[Closed] Gin, still.

You'll be needing a talk with HMRC before you start. They can get unpleasant with distillers that don't pay duty involving use of the big red key early in the morning.

The process is pretty simple. You can make a small batch with basic lab equipment (flasks, etc) or you can buy small stills pretty cheaply online. We did a distillery course and made a couple of bottles. Came out ok.

I'm not sure about the tax situation but you make gin from neutral spirit which you pay the tax on when you buy it. You don't actually make alcohol in a gin still.

Do you actually want to distil or do what the majority of craft gin "distillers" do and rectify? The first is basically impossible to do legally on a non commercial scale, the second appears to be relatively straightforward.

I had a look at distilling.

It was the possibility of accidentally  producing wood alcohol and going blind that put me off. Being blind and  jail for distilling spirits just seemed a crazy risk to take for something I could just buy in a shop legally with little chance of being blind.

I only just scraped by at uni in my chemistry labs.

Got an addiction?

You can make a bathtub gin with a bottle of vodka and the botanicals of your choice.

You can make a bathtub gin with a bottle of vodka and the botanicals of your choice.

Also nees a rubber duck if it's going to be a proper bathrub gin....

If you're just looking to muck about and make a little bit for your own consumption, then I wouldn't worry about HMRC.

Easiest way is to add some botanicals to some vodka and leave it in the cupboard for a few weeks then strain them out.

After that I'd look at one of these:
https://stillspirits.com/products/turbo-air-still

After that it gets a little complicated.

My friends use a still and make their own batches. I think they just get the sachets of flavourings to add which makes the end product after making the alcohol.

They use an air still. https://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/airstill-alcohol-kit-no-fermenting-equipment-included-uk-version/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAgP6PBhDmARIsAPWMq6loutKJ6MA_pSXq9uoU4Pect5TZGic3YAmY7T0XxPTBAhXuXJ0_tU0aAkxFEALw_wcB

Thanks for those snippets.
I doubt if HMRC would be arsed about a litre a month or so. Unless I was selling it.

Got an addiction?

Not yet, work in progress.

I'm guessing you won't be distilling the alcohol with a home setup but if you are be very careful as alcohol fumes are highly combustible as you can imagine

I doubt if HMRC would be arsed about a litre a month or so. Unless I was selling it.

I think you might be surprised, given how dangerous it can be. Both polcie and HMRC are very interested in this.

Being blind and jail for distilling spirits just seemed a crazy risk to take for something I could just buy in a shop legally with little chance of being blind.

You are NOT WCA and I claim my £5

DrP

I looked into this in lockdown - I made some home-brew beer which was successful and thought trying to make a spirit would be something else to try/next logical progression, from a curiosity POV. Looked into it and generally seen as illegal, dangerous and most home brew forums ban the discussion of it

Watched a few YouTube videos and seems easy enough, but need to discard quite a lot of the distilled spirit (or use it for cleaning) to ensure you don't go blind through drinking the Tops and Tails, then the spirit you do keep needs to go through quite a few charcoal filters.

Decided in the end, that you needed quite a lot of kit, for something of dubious safety, you run the risk of an awkward conversation with the law and at the end of the day there's quite a few nice bottles are often on discount at Tesco for £20...

If anyone has any questions about distilling, (such as - how not to go avoid the poisonous bits or avoid explosions) post them up - I've got a masters degree in alcohol distilling...

Out of interest, is (personal) distillation legal on the Isle of Man? I was surprised to see Big Clive do a series on (re)distilling some drinks. While it might not be widely enforced, I still doubt that putting it up on You Tube would be a good idea if it was illegal.

'If' I had made one a few years ago, which I clearly didn't, I would have stuck a couple of bottles of cheap wine, red or white, into a wallpaper steamer tank and then rigged a swan neck and cooler coil out of some copper brake pipe that was in the garage. The steamer boils the wine with the swan neck and cooler catching the vapours. Ditch the first and last 20% as dirty but the middle of the distil is pretty okay. Leave to age for a while and then either drink it or set fire to the garage floor with it.

Clearly none of this happened and I wouldn't do such a thing but definitely worth leaving a few months in the bottle. Not sure what evaporates or dissolves but it tastes (a bit) better.

If anyone has any questions about distilling, (such as – how not to go avoid the poisonous bits or avoid explosions) post them up – I’ve got a masters degree in alcohol distilling…

Ok, so if one, in a region of the world where it were legal to do so of course, were to put a litre of fermented liquid (a wash if my whisky tour memory serves), though a typical air still, how much distilled spirit would you expect to make? More precisely, how would you know when the product has changed from a cleaning alcohol to one which won't make you blind?

