This is my first time posting so I hope I'm doing it in the right area. I have several questions regarding making your own hard alcohol, which are as follows; Is it dangerous to use a makeshift still? Drinking this alcohol won't make me go blind or anything, right? If moonshine can eat through pennies, how can you drink it? And, finally, what is the procedure for rotting potatoes to make homebrew vodka?

Thanks in advance,

-Tommy M-H

[This message has been edited by tommymh (edited 11-19-2003).]

a makeshift still can be dangerous, if it is not correctly built. Take extra care in selecting your pipe and solder, and be sure to stay away from any pipe or solder containing lead.

You can go blind from drinkning home-made alcohol, but only if you make careless errors. Back in moonshine's hay-day, most of the cases of blindness from moon-shine were not caused by the alcohol itself, but from distillers using pipes and other equipment containing lead, and from hasty bootleggers bottling up the metahnol alcohol that comes out before the ethanol alcohol.

i've never heard the "moonshine can eat through pennies myth", but i do know that Coca-cola (aka, refined phosphoric acid) can dissolve a t-bone stake in four days, so if you can drink coke, you can drink moonshine.

to make your mash, buy 5-6 bags of frozen corn, place the corn in the bottom of a bucket, and add enough water to cover the corn, cover, but do not seal the bucket, and let sit for 2-3 weeks. it is very important to not seal the bucket because during the fermintation process gases are released, and if the gases have no opening to vent through, then they will create one.

research www.homedistiller.com (http://www.homedistiller.com) before you even begin to think about making moonshine

quote:Originally posted by tommymh:

This is my first time posting so I hope I'm doing it in the right area. I have several questions regarding making your own hard alcohol, which are as follows; Is it dangerous to use a makeshift still? Drinking this alcohol won't make me go blind or anything, right? If moonshine can eat through pennies, how can you drink it? And, finally, what is the procedure for rotting potatoes to make homebrew vodka?

Thanks in advance,

-Tommy M-H

[This message has been edited by tommymh (edited 11-19-2003).]

In addition to emplosivo's advice, I suggest reading this file here: http://www.totse.com/en/drugs/booze_the_legal_drug/alcohol.html

Maybe it can help answer any further questions.

[This message has been edited by The_Rare_Gh0st (edited 11-19-2003).]

Thanks for the replies, one of those links says you can remove methanol by pouring the distilled alcohol through activated charcoal, and I was just wondering if anyone knew how accurate that is. Also, is there any concern about methanol or blindness when making beer?

Thanks,

-Tommy M-H

quote:Originally posted by tommymh:

Thanks for the replies, one of those links says you can remove methanol by pouring the distilled alcohol through activated charcoal, and I was just wondering if anyone knew how accurate that is. Also, is there any concern about methanol or blindness when making beer?

Thanks,

-Tommy M-H

A: dead wrong

B: no concern

SWIMs methode of choice is the LFLM ( Lazing fucking LMFM method ).

Take a 4L (gallon) milk jug.

Add a .75kg (2 pounds) of sugar.

Fill 3/4 full with water.

Add bakers yeast (any type of yeast. it doesnt matter).

Leave with lid off for 3 days at room temp.

Freeze it as cold as possible.

Tip the milk jug upsidedown over a pickle jar until the pickle jar has ~1.5L of liquid in it.

Wash ice out of milk bottle.

Funnel liquid from pickle jar back into milk bottle.

Freeze it as cold as possible.

Tip the milk jug upsidedown over a pickle jar until the pickle jar has ~.75L of liquid in it.

If you are not defective (and froze at -25C) you should now have a twixer of %30.

If you add activated charcoal and then filter it out, you get vodka.

[This message has been edited by Rattof (edited 11-19-2003).]

The bit about activated charcoal filtering out methanol is crap, that being said it will make your booze taste better.

One can make an excellent pot still for less than $15 and a trip to walmart. I recently made one for my nephew who left for his first term of college this fall.

You need the following;

1 5L pot with air tight lid (Mine was a steel pot with a plastic lid and a rubber seal $8)

20' Aquarium hose $5.99

2 1gal water jug 50 cents each

1 celcius cooking thermometer $2.99

Drill a hole just big enough for the hose in the center of the lid, the side of the first jug near the bottom, and the lid of the second jug. Cut off the top of the first jug about 1/4th of the way down. Cut your hose into a 5' segment and a 15' segment. Hot glue one end of the long segment into the pots lid and the other run through the top and out the bottom of the first jug, pull about 1'-2' out the bottom of the jug and glue in place. Glue one end of the 5' segment into the lid of the second jug. Duct tape about a foot into a U shape on the side of the jug and let the rest hang free. Drill a second hole in the lid of the pot and glue the thermometer in place.

To make vodka in your new set up you will need about three pounds of potatoes. Peel and boil your potatoes in 1 gallon of water. After they are well and truly boiled mash them in the water. DO NOT THROW THE WATER OUT! After they are mashed, continue boiling them untill the water looks like milk. Strain the potatoes SAVING THE WATER. Crush up two pills of beano or use a few drops of liquid beano, put into the milk white water. Beano is an enzyme extract (Amylase) that breaks down complex starches into simple sugars that yeast can process.

Now we need yeast, you can use baking yeast but you will not get a good product, and the yeilds will be too low. To make liquor worth making you need a brewers yeast. I reccomend either champagne yeast (strain EC1118) or "Turbo Yeast" Champagne yeast will make your mash ferment to between 15% and 18% alcohol, Turbo yeast will take it as high as 25%. Baking yeast will barely take it to 6%. By using the proper yeast you can get a half gallon of vodka instead of a pint with baking yeast. Brewers yeast runs 50cent to a dollar.

Mix your yeast of choice with your cooled potato water and pour it into the second jug, the one with the tubing taped to it. Pour 1-2 tablespoons of water down into the U shaped bit taped to the side. This acts as an air lock, allowing gasses out but preventing bacteria from getting in. Allow to sit for one week or until it stops bubbling.

After it stops bubbling pour it into your pot and seal the lid. Fill the attached jug with ice salt and water. Put the pot on the stove and the jug on the counter. Use a low heat and bring the liquor up to 75 degrees celcius. Discard everything that comes out of the tubing before 75 degrees, this is the methanol. Collect everything that runs between 75 degrees and 85 degrees, this is the ethanol you want. Discard the rest down the drain. You should now have about a quart of 90%-100% pure alcohol, mix it with an equal amount of water to bring it to 40%-50%. If you want you can filter your vodka to give it a smoother taste using activated charcoal. For comparision, Popov vodka (shitty bottom shelf vodka) filters their vodka six times, while Grey Goose (a real top shelf item) filters their vodka over 30 times. Filtering helps.

Huzzah!!! Youve made a handle of decent vodka for less than $20, future bottles will cost less than $5 because you already have a still.

Ok folks, lets us move this on over to Lab Tips, where it belongs.