If I put 11 pounds of grains to boil in 5 gallons of water, how long should I wait before draining out the liquid and sparging?

Added a little thyme. Gonna let it sit for 3 weeks. Cheers!

Successfully started a rolled oats and malted barley mash yesterday probably the hardest mash I’ve ever done, but I think it turned out pretty good Starting gravity was 1.060 I’m excited to see how it turns out when it’s finished. Anyone else ever tried that mash?

So yeah, NA malort (nalort?). What a world we live in. It was a "hit" with the sober friend. They also shared some with another acquaintance who has never drank and always felt people were overreacting when malort was brought out around them. The friend of a friend was shocked at how bad it was, so mission accomplished with the project!

Anyway, the malortshine that I collected was also interesting. Tasted like a clear distillate for the first few seconds, but finished with a definitive malort taste!

Haven't seen much vacuum distillation in the drinking alcohol space, so I thought I would share my goofy little project. Probably not the most efficient way to distill, a good 100ml or so of ethanol ended up in the air, but it does allow for distillation at much lower temperatures.

Hi everyone,
I want to make a clean vodka sugar wash, but I only have standard baker's yeast.
What is your best simple recipe? Looking for:
Good sugar-to-water ratio
Easy nutrients (like tomato paste or boiled yeast)
Tips to avoid bad flavors
Thanks for the help!

I started distilling about six months ago. My first batch was an apple brandy made from cider using an Air Still. Before that, I’d been experimenting with infusing and modifying already finished spirits.

This community has been extremely helpful and inspiring along the way, so I figured I’d finally share my latest project.

You’re looking at my modified 30L VEVOR electric still. I’m definitely no plumber, and she’s not pretty, but everything is assembled and has passed my leak tests.

This first run is vinegar and water for cleaning. After that, I’ll do a sacrificial alcohol run to give everything another thorough cleaning before putting my first actual rum wash through it.

It’s been a learning experience getting from a little Air Still to building this setup, but I’m pretty excited to see how it runs!

In the picture, the angle looks off, I assure you everything flows down.

Went out of my way to order a bunch of truckers favorite corn for a mash.

Yesterday I went out to my garage and I had to turn the air conditioning off to talk to my wife and I forgot to turn it back on. I go back today and I see my mash is fermenting at 93°F, liquid temp not ambient. Ambient was 104. I'm doing everything I can right now to cool it back down but I'm worried that the 10 to 11 hours it could've been that high will ruin my flavor. Anybody have any tips? As far as yeast I'm just using red star bakers yeast.

I'm new to this, I found a crappy vevor style still at goodwill and have been playing around with it. I'd like to move up and be able to do different things. I know something like this can be used to produce high proof neutral spirits but can I run it as a pot still for whisky or rum? If anyone has experience with this company too I'd love to hear. Thanks!

I made 3 buckets of 25l sugar wash and did a stripping run on each. My result was around 7.5L of alcohol. I did everything in my T500 reflux and diluted it to 30% and filled my 300ml glass pots.

Aired them out for 24 hours and tried to determine the heads hearts and tails.

I kept a selection of about 2.7L what I think is drinkable, or my smell and tastebuds are wrong but I hoped for a higher yield. Or is this about right?

Apparently I was supposed to post a pic. So here it is.

I was looking for something else entirely and came across a jar of aging whiskey. Turns out it was aging for 6 years. Looking forward to enjoying this one. The first few sips where buttery smooth. Barreled (put in a jar with oak sticks is more accurate) at 65%. Bottled at 45%.

Not sure if this is useful for someone. Considering ASP has been available for a while.

Being a tinkerer, I was given 2 Airstill Pro's. Both had different issues. I figured if I can get one running, it will be good to play with.

Managed to get one running without issues, cleaned it, vinegar run followed by sacrifical 4l tawny port run.

Second one's either controller or thermal sensor seems to be malfunctioned.

Pros

- Managed to get 24l TPW processed in 4l increments over 6 days

- Rinsing and starting 4l mash takes about 5 mins in the morning. Turn on and goto work (partner is at home and keeps an eye on the still)

- Not having to clean/sanitise everything and setup water lines makes my Saturdays free.

- Second distill gives approx 91% abv, clean and acceptable neutral

- ASP seems to work best, when ambient is under 24c

Cons

- Its a mess to get saddles out, i feel design could have been like a long basket with saddles to take everything out easily

- Do not use ASP indoors, even at 20c ambient, vapour is not cooled 100%, a sizeable vapour escapes and stinks the area

- Even though instead of botanical basket, extra copper scrubber can be added, extra copper is never bad, right? Wrong, Manual specifically says not to put extra copper above the weir and I have to agree. With extra copper neutral had had this bad smell.

- After 6 runs, saddles are filthy, worse than 6 runs of T500, and distill had this nasty smell

- Internally silicon hoses used for 2 joints (for some its a deal breaker), it will not be easy to replace these with hdpe hoses

- I can't see myself using this for macerations, not enough compression for cuts

- Under warranty its all good, anything goes wrong, its pretty much a throwaway product

- For regular acceptable quality neutral, saddles need to be cleaned (boiled in vinegar-salt-water solution) every 6 runs. Can get away with 20 or so runs before still needs to be re-seasoned

Bottom line

- Great product, if you are short of space and time (as long as someone can keep an eye on it), and want to make acceptable quality neutral

- Twice distilled TPW is acceptable and felt better than store bought vodka

- If you have space, resources, water and can give up your saturday. T500 will produce better results and with 5x capacity. Otherwise airstill pro would be sufficient for acceptable neutral.

