Hi all from another Pom, or Little Englander as the rest of Europe now like to call us, residing in the south east of England (although, in my defence, I do have a son who lives in Brisbane - if that counts?)
I am probably like many people and had a mis-spent youth churning out barely drinkable beer and wine, mainly due to the fact that I was too impatient!
However, advancing years has changed my palate to somewhere near grown-up and myself and 'she who must be obeyed' are now really into all the different craft gins and mixers that have exploded onto the market in recent years.
Some while back, we had a day trip to a craft gin distillery where we were able to make our own personalised bottle of gin each, using botanicals picked from the huge selection that they had available. Having not given it a lot of thought beforehand and not really knowing anything about the manufacture of gin apart from the fact that juniper berries were involved, I was astounded at how easily a good bottle of gin could be produced using little more than a glass flask sitting on a hotplate with a tube out of the top attached to a water cooled condenser - no more high tech than we had in the chemistry lab at school! (Admittedly, they had high quality neutral spirit to start with which no doubt helped!)
Ever since then, every time I throw loadsamoney at a bottle of craft gin, a little voice inside my head has said '' You could be making that '', especially after I discovered that I could actually purchase a still in the LHBS - and make fuel for my bio-ethanol burner fireplace. :)) (Apparently legal in the UK)
Anyway, moving swiftly on with my boring story, which is probably the same as for masses of other people, I decided to do a lot more research during the 'lockdown' and spent many hours reading books and trawling the internet for information on home distillation (hence finding this forum) and now feel reasonably confident to move forward (hence joining this forum!)
My interest at the outset is not necessarily to produce large quantities of cheap spirit, but to experiment with the huge selection of botanicals that are available and try to make quality gin that will impress friends and family.
I do not have any equipment at present and came very close to purchasing a T500 with copper column but having seen pictures of one in bits being modified, I figured it was well overpriced (£500 in the UK) and something that I could easily make in my workshop. In fact, it looks so simple, I am left wondering why nobody seems to copy it for a home build - perhaps you all know something I don't!
So the upshot of all this is that I have convinced myself to consider building a still of my own and amaze my friends and family even more with my own bio fuel burning brightly in my lounge!! :))
Looking forward to learning a lot more from all you clever people.