Use high alcohol producing yeast and dextrose or white sugar as you are just making it for extracting you don’t have to get fancy, I might take a couple of cooks
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mash tuns are more for beer making, or yes i guess grain alcohols, but simple ones can be made using a electric heat pad wrapped around a 5gal bucket with a bungee strap or rope so long as you want to try and hold a higher fermentation temperature.
As for what grain to use its easier and a lot cheaper to just make your ethanol from a sugar wash look up some recipes over on homedistillers . org . They are just sugar, water, yeast, and a nutrient source for the yeast, and sometimes citric acid for fructose/sucrose splitting “inversion” now the nutrients whether old dead yeast cells “yeast bomb” or sources such as tomato paste, dap, or whatever they just provides nutrients for the yeast so they don’t stress out producing more off compound that can affect at least end flavor of ethanol in drinking it, doesnt really mater as much if using the ethanol for extraction purposes but good to follow either way, I typically just used molasses as my nutrient and partial sugar source along side white sugar and made essentially just high percentage white rum “90-95%” for my extraction purposes, also drank the stuff too when diluted and appropriate head and tails were taken, or fractioning off the methanol if reflux distilling.
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I just use the ‘tomato paste recipe’ for my brews. It gives a great clean end product, very neutral tasting 90 to 95% alcohol.
I don’t use a pot still tho, mines a reflux still.
Cheers Johnny
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but methanol has to be removed no matter what type of still, no?
A reflux still is a little beyond my reach at the moment. One day perhaps.
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Yes, its your foreshots or what comes off first, just a more definitive separation in a reflux still.
Now for extraction purposes where your evaporating off all the solvent… methanol does work for that…
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Didn’t know this thread was here.
I’ve been distilling everything from sugar mash to butane in my DIY setups for years.
I’m about to set up my bigger still to cook off 2USG of Coleman’s Camp Stove fuel to get me some pure naphtha to make my wife the best RSO ever.
I’ll take pics and post them if anyone is interested.
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@LabRat just use some of your ethanol and or methanol foreshots instead of naptha
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How pure of hexane is it? I thought it was pretty pure but maybe not.
? I’m not distilling either of those at the time and how much foreshots can you get. Not much.
It’s not hexane or at least not just hexane and the fuel has an anti-rust compound added that you don’t want in your oil so I distill it to get rid of that. Twice usually.
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I’ve been stalking this thread for a while. I have a newer T500 with the copper condenser and a few minor mods and hacks based on info gleaned from Aussiedistiller.
I did my vinegar wash last night, and I am going to do my sacrificial run this weekend with the included 48hour Turbo yeast.
My goals for this still is to make a neutral for extractions. I think it would be fun to get “hooked” on this hobby and go way down the rabbit hole with knowledge and experimentation. I’d love to be able to make something I was proud to drink and show off. I find this conversation invaluable, and appreciate the growing slant thrown in as well. Want to say thank you and let you know there are others out there looking to learn this fascinating skill.
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This is awesome, I wish I had stumbled onto this thread earlier. I have homebrewed for about 7 years, made some whiskey with my dad, and have just this past winter finished an intensive brewing science and engineering program. I’ll have lots to talk about here so…ya know…have the STFUs queued for when I’ve gone too long. It’s late and I haven’t read this yet but I’ll be back!
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