Distilling at home: Three ways to make high ABV spirits

on this episode of doing the most we're gonna take a look at distilling [Music] homemade [Music] creation fermentation inebriation doing the most i want to start off with a big thanks to the sponsor for this video viver they sent us this five gallon pot still for us to use as a practical example in this video for more information on weaver and where you can get a pot still like this or a ton of other different equipment that they sell take a look at the link in the description thank you viver for supporting this video there are two commonly practiced methods of distillation heat distilling and fractional freezing and we're going to take a quick look just a nuts and bolts look at both methods in this video now this is not going to be a full-fledged how-to on how to do either of these processes mostly because if you take a look at your local laws it's probably not legal for you to do either of these things where you live also teaching you how to run a still is like trying to teach you art and science and it's going to take a lot more effort than what i can put into this particular video and there are some great distilling youtube channels out there like these and i'd recommend you take a look at their videos if you want to do a deeper dive into this hobby [Music] heat distillation requires a few things first off obviously a still you can use a pot still or a reflux still those are the two commonly used type of stills this one is a pot still because the base of it is a pot and because there's no reflux column on here obviously you're also going to need a heat source for still like this you might be able to get away with an electric burner i've seen it done with very small like 1.25 gallon pot stills on electric burner but really you would need to use something like propane in order to get a big enough flame underneath this thing so that you're not waiting all day for it to come up to boil and lastly you're going to need a wash and that could be anything from cider to wine to beer a lot of times they're made with malted barley malted grains even corn and some people will just do a sugar wash with sugar or invert sugar and brew it up to 10 even 18 and then run it through the still to further purify it and separate the alcohol from the other stuff in that fermentation so it does require fermentation from the outset so how does it work it's actually fairly simple because all you're doing is collecting things at the right time so we'll talk about this in a minute but the undesirable stuff turns into vapor faster than the stuff that you want and then the other undesirable stuff at the end of running the still that boils at an even higher temperature so what you're collecting is the ethanol at the heart of your distillation essentially you place your wash in the pot and you get everything sealed up tight and as you apply heat to that the vapor starts to come up and out through here it travels around and through your thumper or in this case this is a slobber box they both perform kind of similar functions but a thumper is like the upgraded next level more expert version of the slobber box this model comes with the slobber box and inside here that vapor will collect condense and then re-vaporize and come up and out through here and then it goes through this condenser coil where you're chilling this with icy cold water that runs in and out of here so it's constantly staying cold and so your alcohol distillate turns from vapor back into liquid and then drips out here and you collect it with a jar there like i said this model comes equipped with a slobber box and what makes it different from a thumper is that you don't have an inlet tube going down to the bottom which would be submerged under liquid in here and the cool thing about using an actual thumper is that it does kind of a second wave of distillation helping purify it even more during your initial runs and also you can charge this with botanicals herbs things like that to create a flavored spirit so if you're making gin for example you might want to put your gin botanicals in your thumper so that way when the vapor travels through them it carries that flavor up and out into your collected spirit this model also comes equipped with a thermometer and that's kind of how you track the pace of progress while you're running the still and for this model it seems that about 180 fahrenheit according to the thermometer built in is when your distillate starts exiting the still and generally that's going to be closer to like 190 195 maybe but i think that may just be a quirk of this particular thermometer but that said generally a distiller can kind of know where they are in the run based on what temperature the still is at and of course also by smell and by flavor your first run is known as your stripping run and basically you're taking that wash which is like i said 10 to 18 alcohol and you're running it through the still in order to concentrate it and start separating some of that water content and other stuff out of it so that results in what we call the low wines and that's anywhere from 25 to 40 percent alcohol depending on where you started with your wash and sometimes people will just leave that where it is because they may be happy with a 30 percent alcohol rum now generally cuts aren't being made during that process so some of the gnarlier stuff may make it into your final batch if you're not throwing out the first jar or maybe two jars of your stripping run but it can be perfectly drinkable if like that's where you just want to stop however most folks will run it through the still again or maybe again in further stripping runs until you get to your spirit run which is the final run of the still where you're collecting the final spirit that you're going to be blending and bottling so when you get to that spirit run it is important to make a lot of cuts along the way as you're doing that run so you can kind of get the spectrum of product off of the still and kind of know what okay maybe that's got too much tails or maybe that's got too much heads kind of collect that heart and blend them together so you get something that's really cohesive and tastes good to you we talk about four different categories when we talk about cuts and they happen at specific times as you're running the still first off are the four shots and that's the truly nasty stuff that is unfit for consumption they're