Home Distillation of Alcohol (Homemade Alcohol to Drink)
Preparing a Sugar Based Wash
Summary
Dissolve 5 kg of sugar & 60g of nutrients in 20L of water, and
cool to below 30C before adding hydrated yeast.
Different sugars will result in sweeter or drier alcohols.
Ok, either knock up a "thin" wort (pronounced "wurt") for vodkas, etc (via a reflux still),
or get fancy and do a full grain recipe for whiskey (using a pot still).
If you are using a reflux still, it's no point using anything other than a
thin sugar/water wort, because the reflux will strip out all the flavours. So
no point in paying heaps for grains, malt extract etc, when sugar is so cheap.
If you're after a neutral spirit, one thing you can do different is to add some
activated carbon to the wash (eg with the sugar). This will take out the cogeners
as they form. Just make sure that you filter/decant off this carbon with the yeast,
so that it doesnt go into the still (and release the nasties when heated).
Thin Wort
This is by far the easiest to do, to produce basically a
flavourless vodka, which can be flavoured using either commercial flavourings,
or use fruits to convert to liqueurs.
See Mikrobios' pdf Wine for Distilling
on this topic - you still need to take some care to get a really smooth neutral spirit.
Thin Wort Recipes
Vodka - sugar/dextrose only.
Rum - use molasses instead of sugar, diluted to a SG of 1.06 - 1.07
If you use more than 50/50 molasses/sugar you'll get a heavy rum. "Fancy" (high grade) molasses
will give a better flavour, and has more fermentable sugars than say blackstrap molasses. You
can also use brown sugar instead of molasses.
Method
Basically the same as for beer making, but a lot easier.
Use a 25L beer fermentor, sanitised by soaking full of
water + 150 mL bleach for half an hour.
Dissolve 5 kg of white table sugar and 100g of yeast nutrients in
4L of boiling water, then top up to a total of 20L using cold water.
Yeast Nutrients
The yeast nutrient is necessary because refined sugar has no additional nutrients
in it.
If you try using just sugar, water & yeast, with no nutrients, you will get
very little alcohol. Not much will happen without nutrients present. The alcohol you do make
will contain more of the undesirable byproducts, like aldehydes and higher order
alcohols. To grow, yeast needs
amino acids, minerals, and enzymes, so that it can form the proteins the new cells
will need during its "budding" to form daughter cells.
It provides the necessary potassium, nitrogen, and phosphates needed
(that would in other brewing usually be provided by the malt).
If it can't "bud" to form daughter cells, it will still be able to reproduce a couple
of times, but it does so using up its own reserves. The resulting cells aren't quite
so skilled at the job of making ethanol, and tend to do a couple of extra other things instead.
Use yeast nutrients at the rate of 3 grams per litre of wash (eg 60 g for 20 L).
It is typically made of the following, and/or similar:
diammonium phosphate
magnesium sulphate
yeast (usually deceased,but imparts vitamins and minerals)
folic acid
niacin
calcium pantothenate, and
thiamine hydrochloride.
The "Great New Zealand Home Wine Making Book" suggests to ...
"buy some ammonium sulphate or ammonium phosphate, and some
pottassium phosphate or potassium sulphate and add 2g (1/2 teaspoon)
of each to every 4.5 L. Another valuable addition is vitamin B1.
You can buy these as tiny 3 milligram tablets from your local
chemist or pharmacy and add one of these each 4.5 L" ...
This is why sometimes in some recipes you might see tomato paste or vegemite being
touted as a "secret ingredient" that helps produce cleaner alcohol with less off-flavours
to it. This is because they are acting as a primative mix of nutrients. It is far
better however to use the prepackaged nutrient mixes, as these specifically target
the needs of the yeast, based on quite a bit of laboratory testing & research.
See the
Turbo yeast and
AllTech company web pages for more details
about yeast and nutrients.
Acidity
The other important thing is the acidity of the wash.
Getting it right should achieve better utilization of the sugar, a
slightly higher alcohol %, and less other alcohol congeners. The wash
should also take less time to ferment.