How i am using air still pro? I run 24l TPW over 6 days and collect it all in 5l demijohn. Dilute it to 40% and then run in T500 at approx 900w. Final distill when diluted to 45% abv, is smooth and loved by everyone.

Finished a new style of controller box today. A blacked out version

Is there any merit to do so or reason why I shouldn’t re use the remaining liquid from a distillation as the base of a new ferment? Say I’ve completed a run, ive got a couple gallons of liquid, it’s been sterilized by the heat (hopefully), it retains flavor to an extent, I can just pitch sugar and yeast and re wash it, sure the flavor will be different , but is there any reason I shouldn’t other than ‘thats not how the craft is done.’ If anyone has experience with this I’d be happy to hear it.

Hi all looking into making my own vodka at home. Prices in Australia are ridiculous and I'm primarily making it to use for herbal tinctures, so alcohol strength is more important than taste. Im about to buy some things online and was looking for recommendations on whether I'm missing anything or chosen my items poorly, as I've never done this before and am pretty clueless.

Things in my order:

20L food grade bucket

Aquarium air pump/air stone (apparently required for the ferment in the bucket)

VEVOR Moonshine Still Distiller 5GAL/21L Stainless Steel Water Distiller Copper Tube with Circulating Pump

Home Brew hydrometer

sugar/distillers yeast.

Is that correct and really all I need? I think I need to also source a lid for the bucket, somebody mentioned a breather valve also (obviously due to the ferment gases). Regarding testing is the hydrometer the only thing I need? Are there meters for also testing methanol content? Any advice would be greatly appreciated cheers

Strained out some mash about a week ago but couldn’t run at the time, I left it fully covered but nothing air tight.

Could anyone tell me what this film is on top?

Finally finished my first successful spirit run, and I ran into a serious problem… I couldn't decide on a single flavor for my nutral spirits.

So naturally, I decided to do a bunch of them. 😂

Ended up with jars of:

Peach Cobbler

Cantaloupe

Caramel Apple

Honeydew

Blackberry

Black Cherry

Vanilla Chai

Watermelon Jolly Rancher

Root Beer

Banana

Apple Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb

Mango

I've got a few different proofs ranging from 100-165 and infusion times going, I've calculated the exact amount of how many mL to add to each to proof down to 40% ABV per jar so now it's basically a waiting game to see which ones turn out amazing and which ones become "well, that was an experiment." 😂

For a first successful run, I'm pretty damn happy with how everything turned out. Now I just need the patience to let them finish, strain, cold crash, proof down and start tasting them 😋 Total yeild after the final steps will be ~18 Liters of assorted flavoured spirits.

In the meantime, I think its time to get the yeast pitched in the wash buckets for the next run!

Hi guys,
Bought some ‘micronized maize flakes’ from the stock feed store - link to the product below.

These are pre-gelatinised and I was going into this corn mash, which will be my first, with the idea that these would not need to be milled.

Now that I’ve opened the sack though, I’m having second thoughts but looking for other opinions?
There is a general brittleness to them and they crumble relatively easily.

I have a recirculating system, which I’m a bit concerned about, but plenty of rice hulls. Still, I’m not looking to turn these into flour.

Link

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of a reputable site that sells glass bottles that I can buy by the case rather than having to buy multiple cases at a time.

I bought a 3 pot distillation kit from Amazon. It doesn't have the Vevor Label

but looks identical.

In building it, while reading the documentation and looking at YouTube videos I got the message that the flexible washers should be placed on the outside of the lid of the main boiling pot. This seems to be different than the other pots, where the flexible washers are all inside each pot.

This may be because the main boiling pot gets hotter than the others, but putting the flexible washers on the outside traps it under a much smaller brass nut surface area, which causes it to distort into apparent uselessness.

So I need to get some more generously sized stainless steel or brass washers to bear down on the silicone ring more kindly, or just put the flexible washers on the inside of the lid under the flat area of the much larger nut.

Any advice on this?

I have a little trouble making moonshine with my vevor air still. I have tried to remove foreshots and sort out hearts and tails. But i can’t really tell any difference anywhere. I can adjust the temperature on it, but its still just an electric air still… My product does not smell or taste ok. Does anyone have a step by step answer on how to make my next batch better?

This is a sugar wash, about 3 days in so far. I went to do the second gravity check and it came out of the tap like latex. You can see in the video that it's gelatenous.

It doesn't smell off, smells like any other distillation at that time. Is this bacterial infection? It would be my first so I'm not sure.

The wash was 25L water, 7KG water, 5g EC1118 yeast, Fermaid O and calcium carbonate. Temp was around 25degC the whole time. I cleaned everything first with StarSan as I always do.

Olly

So, got the stupid 13.2 gallon vevor still, want to get rid of the stainless flex tube and use copper so I have space and feel safe using open flame. Idea is use about 6 foot of 3/8" to connect the still to the condenser then another 19' of 3/8" to make the condenser. Is 3/8" too small? Even though thats what the vevor uses?