Hey, I'm Dave, been distilling for... about a year? I think? I moved on to add distilling after only brewing beer for some time. My setup is pretty simple- I bought a basic reflux attachment to go onto my electric brewery (Grainfather). It was a simple way to get into distilling and make a spirit I can then use for various things. I still brew of course (I've got a keg of brown ale carbonating right now), it's just I've added something new to experiment and have fun with.
For the most part I make various liqueurs with the spirit. I make the usual, straw/blue/black/raspberry, mint, amaretto, chocolate, and so forth. I get my recipes off various websites, though typically I halve the sugar, following the recipes as written gives alcoholic sugar water rather than something nice (at least to my tastebuds).
I also make skittle vodka. It's pretty simple- I get a heap of skittles, separate the flavours, and soak one colour in spirit for about an hour or so. Basically until the colour gets stripped from the skittles. I mix the resulting drink with lemonade, it's quite refreshing. I recommend getting the berry skittles, the flavours I've tried from that version have all been great.
I'm also sitting the spirit on wood and making a... rum? It's a sugar wash so I think it's technically rum I'm making? Anyway it first sits on wood chips, then gets moved into a small barrel. I used to use the barrel to mature port, now it's spirit. I have an unusued empty barrel and when I've built up enough spirit to fill it I'll use that one too. It makes a drink that's somewhat simple but quite nice. I usually have it with coke.
Hello all!