The
Autofuel Manual recommends
that the optimum pH for mash is between 4.8 and 5.0 to keep the yeast
happy, and to retard the growth of lactic acid micro-organisms. They also
state that .. "Most grain mashes have a naturally acid pH of between 5.4
and 5.6 after malting or conversion has been accomplished. Other materials,
notably saccharine substances like molasses and fruit pressings, have a
naturally alkaline pH and must be acidified prior to fermentation." For sugar
washs, the optimum pH is more like 4.0 to 4.5
Wal writes ...
Wine makers aim for a pH of 3.5 which equates to 0.6% acidity and
which is equivalent to 6g of citric acid/litre of water, or 2
lemons/litre of water.
(1 lemon is roughly equal to 3g of citric acid or 1/2 tsp.)
A pH of 5.0 equates to 0.4% acidity and is equivalent to 4g of citric
acid/litre of water, or 1 large lemon/litre of water.
1.2g of citric acid raises the acidity of 1litre by 0.13%.
i.e. 1tsp. (2lemons) raises acidity of 5litres of mash by 0.13%
Tim Watkins comments ..
for acidifying the mash, I've
always used lactic acid (88%) that I bought at the local brewshop. Use
it sparingly though. In a sugar/water mash there is practically nothing
to buffer the acid, so a little goes a long way. I can recall
acidifying only water (about 16l or so) in to the appropriate range with
only about 1/4 of a teaspoon.
Don (Nighthawk) adds
..... as an amature wine maker I always test
the must just before pitching
the yeast, and adjust it to .6% using acid blend (a combination of malac
and tartaric acids) available at most brewing supply places. During fermentation
the acid level will usually increase by about .1% which is where I like my
finished product (.7% acid).
I understand a slightly acid environment gives the best results from
the yeast and is a mild preservative, and have always had good results,
so when I do a batch of sugar/water I balance it to a pH of .5% (using
the ratio of 4 oz. acid to 30 Imp. Gal = .1% increase) as the basis for
calculating how much to add.
On a number of occasions when I was out of acid blend I've used canned
frozen orange juice which seemed to work just as well, and once I even
resorted to vitimin C, but this was when the stuff was dirt cheap. LOL
Buying acid blend in bulk makes it very inexpensive, so I never brew
anything without it, but this is just my way of doing it.
Asking at my local homebrew shop, I was told that the yeast nutrients in
with the Turbo yeasts etc can often contain up to 45% citric acid, purposely
to acidify the sugar washes. I can't confirm this myself, as I can't even
find decent Litmus paper in this wee town ...
Using the new alcohbase
yeasts, the mixture can ferment up to 21% alcohol.
Inverting Sugar
Some people "invert" their sugar, saying that it makes it easier for the yeast
to ferment it. For more details see the Sugar page.
Wal writes ...
Some recommend to turn the sucrose syrup into an invert sugar syrup by
adding an acid such as citric, tartaric or cream of tartar (potassium
hydrogen tartrate).
For 2 lbs of sugar (1 kg.), 1 pint of water (500
ml.), add 1/4 tsp. (1 g.) acid (or juice of 1/2 lemon). Bring to boil
and simmer for 15 minutes. Cool.
At 100C, and a pH of 3.6 (6g acid/litre) you need to simmer for 15
minutes.
Yield
How much alcohol can you expect to make, knowing how much sugar you
put in ? Easy. The theoretical yield is 51.1%, but you will get less
than this, around 48% because you lose some of the sugars to
forming the small amounts of other alcohols, esters, etc
(eg 480 g (610 mL) of ethanol for every 1 kg sugar). All going well, you should be able to
capture approx 90% of this, ie 550 mL pure (100%) ethanol per kg of sugar.
So ... for say 5 kg of sugar, you
should be able to get 0.55 x 5 = 2.75 L of pure ethanol. I collect
mine at 75% strength, ie I get around 2.75 / 0.75 = 3.7 L of distillate . If you run
a pot still at 40%, this means you will get around 6.9 L of distillate.
Knowing how much alcohol is present then lets you know when
your run is about to finish.
Bakers yeast will produce a maximum of around 14% alcohol, whereas the "turbos" can
generate up to 20% alcohol. Obviously you'd use different amounts of sugar for either case.
