast so long as you have enough.
Fermentation typically takes a week to two with a bit of time to have the yeast settle out, then your ready to run a batch.
My average cost for my rum washes work out to be around $1.30 a bottle “750ml or 26oz” at 40-45% alcohol content, electricity cost included.
Oh and proof for those in the three counties in the world that don’t use SI units or still use it as measurement is an older type measurement system where you literally mixed alcohol with gun powder which would be lit to see if the gunpowder would go off, if it did it was “proof” that it was high alcohol content. But Proof is actually just double what the percentage is for 80proof = 40% Alcohol by volume.
A old shot of some Strawberry and peach maceration’s, all natural color, would just drain and cover in sugar after this and decant the liquid off after a week or so.
Would you say it’s more expensive to make a higher proof bottle.
What I mean to say is if a 750ml @ ~42% costs ~$1.30, does 750ml of ~84% cost ~2.60?
$18.00/750ml of 190° leaves stress wrinkles in my wallet. 
can you not use 99% isopropyl alcohol ?
I often put it into edibles, so I like a food grade solvent. In the end it might not make a difference, but using iso feels against the grain when I’m going out of the way to use organic sugar, flour, and butter, ya know?
Are you trying to ask me a question, lol. 
99%
lol wow i didn’t realize what thread i was in i thought it was the extract thread.
unfortunately i’m allergic to alcohol or i’d probably have a still… drinking it makes me dizzy, slur, things like that
Funny, does the same thing to me, lol.
99%
Just started this hobby so I’m not an expert yet. First try was a banana run. The smell of the liquid that came out was very banana like with a hint of racing fuel. Came out at 100 prof it burned all the way down. Getting ready to do another run of banana. The boy and I built this pot still from scrap. Building a better column for it. The treaded 3" copper fitting I need costs $85.oo. Sad part is I seen one at the scrap yard but the MFers would sell it to me.
What I would like to know. Would adding molasses to the batch increase the yield?
