A year ago I was making my beer & apple cider & I thought about making spirits, but I had no still & no idea how to make it.
Luckily Santa bought me an Air Still for Xmas, which was a total surprise, what was even more surprising was the jolly red one used my credit card to buy it; wait till I see that fat f**k this year.
GIYF (google is your friend) or your local home brew store, just don’t let them talk you into getting turbo stuff.
I use an air still as I live in a place where there is only rain water & I didn’t want to use my drinking water to cool down the still.
There are different types of stills & the best place to read & find out things is on this site -
index.php - they are a friendly bunch there; I like vodka so I use a pot still, other spirits require different types of still.
To start with, you need a 60 litre fermenter, a long spoon, a towel, a tap with sediment trap, a heater belt, an air lock & a temperature gauge
Frank Cooper once told me, “you put shit in & you get shit out; so always use the best ingredients”.
So to make WBABW (Weetbix All Bran Wash), we need.
10kg white sugar (I use Coles sugar, any white sugar is OK, except really cheap brands).
half a box of 1.4 kg of Weetbix
half a 530g box of All Bran
2 teaspoons epsom salts
1.5 teaspoons citric acid (in the spice section of the supermarket)
water to the 60lt mark
100g bread yeast
Method
Boil some water (I have a stainless steel pot that I have & its only job is to boil water for my brews).
add a bag of sugar, more boiled water, more sugar, stir, add more boiled water, add sugar & stir; get the picture? Keep adding boiled water until all the sugar is dissolved; you can add the epsom salts & citric acid now as well.
When all the sugar is dissolved, add half a box of Weetbix, you don’t have to mash them up as the boiled water will do that for you.
The All Bran is different, it has to be mashed up , I use a blender. I take out the bag from the box & cut the top off then I weigh it on the kitchen scales then halve that number & remember it. Blend up the All Bran a little at a time, it doesn’t matter if it turns to power; then put it in the fermenter & stir.
Once everything is mixed in the fermenter, it doesn’t matter if it takes a few drinks/hours you could always add boiling water to it as the final temperature will be 30 degrees. Add cold & boiled water to the fermenter until it is up to the 60 litre mark & the temperature is around 30 degrees; we use bread yeast so it won’t die at a higher temperature like beer or cider yeast. When the temperature & water levels are right, measure out 100g of yeast & place it in the fermenter; you don’t have to stir it in.
As you can see from the above picture, there is a lot of sediment in the fermenter, that is OK. Next put the lid on, but don’t screw it down, just let it sit on the fermenter for 24 hours or it might go up like in Young Einstein where he split the beer atom in the shed of his ol’ mans shed – BOOM. Not really, there won’t be a thermal nuclear reaction or an exothermic reaction, it’s just that there be a lot of carbon dioxide released & the little hole for the air lock is too small to allow all that carbon dioxide to escape that quickly.
I left this for 2 weeks in the fermenter until the SG reached 990, use a brewers hydrometer to check the specific gravity.
I then removed the heat & left it for 4 days to settle after I got my long spoon & stirred up the junk in the bottom so anything that was trapped under & didn’t ferment, will now finish the process.
I then moved the junk from around the tap & left it for another 3 days to clear, then I decanted it; you can use 1 or 2 x 30 litres fermenters or 1 x 60 litre fermenter, it is just too heavy to lift the 60 litre fermenter onto the bench.
Now for the stripping run
Place the WBABW “wash” into the air still with boil enhancers & a few drops of olive oil. Make sure both cables are fully connected.
When stripping the wash, let the still run until what’s coming out reaches 20% ABV.
I can get 900 - 1000ml when I do the stripping run from 4lts & the total alcohol is ~35% ABV.
To get 1 litre, it takes ~3 hours & 10 minutes.
I get ~18 beer bottles after I put it all into bottles. You can use glass or stainless steel to keep it in, not plastic, as the plastic flavour will leech into your brew. That plastic jug you see above & below is special plastic - Polypropylene
In the nearly full 17 litre stainless steel pot above, is what I got after doing ALL the spirit run. I then use a very clean mug, as it’s got a handle, and put it in the polypropylene jug then into bottles. I use beer bottles, you can use anything you like, just make sure the level is all the same; I use the top of the CUB crest as my mark.
If you don't get multiples of 3 bottles, or whatever you use, keep the remaining in glass or stainless steel for the next stripping run. Wash out everything after you have finished; I described this in the previous page.
Spirit run
No need for boil enhancers or olive oil in the spirit run, but I use the boil enhancers.
Empty 3 beer bottles (~750ml) from the stripping run into the air still & filled to the 4 litre mark with water, this gave me ~20%ABV (the ABV can be as low as 15%).
Turn on the distiller & wait an hour
The first 50ml is foreshots, throw away, or keep in a bottle marked poison & out out of reach of kids as this stuff will kill you; I use it mixed with water to clean windows or put some in your car washer bottle so it will clean the windscreen better & it won't freeze in the colder weather :)
The next 250ml, keep for heads run*.
Collect 1100 - 1200mls, that is a mixture of hearts & some tails, after collecting that, collect 100ml then another 100ml & another & check with alcometer (stop when it gets down to 20%) & for taste to see if it they get included in what you already collected. I usually get 1200mls when I do one stripping run, I taste the output to tell me when to stop.
After you do one spirit run, clean the air still (only clean the base) & keep going until it is all finished. Stir the finished neutral in the stainless steel pot with a steel spoon & then place into containers, usually bottles or jars, not plastic. I usually let the neutral breathe in the pot with the top off & you will tell when it is ready to bottle as the smell won’t be as strong. Don’t forget to check what the final ABV% is with your alcometer
So, after buying initial things, all you need to make 12 litres of neutral/vodka/moonshine is 20kgs white sugar, 1.4kgs Weetbix, 530g All Bran, 4 teaspoons epsom salts, 3 teaspoons citric acid, water & 200g bread yeast; not bad eh cheers
*Heads run
Once you collect 1750ml of heads from the spirit run, place in distiller with boil enhancers & add water to the 4lt mark.
Discard the first 150ml, or use it to clean windows or poison weeds, the collect 1 litre after that.
I usually put that one litre in with what I collect from the spirit run & mix it all up. I have done guide as a request from fellow neutral/vodka/moonshine drinkers who enjoy what I produced
cheers