To estimate the sugar you need, multiply the wash % alcohol by the volume and by 17 grams, eg
to make 20L at 13% you'd use 20 x 13 x 17 = 4400 g = 4.4 kg.
Glucose (dextrose) can be used instead of sugar, and is sometimes said to produce
a "cleaner" wash. You will need to use slightly more (12.5%) by weight to get the
same result as using sugar (eg use 1.25kg of glucose for every 1kg of sugar needed).
Maximum Sugar Concentration
Why not just add heaps of sugar ? Because the yeast won't be
able to handle it, and will burst. The better yeasts (ie alcobase) can take up to 0.35 kg of
sugar per litre of water, but most other mortal yeasts won't. Keep it
to around 0.20 to 0.25 kg/L unless otherwise specified on the packet.
However, Donald advises ...
When making thin worts for distillation achieve higher alcohol yields by
"stepping up" the fermentation, usuing yeast nutrient and real distilers
yeast. To "step up" simply add (50%-100%) more fermetables after primary
fermentation and repeat until yeast is maxed out. Do not use this
procedure if you want to re-use yeast. You may however, harvest enough
yeast (1/4 of total) to re-ptich then step up the rest.
ie .. so start out with the regular routine of say 5 kg sugar in 20L of water, to
get an SG of around 1.07. Ferment down until about 1.0 or 1.1 (ie starting
to slow down), then add another 3-5 kg and see what happens ? (me asking)
Yes, but keep those yeast nutrients in there & make sure it includes
diamonium phoshate.
With proper yeast strain & yeast nutrient a complete end fermentation is
common past 20% so getting 17%-20% at home is only a matter of watching the
hydrometer. Adding too much sugar or adding too much all at once will
result in the wash foaming up when distilling, or burning onto the element.
Poteen
Maurice writes ...
This is a recipe from County Fermanagh, taken
from a book called "In Praise of Poteen". I've never tried it myself.
7lb of bakers yeast
3 stone of brown sugar
4lb of treacle
1lb of hops
Steep ingredients in 3 gallons of lukewarm
water at the bottom of a 40 gallon barrel after steeping fill barrel
to three quarter full with cold spring water. Leave in a cool place to
settle. After several weeks transfer to your still.
Molasses
To find large quantities of molasses, try farm stock feed dealers.
They will sell black strap molasses for horse or cattle feed supplements.
In response to some questions about using molasses ..
I intend to produce fuel ethanol using molasses as a feedstock.
This will provide the sugar source but I have been told that on its own
it does not contain enough nutrients for optimum alchol conversion.
Somebody suggested that you can add corn steep liquor (CSL) - does
anybody have experience of this and what ratio of molasses (at 49%
sucrose) to CSL would you use? Or is there a better alternative.
David replied ..
This is simply not true most of the time. Molasses generally contains more
than enough nutrients although where high temperatures have been used in its
processing it can occasionaly be a little deficient in one or two vitamins
(generally not a problem as yeast require very small amounts of these). The
problem is not the nutrients but the presence of bacteria and wild yeasts
which molasses contains a lot of. To get round this you need to introduce
larger than normal amounts of yeast and to have your pH right so the good
yeast quickly get the upper hand and quickly dominate. This then leads on to
the proper fermentation temperature as too quick a fermentation raises the
temperature and can quickly kill the yeast. If you look after both these
aspects you should have very little problem.
One of the problems with molasses is that it often dosnt have the sugar
content that the seller claims and it therefore will not produce as much
alcohol. There is often a lot of unfermentable material as well. A standard
44 imperial gallon drum (US 55 gallons) contains something like 260 to 280
kg of molasses. This contains a lot of inert material. If buying and using
molasses for this purpose one needs to constantly monitor and check the brix
level so you get what you are paying for. Note: not the theoretical or
claimed level but the actual level.
The addition of CSL will generally improve the fermentability but you will
probably need the addition of enzymes and this adds to cost. Note that CSL
generally has much better starch levels than molasses. Molasses is invert
sugar which still has a fair amount of the sugar content remaining but from
which a lot of the easily extractable sugar has been removed. A lot of the
sugar remaining is in the form of more complex starches so it is all not
utilisable. Again the use of enzymes can help remarkably. Hope this is some
help.
B.r., David
Rum
PK writes ...
