Mooonshiiine

[ThreeWords]

I'm sorry to disappoint you all, but the inestimable paragon of virtue that is your well known friend ThreeWords is now engaged in the planning of a most heinous activity; the creation of home made alcohol.

Unfortunately, he's not entirely sure of how to go about it

To clarify, I'm not brewing it myself, but a friend has come to me, due to my reputation of knowing everything, and asked me what he needs. I'm not entirely sure, and the internet has proved unhelpful, so this is admittedly a last ditch attempt.

So far, he has a vat, some yeast, and a suspension liquid, and he knows that he will need some carbohydrates in the form of sugars. The question is, what else does he need?

EDIT: Also, he wants to produce yeast on a 'industrial' scale, ie a couple of pints from a 30g source. Is the possible, and if so, how should he go about it?

 

[delet]

You can't just search Google or Wikipedia to find it? That's all I'll be doing to find this out so I don't see why you can't.

Time to search then...

Edit: Linky Linky. [http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-moonshine/] What was that, 12 seconds?

 

[Urgh76]

I'm sorry to disappoint you all, but the inestimable paragon of virtue that is your well known friend ThreeWords is now engaged in the planning of a most heinous activity; the creation of home made alcohol.

Unfortunately, he's not entirely sure of how to go about it

To clarify, I'm not brewing it myself, but a friend has come to me, due to my reputation of knowing everything, and asked me what he needs. I'm not entirely sure, and the internet has proved unhelpful, so ths is admittedly a last ditch attempt.

So far, he has a vat, sme yeast, and a suspension liquid, and he knows that he will need some carbohydrates in the form of sugars. The question is, what else does he need?

O.O I do not know.... BUT my one radio station has a program called: mOOOOOOOOOOOOOONShine In the morning! And i thought it was related. ...

It's every sunday at 7.PM.............

 

[muckinscavitch]

You need good quality yeast (not just stuff from the super market), then just a suspension of sugar and water will usually do just fine. A buddy of mine uses just plain white sugar.

Then you let it sit for x amount of time, than you need to distil it numerous times to achieve the maximum purity of 95%. For this, you would need a container, heater, a reflux tube that has alot of cooling tube attachements and then it must of course of a piece near the top where the vapour will exit and travel through a condenser. Everything must be kept 100% sterile. A be weary of explosions and such since they are an everyday threat.

Little notes: Try to get a ceramic material in the condenser rather than copper. Copper causes the creation of a sulfonated product which must be removed through further chemistry. to avoid this, just use a ceramic material (such as beads) in the condenser.

also, when distilling, throw away the first bunch of it (can't give exact amount without knowing how must is being made). You must to this to throw out a large portion of the methanol by product.

 

[Wadders]

My dad brews his own beer, and to be honest I'm not sure it's worth it. He just makes it weak so he can drink in the day and not get drunk.

To answer the question, my old man just uses a beer kit, gets the yeast from the home made bread he makes (which is lovely btw) and a shit tonne of sugar. I can ask him the details if you want, but if your mate wants to make spirits or wine or whatever it probably wont be much use...

 

[ThreeWords]

You can't just search Google or Wikipedia to find it? That's all I'll be doing to find this out so I don't see why you can't.

Time to search then...

Edit: Linky Linky. [http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-moonshine/] What was that, 12 seconds?

Shaddup, I'm somewhat tipsy

Also, read the edit please...

 

[delet]

You can't just search Google or Wikipedia to find it? That's all I'll be doing to find this out so I don't see why you can't.

Time to search then...

Edit: Linky Linky. [http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-moonshine/] What was that, 12 seconds?

Shaddup, I'm somewhat tipsy

Also, read the edit please...

At least I didn't link you to that 'letmegooglethatforyou' thing...

And I don't know about your edit; it's a tad specific for a bland google search so I'll let the other escapees here help ya.

 

[ThreeWords]

You need good quality yeast (not just stuff from the super market), then just a suspension of sugar and water will usually do just fine. A buddy of mine uses just plain white sugar.

