Thickos' Brewing and Distillation Method Compiled by Anarchy Underground in txt format *[ http://www.fakeidcenter.com/ ]* - Fermentation Equipment - The Fermentation Process - The Distillation Equipment - The Distillation Process Fermentation Equipment If you brew your own beer, as I do, then you already have the necessary equipment for the fermentation process. Basically all you need is a 5 gallon bucket with a lid, mine also has a tap fitted near to the bottom. There are a few other things which you will find useful, but can do without:- A Thermometer. An hydrometer. This will help you determine when your brew has reached the desired strength of distillation. A large wooden spoon to stir the brew with. I use whatever comes to hand (even if it IS my hand). A siphon tube, if your bucket has not got a tap. Some sort of heat source to maintain the temperature of the brew between about 70 and 85 degrees fahrenheit (roughly 20-30 degrees Centigrade). There are several types available from home brew shops, such as heated rubber mats or belts. I just keep my fermentation bin in the airing cupboard, under the hot water boiler. ------------------------------------------------------------ The Fermentation Process Sterilization The first job is to sterilize your fermentation vessel, and any utensils you are using. You can go along to your local Home Brew Supplies shop if you like, and buy some (expensive) sterilizing tablets, I prefer to use the cheapest bottle of household bleach that I can find. If you buy the tablets , then just follow the supplied instructions. If you save money and buy the bleach, then add about half the bottle to your fermenting bin and top up with cold water. Put the other items (thermometer, spoon, hydrometer etc.) into the bleach solution, and try to squeeze the lid in there too. Leave to soak for a couple of hours, and then RINSE VERY THOROUGHLY with cold water. This is very important. although excellent for killing germs, household bleach is pretty toxic stuff, so you don't want to leave any traces of it on your equipment. The Recipe My particular form of 'moonshine' is distilled from a simple brew of water, yeast, sugar and yeast nutrient, which gives me a finished product which is indistinguishable, when appropriately diluted,from commercially made vodka. However it is also a good starting point for making other drinks with the use of flavourings. My fermentation bin holds 5 imperial gallons, which is equivalent to just under 23 litres. For this quantity of brew I use 5 kg of sugar. For the yeast, just go to your local home brewing supplies shop and look for a yeast which claims to give a high alcohol content. While you are there get yourself some yeast nutrient Empty all of the sugar into your bucket, and cover with boiling water, stirring well. Keep on stirring, and adding more hot water, until ALL of the sugar is dissolved. Top up with hot/cold water, until the 5 gallon mark is reached and the solution is lukewarm, somewhere between 20 and 25 degrees centigrade. Now add the yeast and the yeast nutrient, as per the instructions on the pack (these will vary slightly for different products), stir well and fit the lid. The final step is to place the brew somewhere warm, i.e. 20 - 25 degrees centigrade, and wait until fermentation is complete in a week or twos time. I like to give the brew a good stir once a day and add a little more yeast nutrient. When fermentation is ceased (no more bubbles rising to the top, and, if you are using an hydrometer, a reading which is approaching 1.005) you should have a five gallon brew of (say) fifteen percent alcohol. All you have to do now is recover as much of this alcohol as you can with the aid of your still ------------------------------------------------------------ The Distillation Equipment There are basically two types of still which can be used for the home distillation of alcohol. These are the Pot Still, and the Reflux Still. I opted for a Pot Still because they are simpler to make and operate. I may have go at making a reflux still as a future project. I will shortly be building and testing a second pot still which has quite an interesting design, so, watch this space. The Pot Still is comprised of two basic components, the Pot and the Condenser. The Pot is simply a container in which the brew is heated, and the condenser is a device which converts the vapours, coming from the pot, into a liquid. I made the pot out of an old aluminium pressure cooker, which had lain unused at the bottom of a cupboard for a long time. Ideally, you should try to obtain a stainless steel vessel of at least one gallon capacity, and with a tight fitting lid (unlike my pressure cooker. ) The most interesting part of the still to make is the condenser. First you need a 3 metre length of 10 mm copper tubing (15 mm diameter tubing would probably be more efficient, but is much more difficult to bend) Once you have your copper tube, you need something to wind it around to form a coil. If you are using 10mm tube, then something about 3-4 inches diameter should be OK. For 15mm diameter tube, look for something larger, say 6 inches diameter (this will of course mean fewer turns in your coil, about 6 loops instead of 10-12). If you cannot find something of a suitable diameter, then, get an old broom shank and wrap it tightly with old newspapers and adhesive tape until it is the size you want. Get your copper tube and plug one end of it, you can hammer the last half inch flat if you want, and saw it off when you have finished. Get a large packet of ordinary salt, and fill the tube with it (a small funnel will be very useful here), packing as much in as you can by tapping the bottom of the tub gently on the floor. When full, seal the other end of the tube. The purpose of the salt is to prevent the tube from collapsing when it is bent. Now you simply bend the tube around your former (broom shank). This can be hard work, as a copper tube, packed with salt, is quite difficult to bend. The easiest way is to put a loop in the centre of the tube