Yep 20% off 6 galls sugar and water, my still gets me about 5 liters of 80% or 160 proof on my first run.
I use that for making my RSO, after my first run of RSO the percentage increases more each time.
You never know the raisens might make the RSO taste better lol.
For about 5$ you can get a hydrometer to measure the alcohol content, there are 2 types one is a for specific gravity and wine or beer and one for the alcohol content so make sure you get the right one 
Something like this?
That’s the sucker you want 
Im debating between buying some cheap booze and distilling that down, vrs making my own from scratch. The cheap booze would be a lot faster, the question is how much cheaper would it be to make my own and how long will it take?
If you have no interest in drinking it, what is the cheapest/fastest way to go with the least equipment needs? Can anyone point me to a link with instructions?
Also, how safe is this to do? I have heard horror stories of kegs blowing up…
Edit: Never mind. I got off my lazy ass and Googled it. Dirt cheap and relatively safe to do with some care. No chance of explosion at least 
Looks like around 7 days to do the fermentation, then one or two times through the still should be good enough.
Im going to give this a try!
I just use 10lb of sugar and the turbo yeast, $8 for the yeast and $4 at Costco for the sugar. Put the bucket in your grow room if it will fit it’s the right temps and your plants get lots of C02.
I went with some DADY yeast from Amazon.
It was a lot cheaper than the turbo that I looked at. Should be here in a few days. Frm what I found on a fast search, it is slower than the turbo, but less sensitive to PH and temps.
Im stopping by a brew store today after a dr visit. Going to look at hydrometers and compare prices.
I think maybe it would be a good idea to break this subject off into its own thread - maybe "Using a still to make your own RSO and brewing EverClear "? What do you think @LemonadeJoe ?
Ok guys, I split this off from the THC vrs CBD thread. I think this is worth pursuing on its own.
So - the counter top still linked above is no longer an Amazon Prime item. That means more dificult returns if it breaks and possible restocking charges. Plus many of the reviews make me nervous. The same applies to the stainless/copper stove top still I linked above - lots of iffy reviews that make me nervous.
So, I had a DIY idea - which turns out to not be a new idea at all. Why not take a regular old pressure cooker, and hook it up to a DIY wort chiller to make you own still? Where the weight would normally go just connect some tubing to some copper coils in an icechest and away you go for relatively cheap investment…
I can get a pressure cooker for under $30 and 20 ft of copper for about $30. Add a fitting or two and I should be able to DIY a still for under $75.
I have an old Mirrow pressure cooker that would work but I need to find a new gasket. Its very very old, so not sure I can find one or not, but that would make the cost even less.
Sounds good, I would like to see that experiment.
It would likely work better too. I’m not sure about the air still, but my Source Turbo only holds about 8 oz. of fluid at a time.
Im definitely going to do the whole process - brew up some alcohol, distill it until its close to 190 proof Everclear, then use the still to make RSO and then recover the alcohol.
Yeah, my old pressure cooker is 8 quart, so I an do two gallons of the home brew at a time which will speed things up. Plus I should be able to make the entire batch of RSO at once and recover all the alcohol at one time as well.
I hope 
Totally doable. I’m excited to see what you come up with and at what cost.
So far it looks like its gonna be a bit of extra work, but dirt cheap compared to buying EverClear - especially over time.
I have that 8 qt pressure cooker. The gasket might be salvageble but I screwed up and left the gasket in place with the lid on tight, so its compressed and may not seal very well. There wont be any significant pressure building up, but I dont want alcohol vapors leaking out, so I ordered a new gasket.
Im going to start with 20 ft of 3/8" copper tubing. I think that will be enough. Im also going to try initially with just leaving the coiled copper exposed to the air and see if that cools it enough for good condensation. If not, my next step will be a fan blowing on those coils. That should work for sure. I figure those cheap stills cant have more than 10 ft of copper coiled in the water chamber and they work great. Those counter top stills also cant have more than maybe 10 ft of copper coiled up in the lid where the fan is - if that much. In fact, I suspect 20 ft is going to be over kill.