Then you let it sit for x amount of time, than you need to distil it numerous times to achieve the maximum purity of 95%. For this, you would need a container, heater, a reflux tube that has alot of cooling tube attachements and then it must of course of a piece near the top where the vapour will exit and travel through a condenser. Everything must be kept 100% sterile. A be weary of explosions and such since they are an everyday threat.

Isn't 95% a little powerful for social consumption? What would you recommend for a drink to be shared amongst friends without becoming totally wankered

Also, how do you accurately measure alcohol percentage? Is it by using a device, or by some kind of intuition/instinct

 

[MinishArcticFox]

I know that Samuel Adams has a beer brewing competition so you could check their website to see if they have a help or FAQ section and I know that they also sell home-brewing kits. But to be honest the only real purpose to home brewing is to adjust the level of alcohol in your drink, and if I read right you said you didn't want it too heavy so I'm a little confused.

 

[ThreeWords]

I know that Samuel Adams has a beer brewing competition so you could check their website to see if they have a help or FAQ section and I know that they also sell home-brewing kits. But to be honest the only real purpose to home brewing is to adjust the level of alcohol in your drink, and if I read right you said you didn't want it too heavy so I'm a little confused.

At the risk of alerting the secret police, I will admit that he is brewing to avoid the limits on the purchase of alcohol.

 

[muckinscavitch]

You need good quality yeast (not just stuff from the super market), then just a suspension of sugar and water will usually do just fine. A buddy of mine uses just plain white sugar.

Then you let it sit for x amount of time, than you need to distil it numerous times to achieve the maximum purity of 95%. For this, you would need a container, heater, a reflux tube that has alot of cooling tube attachements and then it must of course of a piece near the top where the vapour will exit and travel through a condenser. Everything must be kept 100% sterile. A be weary of explosions and such since they are an everyday threat.

Isn't 95% a little powerful for social consumption? What would you recommend for a drink to be shared amongst friends without becoming totally wankered

Also, how do you accurately measure alcohol percentage? Is it by using a device, or by some kind of intuition/instinct

First off, you make 95% just so that you can have relative purity in your sample. Without getting it to 95% (or close), the rest you sort of have no idea what it is. At 95%, you can safely assume that most of the 5% impurity is water, with a bit of methanol(since you throw out the first bit that condenses out, cutting out most of the methanol) and some other trace samples of nothings. Then when you dilute with water (to say, 40%), you are sure 40% is ethanol, and that close to 60% is water, where as if you did not purify it, that 60% of unknown contains alot more unknown than if you did the dilution. Hope that made sense...

You can buy kits to make rum, vodka, liquors, pretty much anything. These kits generally just need your alcohol, water and sugar to go with them. You can control the percentage of your final products if you know the percentage of the ethanol. You can buy chemical tests, and sometimes a small device can do it as well.

95% isn't that high, here in Canada you can get a bottle of 95%, can't remember it's name right now but man does it burn going down. Honestly, you probably would never reach 95%. Most people don't even get 90%. My buddy who's been doing it for a long time consistently gets 94%, never 95%.

 

[ThaBenMan]

Isn't 95% a little powerful for social consumption? What would you recommend for a drink to be shared amongst friends without becoming totally wankered

Isn't that the whole point of making moonshine - stuff that's stronger than what law allows you to buy? You could just go buy a bottle of vodka or something otherwise.

Anyway, good luck, let us know how it turns out, hope you don't go blind.

 

[VicunaBlue]

I've done it. Make sure you don't let it expose to the air.

 

[MinishArcticFox]

I know that Samuel Adams has a beer brewing competition so you could check their website to see if they have a help or FAQ section and I know that they also sell home-brewing kits. But to be honest the only real purpose to home brewing is to adjust the level of alcohol in your drink, and if I read right you said you didn't want it too heavy so I'm a little confused.

At the risk of alerting the secret police, I will admit that he is brewing to avoid the limits on the purchase of alcohol.

If the secret police in your area have nothing better to do than troll forums then you live in a very safe place.

On a more topic related note I think there are blogs for this and they probably all offer advice or maybe even start up kits.

 

[Doctor VonSexMachine]

My liver enjoys not having to deal with methanol, thank you very much.