I use a 7L pot still with thumper so I have to make 3 runs per
batch (you just can't argue with free). It comes off at 75-80%. My wash is
made from about 8kg cheap brown sugar and 50g yeast nutrient in 23L bucket,
it finishes at about 15% alc using champagne yeast. I found that aging in
toasted oak for at least a week, undiluted, made a product that would fool
my friends. Noticed an even grater improvement when I got lazy and didn't
discard my oak chips and just added more. Great taste when diluted to about
45%.
The foreshots are easy. Even with a 7-8L batch I discard the first 50-60mL.
I stop collecting when the temp. off the thumper reaches about 185 F (85C). I
notice that at this point % alc. begins to fall as well and the smell
changes.I still keep going till the temp off the still reaches about 195 F (90.5C)
I have found a quick way to make charred oak chips. I wrap a
tinfoil packet of oak chips about 3 layers and put them on my stove element
at less than medium... Here's what keeps the fire out, a big old iron frying
pan placed on top. In about 1/2 hr. good Smokey oak. I also sometimes add
some caramelized brown sugar if the batch seems a bit harsh.
Mix 2 or 3 galls. of water with 1 gall. of molasses, and to every 200 galls.
of this mixture add a gallon of yeast. Once or twice a day the head as it rises
is stirred in, and in 3 or 4 days 2 galls. more of water is added to each gallon
of molasses originally used, and the same quantity of yeast as at first.
Four, 5 or 6 days after this, a portion of yeast is added as before, and about
1 oz. of jalaproot powdered (or in winter 1 1/2 oz.), on which the fermentation
proceeds with great violence, and in 3 or 4 days the wash is fit for the still;
100 galls of this wash is computed to yield 22 galls. of spirit
from 1 to 10 overproof. If the molasses spirit, brought to the common proof
strength, is found not to have sufficient vinosity, it will be proper to add
some sweet spirits of nitre (ethyl nitrate); and if the spirit has been properly distilled by a
gentle heat, it may, by this addition only, be made to pass with ordinary
judges as French brandy. Great quantities of this spirit are used in adulterating
foreign brandy, rum, and arrack. Much of it is also used alone in making cherry
brandy and other cordials by infusion; in all which many prefer it to foreign
brandies. Molasses, like all other spirits, is entirely colorless when first
extracted; but distillers give it, as nearly as possible, the color of foreign
spirits.
Andrews tale ...
I just tried out the first product from my new still on the general
public (ok, it was family and friends at a tailgate) and it was a hit!
Everyone agreed that it not only smelled and tasted "just like real
rum" but that it was yummy. I am very excited.
I made an all molasses mash, pitched champagne yeast, and ran once
through my reflux still. My condensor is attached to my column so I
don't really have a good way to de-reflux my still. I took off
distallate at an average of about 150 proof, and then kept the tails
seperate when they droped to about 125-130 proof and the temp at the
top of my column was about 90C.
I made about a 22L mash. I used a lot of molasses, around 7L, I'm not
really sure of the amount because I went by my hydrometer. I added
enough to get my potential alcohol up to around 16%. Nothing magical
about that number, something I pulled out of a hat considering I was
going to pitch champagne yeast, and noting that the molasses itself
has a lot of dissolved solids in it that aren't sugar and will raise
the reading.
I charred toasted oak chips by baking in my oven wrapped tightly in
foil at 500deg F. I cut the alcohol to about 90 proof and soaked on
the charred oak as well as uncharred oak. It had been soaking about 3
weeks before I dressed it up for the big night out. After filtering
out the wood with a coffee filter, I carmelize sugar and add about a
teaspoon to 500mL.
Two ways that I know of to carmalize sugar. The way cooks do when they
make carmel and need to melt alot of sugar: dissolve the sugar in
water first, boil until all the water goes away, and continue until
the desired color is reached. It's quite a frothy mess and takes
awhile. Since I don't need much what I do is just put a small coating
of sugar in a dry saucepan, just enough to cover the bottom. heat on
med to med-high and toss the sugar around in the pan alot. It will
melt and then slowly change color. You have to do a lot of swirling
of the pan so that you don't burn the sugar locally while some of the
other sugar is still crystallized. It requires constant attention,
but you're done in about 5min. Watch yourself on that liquid sugar, it is
HOT and sticky. I.E. if you get a dab on your finger, it will burn
and you can't get it off quickly.