the first vapors that boil off during distillation and usually contain compounds like acetone some methanol and aldehyde volatile just nasty nasty stuff that you don't want to be drinking and then we have the heads which comes right afterward at the beginning of distillation and typically they contain a larger percentage of low boiling point alcohols and other compounds like aldehydes ethyl acetate and stuff like that these are typically discarded then you have the hearts hearts are the desirable stuff the stuff that comes right in the middle of distillation and they contain ethanol obviously the stuff that we want to keep and they're typically filled with the flavors and aromas that make the spirits unique depending on how they've been made after that you've got your tails or your faints this is kind of colloquial depending on where you're from and what you're running through the still this is the leftover also sort of nasty stuff that you don't want in the final spirit it's not necessarily bad stuff like dangerous stuff it's more just like leftover junk from the wash and a lot of folks will just collect those and dump them in with the next stripping run on whatever else they're making because there is some alcohol in there that can be harvested stills are pretty inexpensive these days they're sold for making distilled water for making essential oils things like that i think this one was at or under a hundred bucks for a five gallon still so for what it is for a beginner pot still it's actually pretty reasonably priced and with a few modifications like adding high temperature plumbing tape to some of the fittings it runs pretty well but i have to remind you again check your local laws you don't want to break any laws running a still in your backyard [Music] the other method of distilling at home is called fractional freezing and for a lot of folks it's probably the most accessible way of distilling at home doesn't require any fancy gear unless you want to level up to the method we've showed you previously where you use a salad spinner for larger batches fractional freezing is usually done with wine or cider in order to make a jacked version of the drink basically you're concentrating the alcohols by removing the water from the mix there are two common ways of doing this at home one involves freezing in a jug or a bottle and then turning that upside down in the fridge in order to let the alcohol and flavors drain out and stop right around the time that all you're left with is ice in that jug and then you just toss the ice or use it to brine meat whatever you're only wanting to keep the distillate that melts and the reason this works is because alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water so the alcohol is going to thaw faster than the water ice so as it runs off it can be collected before you collect too much of the water from the ice the other way of doing this like i mentioned before is using a salad spinner as a centrifuge and instead of removing the alcohol from the ice you're removing the ice from the alcohol so you collect the ice chunks you centrifuge the alcohol out and then throw the ice out putting the alcohol back together and after several days up to a few weeks all of that gets concentrated down so you're just left with the booze at the end that can't freeze at all now it does concentrate the impurities and other stuff that are in there so stay hydrated and drink responsibly if you're drinking fractional freeze distilled spirits think of it like if you removed half the water from a bottle of wine and then drank the remnants that last leftover half bottle of concentrated stuff that's going to give you a worse hangover than if you drank the wine with all the water still in it and so it's not necessarily that you're creating something more dangerous using fractional freezing it's just that you're removing the hydrating factor of the water that's in that drink so you need to have an extra pint or two or three if you're drinking fractional freeze distilled beverages the great thing though about fractional freeze distilled beverages like apple jack is that you're also concentrating all of that rich flavor so versus heat distillation where you're kind of removing a lot of those flavor compounds you are concentrating them and making it a next level drink and that's why applejack is best made through a fractional freeze distillation rather than being run as an apple shine through a pot still because you want all that good rich flavor in there one last note on fractional freezing it can be used to up the abv of certain drinks also for example if you want to take your beer up an extra half a percent alcohol or one percent alcohol you can freeze it remove a little bit of that water ice and then the abv will go up just a little bit incrementally and as i understand it freeze concentrating beer up to a half a percent alcohol extra is legal in the united states but i'm not a lawyer i hope you found this video insightful i know it's a lot to take in and distilling is a thing that kind of scares people off a little bit in its complexity but it's not that complex it just takes a little finesse a little art and a little science to be done right and of course it takes living in a place where it's actually legal to do for more videos on home brewing and home brewing related topics i hope you'll subscribe to our channel and ring that notification bell and of course you should join our discord community where there are tons of home brewers that are waiting to be your newest bestest friends there's like a thousand people over there now so it's kind of a hopping place now if you'll excuse me i've got some errands to attend to and no this isn't going through the still this crispy hydra mill session meat has got to get into a keg before summer's over until next time happy brewing and cheers [Music] you

Channel: Doin' the Most Brewing

Views: 23,834

Keywords: cider, cyser, maplejack, freeze distill, distillation, freeze, homebrew, homebrewing, maple, wine, howitsmade, hard cider, honeyjack, honey jack, distilled mead, honey vodka, maple brandy, honey brandy, brewing history, historical cocktails, jack rose cocktail, cocktail recipes, homemade brandy, homemade spirits, fractional crystallization, freezer jack, sugar jack, fruit wine, cidermaking, homebrew for beginners, stillit, distill at home, distill dorm

Id: 89UnJdoogZ0

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022