Distilling Alcohol

Has anyone ever distilled alcohol before? I went to a gin festival yesterday and they were selling copper stills similar to this one.

I think the idea is you put ethanol and botanicals in the chamber and heat. What you get is 80-90% alcohol so you need to further dilute with distilled water.

How do I know which ethanol to buy so I don't kill myself? Is grain alcohol the same thing? How do I measure how strong it is?

I don't want to go blind. Thanks.

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I like the pigeon statues

it's all about the temperature of the steam. thats what the thermometer on the top is for. 60 to 80°C = you're kill, anything above is fine.

But surely it doesn't evaporate until you hit boiling point? Sorry if that's a stupid question.

Also what's the difference in flavour between vapour infused and steeped? Some of the stills have a little basket to hold your botanicals so the vapours pass through them. Steeped is where you just through all the ingredients in a pot.

Alcohol evaporates at lower temperatures.

Depends on the botanicals you're using. Some are better steeped, whereas others benefit from vapour infusion. Monkey 47 does both. They steep things like the juniper, berries etc. And then put the herbs in a basket to collect flavour from the vapours.

Pot stills are kinda shit. Packed column is where it's at. You can operate them as a pot or adiabatic still.

liquids always evaporate. Even when they are not boiling. If you take acetone (boiling around 56) and pour some on the table itll be gone in half an hour max. Boiling just means that all the liquid at the same time is trying to become gaseous.

First of all dont buy industrial/cleaning alcohol. They mix poison in with it to prevent people drinking it, if it is drinkable you have to pay an alcohol tax when selling it. Also the industrial stuff is not fit for human consumption even without the poison, the poison just makes you vomit. They put it on the bottle if it is poisonous. It is then called denatured alcohol.

The shit that makes you blind is methanol. It turns into formaldehyde in your body and that shit is used to fix organs. That stuff has a natural disposition to get to your eyes and then your eyes just get fixed. Best way around that is testing your stuff. But I have no experience how.

Also if you go to the festival. Can't you ask the vendor how his product works?

He explained how it worked. He said he uses 96% grain alcohol in their main distillery but didn't said where they get it from. I imagine they order it in massive quantities as they've got a 90L still.

I guess I could just use vodka? Obviously would be better to use pure alcohol.

115L of water
30Kg Sugar
1326ml tomato paste (8.5cans)
5tsp Citric Acid
380g Yeast
1 tsp Epsom salt
2 campden tablets in water

That creates ~130 litres of sugar wash @ 13%. Distill that, throw away your foreshots, pull your heads, hearts and tails and blend your vodka.

Is this a lazymans recipe for Marie's Italiano sauce?

That sounds disgusting. I want 40%+ gin not 13% pasta sauce.

sigh.. Go read homedistiller for a beginners course.

and this is the tried and true recipe forum.
homedistiller.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=14&sid=e32f6e39233d76640ecdd7555db29dd3

I don't want to fuck around making that shit. I'd rather just buy pure ethanol/grain alcohol and add botanicals.

>I want to make gin
>I don't actually want to make gin
??????

Gin is vodka with juniper and botanicals. You don't have to make the spirit from scratch in order to make gin.

You can just buy a readymade neutral spirit like vodka, or pure grain alcohol (diluted with distilled water).

Gin can be made from any spirit alcohol made from agricultural product which meets the neutral alcohol requirements laid down in the spirit drink regulation. The neutral alcohol must be distilled to a minimum of 96% abv and the residues must not exceed those stated in the neutral alcohol definition. The finest raw materials for this 'neutral' spirit are either grain (normally barley or maize) or molasses. The best neutral alcohol has no flavour at all.

Just freeze distill

U wot

That's not really "making gin" though, ti's like buying a boboli crust and "making pizza"
Thanks wikipedia

It's technically a compound gin. You can only make true 'London Dry Gin' through distillation. However you can do this with a readymade base spirit afaik.

...

>the poster of the beautiful vineyard juxtaposed with the murder cages and anti-retard barriers
at least they tried

freeze the booze and take out the ice, leaving the stronger booze behind. Its how to make applejack in particular

It also concentrates methanol for those wonderful poison headaches. It's especially problematic with fruit pectin ferments which maximize methanol production.

retards say this often, its the same amount of methanol though. You'd be drinking less of the final the product per server, so its the exact same volume of methanol.

Distilling (not freeze, which isnt technically distillation) does the same thing

>Distilling (not freeze, which isnt technically distillation) does the same thing

No it doesn't, dumbass. You always throw away the foreshots.

That's the whole point of distillation. Different substances vaporize at different temperature. First is methanol which is toxic, so you have to get rid of that.

Lotta google experts in this thread. No one really wanted to talk distilling seriously.

64.7 °C for methanol,
78.37 °C for ethanol. 11.5 degrees difference in boiling point is insanely small and you wont be able to completely separate them. Especially if you use some home distillation setup. You don't distil the methanol out of your spirits, make sure it never gets in.

>How do I know which ethanol to buy so I don't kill myself?

Make it yourself....that's why you buy, or make, a still.

>Is grain alcohol the same thing?

Yes. Everclear grain alcohol is what you're looking for, or any other grain alcohol.

What you don't want is rubbing alcohol.

copper packed column stills can distill to azeotropic ethanol levels. You're damn right you can easily separate out methanol. Quit easily in fact. You save to use as degreaser.

>I think the idea is you put ethanol and botanicals in the chamber and heat

kek

That's how you make gin you idiot. Grain alcohol (ethanol) and botanicals.

It has to be at least 37.5% and you can only add water, ethanol or sugar after distillation to be classified as a London Dry Gin.