Mostly made mixed drinks since it's still young (I can taste a little
something back there but it's faint), but with further ageing and
mellowing I'm sure it will be even better.
A couple people were interested in how I was able to get flavour
through my reflux still. I have some ideas, but thought I'd also put
this out for discussion. My reflux column has good surface area and
insulation, but no cooling water in the column itself. I control the
temperature of the top of the column by the heat input to the boil.
My guess is that at the temperatures I run at, although I do a good
job of knocking down the water vapors, there is still plenty of
flavor coming over to my condensor. The oak chips also definately impart
flavor to the liquer. Seeing as scotches, bourbons, ryes, tequilas,
all age on oak as well, this can't be the flavor that makes it taste
like rum, but is more of a backbone and mellower, I am guessing.
Honey
Wal writes ...
Bees collect nectar, which is mainly sucrose and 40-80% water. They
process this using the enzyme invertase, and by evaporation into a
product containing 18-20% water we know as honey:
Water 18%
Fructose 38%
Glucose 33%
Sucrose 1.5%
Maltose 7.2%
Higher sugars 1.5%
Minerals 0.2%
Total acid (as gluconic acid) 0.6% (pH 3.9)
Mock Honey.
Not to be outdone by bees, we can also process granular sucrose to
make a home-made 'honey'. Here is a mock-honey recipe (a form of
invert sugar syrup), based on the above, using 4 units of granulated
sugar to 1 unit of water:
2000g raw sugar (say 8 heaped cups). For a darker color substitute
with soft brown sugar (1 cup)
5tbsp. malt extract (maltose)
500ml water (say 2 cups)
6g or 1tsp. acid (a mixture of various - tartaric, citric) or juice
of 2 lemons. A pH of 3.6 is equivalent to 6g of citric acid/litre or
1tsp.
Boil water, add acid and sugar and simmer for 15 minutes. Cool. When
cool add 1tbsp raw sugar (sucrose). This produces about 1 litre of
mock-honey syrup. SG of honey is 1.5kg/l.
You could infuse dried
flowers (camomile, roses, citrus flowers) to provide a floral aroma.
If you are making a heavily spiced mead, and you want to save money,
the recipe is appropriate.
Honey Mash
One of our Utah mates recommends this. Ferment for 75
days and distill. Said to taste great and the mash comes to about
18% alcohol.
5 lb of honey
4 gallons water, with
some yeast and
a little lemon juice..
Mead Brandy
Jacks recipe for Mead Brandy ...
I think this would be close to the ancestral roots
of Krupnik (the honey sweetened vodka). First step: make mead
Per gallon (4L)
3 pounds of honey
one TEAspoon of yeast nutrient
one TABLEspoon of acid blend
Dissolve everything in the water - then pitch a dry champagne yeast (I prefer
Lavlin's K1V-1116 over the EC-1118 because the '18 tends to develop a stale,
brackish taste over time that can follow into the spirit). Once fermented
till dry - distill twice in a potstill or just go by taste in a reflux still.
It's good as a clear spirit, but I prefer to water it to 40 to 45% and age
it on a quarter teaspoon of charred American oak until it gets a Glenmorangie
(10 year) gold color. This takes maybe a month in the bottle.
Age it at this lower strength as vanillins tend to interfere with the honey
aroma of the spirit, and the bitter - sweet taste of this wood tends to
balance well with the honey - the sugars in the wood that are extracted at
this low strength also tend to smoothen out the spirit.
Your Brother in Magick, The Omnipresent Mecakyrios writes about using maple syrup..
Yes, you can use maple syrup to make alcohol. How? Well you take a recipe,
follow it and BAM you have your brew. What if you don't have a recipe? Well
most people I know substitute maple syrup for honey in their mead recipes.
What is you don't have a mead recipe? Well, darn, do I have to do everything
for you? Just joking, if you don't have a good mead recipe I will include
one that has been in my family for years:
-----------------------------------------
This is exactly as it is written. My comments with be enclosed in
[brackets]. I will write the metric version below the original.