first, rather than one of the ends, and then fasten in place with tape before forming the other loops. Leave a straight bit of tube (about 3 inches) at each end of the coil. When the coil is the required shape, unplug (or saw off) the ends, and empty the salt out. It takes a lot longer to empty salt from a coiled tube than to fill a straight one, but you must make sure that all the salt is removed. Now that you have a coil you need some means of keeping it cool, because the cooler the coil, the more efficient the condenser. You could make some sort of jacket to fit the coil inside, and run cold tap water through it, but I prefer to keep things simple. Get an old bucket and drill a hole in the side, so that when the bottom end of your coil is passed through the hole the top end is about an inch below the top of the bucket. Fit you coil inside, with the bottom end of the tube poking out of the hole by at least an inch, and then seal around the tube, inside and out, with silicone sealant (or anything else that will give you a waterproof joint. Your condenser is now complete. To make your pot you have to find a way of making an outlet in the lid for the vapours from your brew. I fitted two pieces of 10mm copper tubing (one for an outlet, and one to house a thermometer to check the temperature of the vapours near the top of the Pot) into the lid of my Pot (pressure cooker), using some old compression fittings I had lying around, and sealed the leaks I found with some epoxy resin I 'borrowed' from work. You can use any method your imagination comes up with to do the same, but don't be too worried about the thermometer, you can do without it, and if I was making another still I would not bother fitting one. Finally, you need a length of plastic tubing, about a metre long, to connect the outlet on your Pot to the top of the coil in your Condenser. ------------------------------------------------------------ The Distillation Process Theory Ethanol or ethyl alcohol (CH3CH2OH), is a clear colourless liquid with a boiling point of 78.4 degees centigrade. One hundred percent pure alcohol can not be produced by distillation, the maximum achievable strength being ninety six percent alcohol in four percent water The reason it is possible to distill almost pure ethanol from the rest of the brew you have made , is that all of the components of your brew have different boiling temperstures.Anything with a lower boiling point than ethanol is called the Heads, and, for our puposes, is methanol (methyl alcohol), which is highly toxic when drunk, and MUST be removed from your moonshine.Anything with a boiling point higher than ethanol is called the tails. The tails consist mainly of water, but also contain some undesirable alcohols and other impurities. So, basically, you have to remove and discard the methanol, which is a very important step, collect and save the ethanol, and discard everything which is left, ie the bulk of your brew. Boiling Points (Degrees Centigrade) Methanol --------------- 64.7 Ethanol ---------------- 78.4 2-Propanol ------------- 82.4 3-Methyl-1-Butanol ----- 99.5 Water ----------------- 100 Butan-1-ol ------------ 117 Pentan-1-ol ----------- 138 Hexan-1-ol ------------ 157 Incidentally, if you live in the USA, then to find out how many degrees proof a spirit is you simply multiply the percentage alcohol by volume figure by two. If you live here, in the United Kingdom, degrees proof is considered to be the percentage alcohol by volume figure multiplied by 1.751. So 100% pure alcohol is 200 degrees proof in the USA, but only 175 degrees proof in the UK. This means, for instance, that a 70 degrees proof bottle of Scotch Whisky is exactly the same strength as an 80 degrees proof bottle of Bourbon. Distillation When I first made my still I fitted it with a thermometer in the lid to guage the temperature of the vapours. I also fitted a second thermometer to check the temperature of the liquid brew, but accidently broke it before I tried using it. In practice I found that there is no real use for a thermometer, except for something to watch while your brew heats up, and to provide reassurance. You cannot expect to get a pure product from a pot still with just one run, but I would suggest that if you do three careful runs then you will end up with something with no more impurities than a commercial product. OK, fill your pot with some of your brew and stand it on your heat source, put on the lid and connect to your (suitably cooled) coil. Now start to heat the pot up, I use one of the rings of my electric cooker on full power. If you us a gas cooker, or any other naked flame, then be very careful as any vapours escaping from the still will be highly flammable, ie you could blow up your kitchen. As the brew heats up, you should eventually start to see some liquid start to dribble from the outlet of the coil. This is the methanol, it should smell like methylated spirits, and you should pour it down the drain, or put it in a bottle clearly labelled POISON. After a while the driblle from the coil will have turned into a steady stream of liquid, and if you are using a thermometer you will be able to see that the temperature of the vapour has risen to around 78.4 degrees centigrade, the boiling point of ethanol, which is what the still is now producing. Keep collecting the distillate until the steady stream ends, then remove your pot from the heat source, and dispose of the remainder of the brew. Repeat the above process with the rest of your brew. If you started off with five gallons of reasonably strong brew then you might end up with over half a gallon or more of distillate. Mix this with a litre of water and run through your still, once again discarding the Tops and Tails. Finally add another litre of water to what you have collected, and run through your still a third time. Fill a teaspoon with your finished product and put a match to it. It should burn with a clean blue flame. I would suggest that you dilute the finished product 50-50 with distilled water for a very palatable, strong Vodka.