So my costs so far look like this:
DADY Yeast: $11:00 for a pound. That should make about 245 gallons of brew. If I get any where near 20% alcohol, that will mean about 49 gallons of 190 proof after distilling it down. Enough to last me years and years and years
20ft of 3/8" copper tube is running about $25 or so locally.
I will also need a short piece of 3/8" rubber hose to connect from the pressure cooker lid to the copper. The pressure cooker vent is close to 3/8" diameter, so thats perfect. I think I have some of that somewhere, but a 1ft piece will cost under $1.
New gasket for the pressure cooker is $13.00 from Amazon.
I also ordered this hydrometer kit for $17.00
10 lb of sugar from Costco was around $5 I think.
That should be everything I need other than the normal stuff you need for making RSO.
Total comes to about $72 or sightly more than I would have paid for enough EverClear to do one grow - one liter.
If you dont happen to have an old pressure cooker that your wife will let you ruin, then you can find those at the local Salvation Army or Good Will store for a few bucks. A new 4 qt on Amazon can be had for $30 or so. Bigger ones are in the $40-$60 range. Still well worth it for the savings over time if you make RSO regularly.
The down side to this compared to the counter top ones linked to above is no digital control of temperature. I plan to try using a single burner electric stove controlled by an InkBird controller. Ive done this in the past making RSO and it works fair. The setup has a lot of hysteresis - the temperature swings quite a bit up and down from the ideal temp, but it does work. I expect it to take a little bit of trial and error getting the InkBird settings and the stove heat setting dialed in so the temps stay under about 200 F and above the boiling point of the alcohol - 173 F.
You could always do it on a regular stove, but that means even more standing around watching it. There are always a trade-offs when you go cheap. 
Im following this recipe for the brew.
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Bio-ethanol-From-Regular-Sugar/
Its simple and cheap no frills. For sure not what you would want to do if you wanted to drink the stuff!! 
Im going to make up about 4 gallons of RO water in a 5 gallon plastic bucket, then add 10 lbs of sugar and stir like crazy for a while, then add about 8 grams of the yeast, make sure the PH is under 5.5, cover it up with some fabric and wait. if all goes well, that should net me around 3 qts of 190 proof. More than enough for this grow, and equal to about $170 worth of EverClear at the local rates. Not a bad return on investment! Plus, I hope to recover a good bit of that at the end - I hope
Edit: The yeast arrived today, so Im starting the brewing tonight. The other parts should be here by the weekend, so next week I can start distilling!
Ok, I got the grew bucket started. I ended up with 4.3 gallons of RO water, 10 lbs of sugar and 8.3 gms of yeast.
I filled the pot about 3/4 full of the ro water and put it on the stove to heat, then slowly added the sugar. When it was dissolved - which was long before it boiled - then poored that back into the bucket and stirred well.
I checked the temp to be sure it was under 40 C - it was about 25 C - and then added the yeast and stirred that well. I checked the PH and it was hi. PH needs to be between 4.5 and 5.5, so I added a small dollop of lemon juice. Note that a dollop is a very precise measurement of a random poor. It turned out to be way too much lemon juice as the PH dropped to 3.9. In retrospect I probably should have just added some tap water, but I used regular PH up to bring it back to 4.8.
Its now covered with some fabric I had laying around. I will stir it every so often and re-check PH.
You may have run the temperature a bit high, causing water to vaporize as well as the alcohol. I only go a couple of degrees above the alcohol boiling point.
I have never checked the PH when making alcohol, didn’t know it was necessary. Never had a problem either. Just straight tap water left for 24 hour’s to vape off the chlorine, then put my sugar in leave 24 hour’s in the flower room, then add yeast and off she goes.
@anon32470837, in the future, I would boil the water and the sugar for at least 5 minutes to kill any undesirable microbes that may be in there. Let it cool before adding the yeast though.
I use organic sugar to make sure no pesticides kill the yeasts.
It only kills the old and weak ones 
Thanks guys. I screwed something up. Im not getting any C02 bubbling.
I will respond to some of those comments later. Not feeling well this morning - kidney stones.
Feel better, we will still be here later.