-----------------------------------------
Honey Wine
Makes 1 Gallon [US Gallon]
3 Pounds Honey - Any Kind [Just substitute maple syrup for the honey]
1 Large Lemon Juiced [Only use the juice]
1 Tablespoon very strong English Breakfast Tea
1 Large pinch of bread crumbs
1 Package of good wine yeast ["good" means a strong alcohol content]
Fill a pot half way with clean water [basically, if you can drink it, it
tastes good, and you don't get sick from it], and bring it to a boil. Turn
of the heat and add everything except the yeast. Stir to mix everything real
good. Let sit for 20 to 30 minutes [I assume uncovered, as this is what I
have done and everything turns out fine]. After the wait, fill the pot to
make one gallon, stir, and put into the bubbler [the fermenter with an air
lock]. When the brew is room temperature, float the yeast [sprinkle the
yeast - not mixing it in] and add the top [put the air lock back on the
fermenter].
Let sit kicking away [producing CO2, or bubbling] for one month. After a
month, pour [siphon] the green wine [fermented solution] into another
bubbler [a secondary fermenter with an air lock] and let sit until clear.
Once it is clear [about 2 to 6 months] bottle the new [not aged] wine. Let
the wine sit for as long as you can so the flavor will loose it's bite [let
the mead age for about 6 months to a year in the bottles].
---------------
Metric version
---------------
Honey Wine
Makes 3.78 Liters [Litres]
1.36 Kilograms of Honey
1 Lemon Juiced [Just use a lemon not grown in the States]
15 cc. English Breakfast Tea
1 Large pinch [use the fingers of a person not from the USA] of bread crumbs
5 gm. of good wine yeast ["good" means a strong alcohol content]
Lactose
Wal writes ...
Wine and brewer's yeast won't ferment lactose - they in fact use it to
sweeten beers and lemon brews. You need a special lactose fermenting
yeast.At least 2 are found in kefir - candida kefir & kluyveromyces
marxianus. Commercial distillers use the latter with whey, a
by-product of cheese making. Apart from pure lactose you could use
whey powder, which is 80% lactose. The only problem is getting the
lactose fermenting yeast. I saw a source from Germany;
http://www.gbf-braunschweig.de/dsmz/strains/no005422.htm
Airag is fermented horse milk, a frothy, thick, alcoholic milk (about
3%a.b.v.) that fueled Genghis Khan's warriors and still remains a
local favorite today. Mongols who like airag will drink up to 20
litres in a single day. It can be distilled to produce arkhi with an
alcoholic content of about 12%. A Chinese style still is used. It is
basically a pot with a wok filled with water over it, acting as the
condenser, with the condensed alcohol on the underside of the wok
dripping into a centrally placed ceramic jar.
These days cheap vodka is readily available.
Mare's milk is not readily available, so I have thought of using milk
whey powder (75% lactose), and the lactose fermenting yeast
kluyveromyces marxianus. 1.5kg of whey powder/5l water would be
equivalent to 1kg of sucrose/5l water.
Lactose accumulates an estimated 1.2 million tonnes annually as a by
product of the dairy industry. Lactose is a disaccharide like
sucrose, and it can be converted to its monosaccharide components,
glucose and galactose by acid or enzyme hydrolysis. 100g of lactose
will produce 50g each of glucose and galactose. The lactose
converting enzyme is also sold to people who cannot digest lactose in
milk products. For the distiller unfortunately, converting the
lactose won't work very well, as wine and beer yeasts will ferment
the glucose, but for some genetical reason not the galactose when the
two are combined. Even separately, galactose is fermented slowly. So
using the lactose fermenting yeast, kluyveromyces marxianus is the
way to go.
Milk whey is about 4.8% lactose
Milk whey powder is about 75% lactose
Don advises ...
A micro distiller in the US is making vodka usuing only lactose sugar with
the yeast strain Kluyveromyces marxianus and yeast nutrient. The yield is
high and the alcohol is very very pure due to the pure nature of the raw
material. This allows for great results even from modest equipment. It's
a home distillers dream come true. Worse equipment and better product! I
works on mares milk alcohol for the Mongol hordes and it will work for you
too. Give it try, you'll be impressed with the results.