Can i distill alcohol at home

The still is essentially a heat source to boil the fermented liquid to steam alcohol has a lower boiling point than water and a cold water loop to create cold surface area inside the still for the steam to condense and collect.

All the grain, yeast and other ingredients can usually be found in a home-brew shop or grocery store. What spirits are the easiest to produce at home?

So starting with store-bought beer or wine is a good way to get the hang of the still. Once you move into fermenting your own mash or wash, most people like to start with sugar basically a fermented simple syrup. You can add grains for flavor, but the sugar-wash moonshine is hard to mess up.

Grains are more finicky, but rewarding. Wine to brandy is basically the same process, but from fruit instead of grain. What are some good places for hobbyists to source equipment and ingredients from?

Good sites for hobby stills are brewhaus. What does a good home still set-up typically look like? Assuming you have a stock pot for mashing and a big plastic bucket for fermentation, the last step in the process is the still.

Stills come in all kinds of configurations, but the simplest and most traditional is the best: a pot still, basically a closed pot with a tube running out the top, along with some kind of heat source.

Because explosions are common around stills, an electric hot plate is safest. The tube from the top of the pot needs to run through a bath of cold water, so many stills have a copper coil that runs through a bucket of cold water. Once you turn on the hot plate and wait for the still to boil, the steam will travel through the tube and into the cold coil. It's important to realise that all fermentations produce unwanted by-products known as 'congeners' which add unpleasant flavours to the product.

These can be exacerbated by the use of high temperatures to speed the fermentation, or the wrong mix of nutrients and even the wrong types of yeast. It is therefore important to use a yeast and nutrient mix which minimizes the production of these congeners and to take time to make a quality wash suitable for further processing.

High speed fermentation and high alcohol yeasts often require further special treatment to reduce impurities and the consequential unpleasant tastes. After distillation a special spirit hydrometer is necessary. In many countries other than the UK this is the stage where distillation of the spirit wash is carried out.

Distillation is a refining process designed to remove water and other by products from the wash so leaving the desired product ethanol in higher concentrations. This obviously reduces the quantity of liquid available by a considerable amount, but does leave a high quality spirit for further flavouring.

The main difference from making wine is carbon treatment which uses activated carbon to remove the impurities in the wash. Specially developed activated carbon contains pores designed to trap particles of specific sizes.

Activated carbons are made with different sized pores for different applications so it is therefore very important to use activated carbon specifically designed for treating alcohol. Spirit wash kits require the addition of carbon which can be either during fermentation or after stabilising the brew but before fining as a way to remove these impurities.

This carbon is in the form of a liquid containing the activated carbon particles which is stirred into the wash to absorb the unwanted by-products. In countries where distillation is legal, the passing of untreated washes through a still, will result in the concentration of the impurities to leave very noticeable and unpleasant tastes, so it is advisable to use carbon in the wash this stage.

This type of filter is sometimes used to remove flavours and colours from commercial spirits prior to their re-use with spirit and liqueur flavourings.

Making spirits simply involves adding a flavouring to the alcohol. Most flavours are made in countries where distillation for home brewers is legal so they are formulated to dissolve best in high levels of alcohol.

If you want to distill spirits at home to consume yourself or share with others, you must first apply for a Federal Distilled Spirits Permit. The permit requires a hefty fee, in addition to regulated inspections of your distillation equipment and facility.

If you want to bottle, sell, and market your spirits, you should make sure to read all the preparations you need to consider about your consumer product. Each state has its own legislation about at-home distillation.

Some states like Missouri allow citizens over age 21 to distill alcohol at home without any permits or licenses at all, and other states like Florida do not even allow citizens to own distilling equipment unless they have obtained the proper state permit. Federal law takes precedence and overrides any state law that does not agree with it.

For example, Missouri citizens still need to obtain a federal permit in order to distill spirits, but they do not need to obtain additional permits from the state. On the other hand, a Florida citizen who wants to own a still for decoration but not to distill any alcohol does not need to obtain a federal permit, but would need to obtain the proper license from the state of Florida. In contrast, spirituous liquors include, among others, brandy, rum, whiskey, gin, and powdered alcohol.

Beverages of this type are obtained by distillation and mixed with water and other substances in a solution. Manufacturing, selling, or possessing to sell spirituous liquors without an appropriate license, however, is classified as a Class 2 Misdemeanor and would therefore jeopardize the professional license of anyone charged with manufacturing, selling, or possessing to sell spirituous liquors.

There is another classification of liquor under Colorado law, however, that creates an exception to the general prohibition on distilling spirituous liquors without a license.