Re: Distilling alchohol
Don't bother with double-boiling it. You don't need hardcore temperature control or anything. Put your alcoholic liquid into a metal container, seal the lid, and have the tubing setup through ice water like you mentioned. Just so you are aware, you'll have issues with vapor leaking out at the lip of the lid if you don't seal it well.
There's some good distillation websites out there, and I can't remember them off the top of my head, unfortunately. Google "home distilling" and browse those results. Anyways, for the methanol and other crap (there really isn't very much in it at all, so don't worry) all you do is throw out the first bit and last bit of your distillation. I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it's something like "throw out the first and last 5 oz of fluid." DO research that yourself though, because I don't remember.
one last thing: If you can avoid using open flame heat, that would be best. A ghetto distillation setup won't make very flammable, high-proof alcohol, but anything over 100 proof (50% ABV) can catch fire. So, keep that in mind. Open flame would be an absolute no-no if you had a very nice setup and were shooting for 80 or 90% ABV but it's not as much of a concern for your situation
http://homedistiller.org/static_menu.htm
that's the website I was thinking of. It seems to be slow or down or something now, but it looks like you can still access the information by clicking the links
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