Making booze (not just beers)

[James1214]

whats up mofukkas

so ive decided to get decidedly medieval and brew some mead.

ive got all the hardware, and half of the honey i need for a 5 gallon brew. anyone have tips or experience in the brewcraft? the most important tip i have received so far is to fastidiously clean and sterilize the carboy.

pics this weekend when i get the brew on

[Chovie D]

http://riffrocklives.com/forum/index.php?topic=8316.0

theres a couple other homebrewing threads here too.

sterilization is key , yes. and patience, mead takes a Loooooong time.

[James1214]

I saw those... however I suppose my thought was to make this a thread about other alcohol making. Not just beers.

Who has made a still? Anyone?

[MadJohnShaft]

Mead is fermented, not distilled.  It's like making beer but a tenth of the fuss and mess.   I always liked going to the grocery store and buying giant amounts of honey. "Uh..............I'm trying to meet more bees".






Distilling hard alcohol is illegal - so you got that going for you.  Wouldn't be much to it though. American Science and Surplus would have all the stuff.

[James1214]

Not entirely correct there shaft. Its illegal to distill for drinking purposes however you can purchase stills and own them for making essential oils and alcohols for aromatherapy and other hippy stuff..... and what you do with them on your own property is your own damn business even if you're rocking the white lightning.

[MadJohnShaft]

Awesome story.... my Brother In Law owns a remodeling business....


They were remodeling a house from the 1920s and in a hidden room above the porch when they opened it up they found a full setup for a Still.   The current owner thought a guy from Chicago had owned it at one point, so some Chicago Mafioso had a hidden still.

[neighbor664]

It's not yet illegal to own a stovetop pressure cooker. It is very easy to make one into a small batch still.
I was making moonshine back in my parents house when I was a kid.

[khoomeizhi]

i've done a fair amount of mead now. i like to take 'em all the way to dryness, with wild-caught yeasts. super old-school. have yet to do a plain mead with only honey, with the 'maybe' exception being the bochet we bottled a couple of months ago: medieval burnt honey mead. i'd like to try some freeze-distilling with a bgger batch at some point (most of the time i do 1-gal batches)...

[NCR600]

whats up mofukkas

so ive decided to get decidedly medieval and brew some mead.

ive got all the hardware, and half of the honey i need for a 5 gallon brew. anyone have tips or experience in the brewcraft? the most important tip i have received so far is to fastidiously clean and sterilize the carboy.

pics this weekend when i get the brew on

Pretty much this. You need something to clean with, and something to sanitise. Any cleaner that has over 25% w/w Sodium Percarbonate and no scent additives will work well as a cleaner. Baby diaper cleaner is easy to find but you can get pure sodium percarbonate from a home brew store and it works much better. It will also sanitise, but as you need to rinse it off, it's pretty much useless for sanitation. To sanitise properly, you really need something you don't have to rinse off. I use Starsan, which is an acid sanitiser made for the dairy industry, but you can also use Idophor disinfectant. The Starsan is good value, I bought a litre bottle of it which has lasted 2 years diluting it to the recomended ratio of 1.5ml/litre of tap water.

Are you going to use a known yeast, or go wild?

[NCR600]

Who has made a still? Anyone?

uhh, I'll just leave this here, okay?

Two men are fighting for their lives in a Brisbane hospital after drinking a bad batch of home-made grappa that may have killed two of their mates.

Four men were drinking the Italian grape-based spirit on a property at Ballandean, near Stanthorpe in south-east Queensland, at the weekend.

Joel Lynam, 21, died at the property on Sunday from suspected methanol poisoning.

Bryan Wilmot, 30, was later rushed to Toowoomba hospital in a critical condition. He died late yesterday.

Joel Lynam's brother Josh Lynam and friend Vincent Summers remain critically ill in the intensive care unit at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital.
Video: Elise Worthington reports on the Grappa poisoning (ABC News)

Ballandean is a wine-producing area and locals say there is a tradition of making grappa from the left-over grape skins.
Bryan Wilmot died on Monday Photo: Bryan Wilmot, 30, was rushed to Toowoomba Hospital but died on Monday. (Supplied)

Under federal law it is illegal to distil or sell alcohol without a licence.

Queensland Health Minister Lawrence Springborg says it is an extraordinary and tragic event.

"People can actually have a small still, but not for the production of alcohol," he said.

"Fortunately these things don't happen very much but this will very much affect the Granite Belt community.

"Certainly there are a lot of families across Queensland that are sharing a thought and a prayer for the families at the moment.

"There will also need to be some consideration as to what risk factors were involved here and what might be able to or need to be done to protect people in the future.

"When it comes to home brew, it's not without some degree of risks and the immediate concern needs to be here to make sure the young people are able to be assisted to the road for recovery."

Mr Springborg says investigations are being conducted by police and Queensland Health.

A report is being prepared for the coroner.

First posted Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:43am AEST

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-11/men-fighting-for-lives-after-second-man-dies-from-home-grappa/4745014

[MadJohnShaft]

I thought the chance of making poisonous non-alcohol alcohols via distillation was near zero.

Will need to Google this.

[James1214]

NCR I have a mead yeast from a brewing shop. Its a locally sourced yeast so it should work well with the local honey. I also got all the cleaning and sanitizing stuff from them.

Re distilling: the dude at the brew shop said the issue with the volitiles and dangerous alcohols has to do with temperature control as dangerous ones have a slightly different boiling temp. So by differing your temps you can separate the dangerous from the good through 2 or 3 distillations. At least that's my relatively uneducated understanding of the process.

