How to distill spirits ? home brewing ? Luke Appleby

Distilling spirits can be tricky, but this guide should help you get started and is based on my experience.

It covers equipment, preparing a mash, distillation, carbon filtering and flavours.

This is a bit of a break from the regular content of this site, but I had a special request to share my knowledge and thought I would put it online as well. Enjoy responsibly, won?t you?

This is a rough guide and for full details, I would recommend talking to brewing shop staff.

What you?ll need

A large (20L+) still ? the kind with the condensing coil on top and a thermometer if possible.
A 25-30L white plastic fermenting bucket ? the ones with a tap at the bottom and a place for a rubber bung and an airlock on the lid.
An S-bend airlock.
A sachet of yeast from a brewer?s shop.
Sterilisation pellets from brewer?s shop or household bleach.

THE VESSEL: Every successful home brew will need bottles ? lots of bottles.

A large bag of white sugar (20kg works out best).
A long stirring spoon.
10 or so 40oz bottles for liquor ? more if you?re going big.

What you?ll want
These items are optional, but will make life easier.

A long extension cord
A funnel
Turbo clear or similar mash clarfiying additive.
A hydrometer to measure the specific gravity of the mash (how alcoholic it is).
A warming pad ? these speed up fermentation by warming the 30L bucket full of mash to keep the yeast happy. Electric blankets are sometimes used for cold nights etc.
An S-bend carbon filter and carbon pellets to fill it ? sold at brewers shop ? this is used to filter the ethanol when it comes out to further purify it. Good for vodka.
Measuring jugs (large, maybe 1-2L).
Flavour sachets for your ethanol.

Flavours

These come in just about any liquor you can name, minus the actual brand name. For example, no Midori, but they have melon schnapps.

The three staples I found best were the gin, whiskey and vodka. These basics come in multi-serve packs and you can also flavour them with whatever you like ? put lemon rind and orange in a bottle of gin, for example.

For the vodka you can essentially drink the ethanol straight from the still and it is very similar to vodka. They do sell vodka flavouring ? but I never really used it.

Home brewed spirits will age well, and freshly-distilled ethanol has a sharper sting to it than a bottle which you have let sit for a month or so.

Directions for how much of each flavour to use are on the packets.

Preparing a mash

Before you put anything into it, your bucket needs to be sterilised to nasties don?t grow during the fermentation. The sterilising pellets work well, follow the directions, but bleach can also do the trick. Make sure you give it a good scrub out with undiluted bleach and then rinse and wash the bucket with fresh water several times.

Measure out 20L of water into the bucket and mark the side with a Vivid or similar.

Now you put about 6Kg (check amount on yeast packet) of plain white sugar into the bucket and fill with regular tap water to the 20L mark. This water should be Luke warm ? yeast can die if the water is too hot or too cold.

HUNGRY: Yeast has a real sweet tooth, and it is happy to produce alcohol in return for sugar.

Give the mixture a really good stir to get all the sugar dissolved into the water and then put the lid on. The airlock should be half filled with water and inserted into the rubber bung on top.

Fermenting

Fermenting the mash creates a smell and you may want to put it somewhere away from noses. I never minded the smell too much, though. Return to it every 8 hours or so and give it a bit of a stir up.

The temperature should be constant if possible. Yeast will eat the sugar fastest if it is in it?s ideal temperature range ? that range varies by the yeast so check the pack. Usually a spare room or fairly well-sealed garage will do the trick. Don?t leave it outside as a cold night can kill the yeast. Wrapping the bucket in blanket can help a little, but an electric blanket is great and can be used periodically to heat the mash. The other option is a dedicated warming pad which sits under the bucket ? buy from brewer?s shop.

All up, the fermentation can take between 1 and 3 days or so, depending on the yeast and whether it?s temperature needs we met. Cold yeast eats sugar more slowly. You can test if it is done by using a hydrometer to measure the alcohol content, or just wait it out until the airlock stops bubbling completely. If you don?t see any bubbles in 5 minutes of watching, it?s either done or dead.

Now you can either wait a while until the sediment settles to the bottom of the mash, or you can use a mash clarifying additive like Turbo Clear to make it sink faster. The difference is fairly dramatic and turbo clearing can have you ready to distill in an hour or so compared to 8.

Distilling the spirit

Gently pour or use the tap on the fermentation bucket to separate the clearer portion of the mash into your still. It?s OK if a little bit of sediment gets in, but not too much or you get weird flavours.

Stills are not created equal and the better ones yield a higher percentage of ethanol when you distill the mash ? they range from 40%-90% yield or so. Depending on whether you want to create flammable liqueurs etc, the lower percentage ones could do the trick. I always preferred to have the spirit as pure as possible as it keeps the volumes low and is easier to store and mix.

STILL WATERS: Get your eths out, but don?t let the water boil.

The stills consist of a kettle-type element to heat the mash until the ethanol and methanol boils ? they have lower boiling points than water. To keep the water from boiling, a pipe comes out to be attached to a cold tap which runs through the unit, cooling it down. You need to adjust the water flow to put the brakes on the mash or the water will start to boil and your spirit will be less pure.

There is one major trap to watch out for when you are doing the distilling ? the methanol content has a lower boiling point than the ethanol (65c and 78c respectively) so the first little bit that comes out of the still will be ?meths? and the ?eths? will follow soon after.

The two have a slightly different smell which you can eventually get the hang of, but the safe way to distill is to discard the first 200-500mls (from a 20L mash) that comes out. This stuff makes good fire lighter.

Once you clear the meths out, you simply have to collect the drops of eths coming out in to a large container. One 20L mash will generally create about 6L of ethanol, from memory, but this varies by the yeast and the still.

Once you have the purified eths, you can mix it with water to lower the alcohol content ? a hydrometer is handy here, or just do the maths. Then you can mix with flavouring and funnel into bottles.

Always remember that eths and meths are flammable ? especially if the spirit is up to 90% pure eths so be safe with heat sources and electronics.

Carbon filtering

A carbon filter is an S-bend of plastic which you fill with carbon ? you buy both at the brewer?s store. The distilled ethanol is forced through the bend with gravity and granulated activated carbon pellets absorb impurities in the spirit, leading to cleaner smell and taste.

I recommend you use one if you plan on drinking the eths straight ? with vodka for example. If not, you can do but flavouring sachets will generally mask any impure flavours to some degree.

To carbon filter your eths, wait until you have finished distilling and collect the eths in a bucket with a tap at the bottom. A hose is run between that tap and the carbon filter element, and the spirit slowly seeps through the filter, before being collected at the outlet. This can take between 1-3 hours with 6L of eths ? it?s a drop-by-drop process.

Other notes

You might want to buy your sugar in bulk, as it works out much cheaper that way.

If in doubt, ask the staff at the brewer?s shop ? getting their phone number can be handy, as they may help you over the phone with quick questions.

Distilling spirits is legal in New Zealand, but selling the spirits is not. People have been done for this in NZ in the past 5 years.

Drinking ethanol has a tendency to make you drunk.

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Tags: alcohol, boiling, brewing, carbon filter, clear, distill, diy, equipment, ethanol, fermentation, flavour, home brew, how to, ingredients, legal, methanol, new zealand, spirits, still, yeast

Source: http://lukeappleby.co.nz/2012/08/28/how-to-distill-spirits-home-brewing/

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