Newbie here

[Lunar_Glow]

Hi - Newbie here. I make beer - I grow grapes and make wine. I now want to start home distilling. My goal is to make some decent gin - in the style of 4 pillars or MGC. Any suggestions as to what would be a first up, commercially available set-up to get started? reflux or Pot (I will also be distilling grapes/wine as well as whiskey).Thanks for any advice

[bluc]

Bubbler will be the best bet be able to do all that you want..you can do it cheaper by building a pot and a reflux still but they will be a lot slower..

[orcy]

Welcome. If you wanna make gin, you need to be able to make good neutral to start with. A bubbler with an added packed section would work. Or a boka and a pot still. But you will definitely need both a reflux and a brown spirit still. Preference on this forum would almost certainly lean to a 5 plate bubbler with packed section when you want neutral.

[Lunar_Glow]

Thanks Guys - I appreciate it, cheers

[woodduck]

Hi mate, welcome :greetings-waveyellow:

[Wineleader]

Hi - Newbie here. I make beer - I grow grapes and make wine. I now want to start home distilling. My goal is to make some decent gin - in the style of 4 pillars or MGC. Any suggestions as to what would be a first up, commercially available set-up to get started? reflux or Pot (I will also be distilling grapes/wine as well as whiskey).Thanks for any advice

Hi Lunar,
I have recently distilled 200ltr of wine I was given that wasn't quiet up to bottling standard. (batches of 20 ltrs)
What worked for me was I did two stripping runs on each 20 ltr batch using my pot still (doing foreshot cuts on both.. I.e throw away the first 200ml to 300ml.... Using your nose as the guide).
Then I did a reflux run of the stripped spirit diluted to 40% doing cuts every say 200ml. The output was 92% abv.
I then decided on what was heads, hearts and tails. From here, based on experience, you can decide to filter the spirit using activated carbon.... ( not every one does this-my preference ). Diluted to say 46% before filtering.
Now you should have a very smooth neutral spirit that you can bottle as vodka or add essences like gin.
Once you get some experience you may prefer to make gin from scratch using the herbs.... More equipment required.

Good luck

[Lunar_Glow]

Thanks for the clear advice on that one wineleader - I have plenty of wine stock that is ok but not up to full scratch so cooking wine at best! It was going to be on my plan list and now I can see I will need go both pot still and reflux - probably go pot still first. Any tips on which might be the best brand to go with? I was looking at a small copper pot still - Keggomax (through Keg King) but maybe the still spirits Alembic head might be better? Will have to take the leap of faith soon - cheers

[Wineleader]

Hi Lunar,
Others have much more experience in suggesting a suitable still/ kit.
What I can say, if you purchase a small still you will be frustrated by the time taken to produce the spirit.
I find the T500 just acceptable, though there are many times I wish I had something larger.

In relation to distilling dodgy wine, the pot alone won't provide the quality you would expect to get. It will produce spirit though will bring across dodgy brandy flavours. You will need the pot and reflux still and possibly carbon filtering.

If producing your own whisky wash the pot is the way to go.

Cheers