Also, at what point does the drinking quality spirit turn back to nasty stuff again?

Ok, so if one, in a region of the world where it were legal to do so of course, were to put a litre of fermented liquid (a wash if my whisky tour memory serves), though a typical air still, how much distilled spirit would you expect to make? More precisely, how would you know when the product has changed from a cleaning alcohol to one which won’t make you blind?

Air stills 'only' give around 60% alcohol and you get around 700ml from 4 litres of wine-strength wash once you've binned the heads and tails, according to t'internet.

I have a Brazilian colleague who's family have a still in Brazil - he says that the key is not to be greedy and to leave loads of margin on the tops and tails. Obviously he has never brought some to work (not in the UK anyway) so I am unable to confirm that it is delicious 🙂

WorldClassAccident ‘If’ I had made one a few years ago, which I clearly didn’t,...

With your forum name I wonder if the risk of going blind crossed your mind? 😂 ( Crying with laughter face in case that came across as serious).

Was "your friend" who didn't do that worried? Is there a way to check at home if it's wood alcohol or not? Do you just give it to someone else first?

Clearly there must be some folk doing this. I've had a mates granddads strawberry vodka- possibly the most horrible spirit I've ever tried and some irish potcheen- possibly the most horrible thing I've ever ingested. One was Portuguese, I assume it was legal, one was poteen, clearly it was not.

Do many people go blind? I didn't realise that was a possibility when I tried those drinks.

Do many people go blind? I didn’t realise that was a possibility when I tried those drinks.

My understanding was that there's a quantity required to actually poison you.

Distilling doesn't create methanol, it just concentrates it. So if you started with a 20l barrel of 10% wash then you would get about 2l of 95% alcohol before the temperature goes above 80C at the top of your still. You discard the first 200ml, keep the next 1600ml, and discard the last 200ml.

The reason that 1600ml still has the potential to cause problems is no one can drink 20 pints in a session and not be metabolizing it as they go. Whereas the equivalent 3 bottles of rum is less inconceivable.

I'd like to give it a go, it's probably safer as an occasional drinker. If you're planning to get drunk on it then it's more likely you'll ingest sufficient methanol to cause serious damage.

As far as the volume/%abv goes...

You don't really lose any alcohol, but you increase the percentage in the liquid volume (remember that abv is alcohol by volume expressed as a percentage)

So if you have 100 litres of 8% abv wash (the fermented sugar solution) and you distil it down, you can have 10 litres of 80% abv spirit.

That's a huge generalisation and misses out how the stills actually function in real life, but it is the essential principle.

For the poisonous/minging stuff

Distillation is based on the different boiling points of various compounds in the wash.
You heat the wash up from room temperature to close to 100c.
During that process, different compounds transition from the liquid to a gas (at their boiling points). They rise up, go through the neck of your still and the condensor (water cooling jacket/coils) reduces their temperature back under the boiling point, they become liquid and flow down in to your collection vessel.

Many of the dangerous compounds have relatively low boiling points, so they vapourise first and then come out of the still as "heads". Methanol is the "make you blind" one, but there are lots of aldehydes etc that come off first.

Ethanol vapourises at 78c. This temp is the centrepoint of the "hearts".

Once your wash gets to quite a high temperature you have fusel alcohols coming off it and very little ethanol. This is the "tails". Fusel alcohols don't taste very nice.

... So, the way it works is that you monitor the temperature of the vapour in the still.

If it is low [i.e around the boiling point of methanol (65c)], you discard any liquid collected through your condensor. Once it transitions towards 78c you start keeping it. This is the good stuff - nice and smooth.

However, once the vapour temperature gets higher, you start discarding the liquid as it tastes minging.

The points at which you start and stop collecting are the "cuts" and define the taste of your spirit.

I'll caveat this by saying this is based on batch distillation in pot stills (like whisky). Spirits can also be made on a continuous/column still which has graduations that allow you to choose the temps/abvs that you cut and collect at.

Home distilling at the level we're talking about will be batch distillation

Think I'll just get one of these. 😂

https://flic.kr/p/dx5qnA

Regarding the legality of distilling and putting videos on YouTube, I still find it unbelievable that the Discovery show Moonshiners documents a bunch of well known producers of illegal spirits in the US, mostly who are known to the law and have done time for moonshining.

Yet they create documentary evidence of their actions, have it broadcast across the world, but this doesn't seem to be sufficient for the authorities to pick them up and throw away the key...

Well, have you looked at our government at the moment?

Also.. this video is the perfect serve for this thread:

https://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/guides/beginners-guide-to-making-your-own-spirit/

Love Brewing will sell you the kit and the know how, however they will also point out that it is illegal in the UK without a distillers license