Home Distilling

[Jambo85]

I dare say this will be getting popular in Scotland now with the minimum unit pricing. A litre of 40% spirit is now about £19 irrespective of brand or quality. People selling stills or driving van loads of Lidl vodka from Carlisle to Glasgow will be doing nicely!

[majordad]

Sounds great, any chance you could post a photo or diagram of your set Up?

What exactly are heads and tails?

[guindilias]

I won't be posting any pictures...
But you can buy stills from amazon, ebay, wherever... a few kilos of sugar, some yeast, and tomato puree are the only ingredients needed!
Heads are the nasty bits like Methanol, which have a lower boiling point than Ethanol, and get chucked or put back into the still for the next fermentation. Tails are those unwanted chemicals that have a higher boiling point, so come off after the ethanol - fusel oils and the like, which give you a ferocious hangover.
If you do it right and do it carefully, you can make your "cut" right in the middle where Ethanol is all that's coming out (with around 5% water - Ethanol at above 96% purity is hydroscopic, and will absorb moisture from the air) - then you water it back to your desired strength and flavour it if you want.

Loads of info at https://homedistiller.org/forum/ for your pleasure!

[guindilias]

Just a note - never use "turbo yeast" - it produces a lot of unwanted spirits that are very close to the boiling point of ethanol, so you get a much smaller quantity of "clean" ethanol, unless you are a distilling master. It ends up "slurring" the pure ethanol you get from a still with non-tasty undesirables. It can also overheat your mash, which you don't want - only a problem in the summer, but the stuff is generally only for producing nasty, "hold your nose and drink it down" distillate, and will also give you a banging head the next morning.
I find that (fresh, live) baker's yeast, champagne yeast, or the holy L1118 yeast to be great, and readily available on ebay, amazon, etc.

[majordad]

Thanks, I might try it sometime.

[guindilias]

Just tasted the "middles" - the purest stuff. Came out at 95.3% alcohol after 2 runs through the still. Mixed it down with water (shop bought stuff, distilled, normally for topping up your car battery or cleaning windows), and drank it unflavoured.
Delicious, like the best vodka you have ever tried - if you don't like a vodka with some nasty tastes like Smirnoff, Ketel , Grey Goose always have lingering in the background.
Now some is due for flavouring...