[MadJohnShaft]

Distilling is just step two after the normal fermenting process (beer, wine, mead)

Since you are essentially distilling a fermented brew you would normally just drink - how would other poisonous esters of alcohol get in it in order to be released by heating in the first place?  Distilling isn't producing anything it's just boiling and condensing alcohol out of water (wort)....


http://homedistiller.org/intro/faq



I'm calling URBAN LEGEND.... even the websites sound like wishful thinking and say stuff like this:

3) Will it make me blind ?
Not if you're careful. This pervasive question is due to moonshine lore, which abounds with myths of blindness, but few actual documented cases. The concern is due to the presence of methanol (wood alcohol), an optic nerve poison, which can be present in small amounts when fermenting grains or fruits high in pectin. This methanol comes off first from the still, so it is easily segregated and discarded, and easily observed via changes in the vapour temperature. A simple rule of thumb for this is to throw away the first 50 mL you collect (per 20 L mash used).

[MadJohnShaft]

Legality...


Tough out of luck - see the http://www.ttb.gov/ Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, their FAQ page, and some of the latest ammended laws. You will find ....

    Spirits
    You cannot produce spirits for beverage purposes without paying taxes and without prior approval of paperwork to operate a distilled spirits plant. [See 26 U.S.C. 5601 & 5602 for some of the criminal penalties.] There are numerous requirements that must be met that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal or beverage use. Some of these requirements are paying special tax, filing an extensive application, filing a bond, providing adequate equipment to measure spirits, providing suitable tanks and pipelines, providing a separate building (other than a dwelling) and maintaining detailed records, and filing reports. All of these requirements are listed in 27 CFR Part 19.

    Ray emailed the BATF for the reference statutes concerning home distillation. Here is their response:

    Ray, you have not been able to locate anything on home production because there is no provision for it. Moonshining is still illegal!! Unlike wine or beer, the laws and regulations governing distilled spirits contain no provision that would allow someone to produce spirits in their home for personal use. Under 26 U.S.C. Section 5171 operations as a distiller, warehouseman or processor may be conducted only on the bonded premises of a qualified distilled spirits plant. To qualify such a plant, a registration, application for permit and bond must be filed in addition to other supporting organizational documents. 26 U.S.C. 5178 places restrictions on where a plant can be located. Hope this answers your question.

    Carol Coy
    Industry Specialist
    National Revenue Center-Cincinnati, OH
    Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
    e-mail: cjcoy@cinc.atf.treas.gov

What all this basically comes down to is ...
1. Americans can own a still, but it must be no larger than 1 gallon, and may only be used for water purification or the extraction of essential oils from plants.
2.Dealers/manufacturers of stills in the United States must surrender any address or other info on any customer who buys a still to the BATF, when they request it.(no warrant is required.)

What this means is that anyone who buys a still in America can at any time expect a knock at the door and a man with a badge demanding to see what is being done with the still they bought. How this effects the companies seen advertising 5 gallon stills for use as a water purifier, was not listed, nor is there any info on solar stills. It is probably VERY illegal to import a still too.

[neighbor664]

^looks like I'm in the clear. I was under age and both my parents are deceased.

[NCR600]

Distilling is just step two after the normal fermenting process (beer, wine, mead)

Since you are essentially distilling a fermented brew you would normally just drink - how would other poisonous esters of alcohol get in it in order to be released by heating in the first place?  Distilling isn't producing anything it's just boiling and condensing alcohol out of water (wort)....

I'm not convinced that these hill billies were poisoned by Grappa. I bet they either drank themselves to death, or they were necking tranquilisers or something. You'd probably have to drink about 400 liters of Grappa to get a lethal dose of methanol.

[MadJohnShaft]

Every article about the safety of moonshine says the same thing - discard the first bit of a new batch which may contain harmful methanol and other flavor destroying substances. So, even if moonshine has methanol in it, it is only at the beginning and is a tiny amount that the distiller throws away as a matter of normal practice.  


Then the Internets all go on to talk about unrelated things - methanol added by unscrupulous brewers etc.  Why would you go out and buy methanol and put it in moonshine if you just went to all the trouble and legal woes of making moonshine?  I say blindness from moonshine is total bullshit.  None of the Internets are reputable and seem to be all quoting each other.

[khoomeizhi]

i'm naming my next band 'thump keg'

[Pissy]

Every article about the safety of moonshine says the same thing - discard the first bit of a new batch which may contain harmful methanol and other flavor destroying substances. So, even if moonshine has methanol in it, it is only at the beginning and is a tiny amount that the distiller throws away as a matter of normal practice.  


Then the Internets all go on to talk about unrelated things - methanol added by unscrupulous brewers etc.  Why would you go out and buy methanol and put it in moonshine if you just went to all the trouble and legal woes of making moonshine?  I say blindness from moonshine is total bullshit.  None of the Internets are reputable and seem to be all quoting each other.

I believe that part of a master distillers job is to take the first sip of the batch.  If he drops dead, it was too soon.  I've also heard that the methanol is in the last portion of the draw as well, but I have no innerwebs reference that says so.

[khoomeizhi]

was recently re-inspired about meadmaking after an 'advanced meadmaking' class i took at a festival. have since started two new batches in as many weeks, and have at least one more to start. these are small 1-gallon batches, wild-cultured yeast.

as befits working with potentially diverse, wild populations, i am not fastidious about sterility, kinda at any point in the process. haven't had any bad infections/weird tastes either. to each, they's own.

[RAGER]

I am betting they weren't back in the day either.  Serendipitous results are an exciting prospect.

[MadJohnShaft]

Das Goat! she has Shatten in Das MEADVAT

Das Mead Nine hasen blinden - maken Das Mead Goat Shatten.

[khoomeizhi]

you'll be fine.