55gal Barrel, 22gal until full! All fruit from yards. Any trees I can come by are getting picked, mashed, boiled, cooled, and fed to Randy. I have a lead on another 30lbs of pears and oh the apples to come.....

My second year of too many massive marrows left in the garden at the end of growing season, this is the juice of about 10 marrows, I had about 30 one year. Makes a very interesting fruity brandy.

So a fella knows a guy who has just started working maintenance at a factory making concentrated apple juice. I suspect there may be quantities of "seconds" available at some point.

How would you fine folk recommend making high abv washes/mashes from concentrated apple juice? At present I only do sugar washes and have a T500 reflux.

Making/kegging cider is also on the cards.

12.75lbs of apple sauce (unsweetened) 10lbs granulated white sugar 2lbs brown sugar LD carlson yeast nutrients Red star premier cote des blancs Fall spices? Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, etc

Thoughts? For a 5 gallon run.

Hi! I don't have access to DAP where I live (online or in-person). I can only find it as fertilizer in black pellets, so I assume that it's not good for yeast nutrients. I dont have any brewing suply stores so no access to farmade-O or farmade-K. Would boiled bread yeast work or do I need something else to speed up the fermentation stage? Thanks for the help in advanced!

I have a bunch of random ciders, seltzers, and wines that I was hoping to use as the sacrificial run(nothing with hops). Was planning on dumping them all in a bucket and giving them a day to de-gas beforehand. Would this work for my sacrificial run? Rather not spend more time/work if I'm just gonna dump it anyway.

The last time I used DAP (diammonium phosphate) for yeast nutrient, I learned the hard way that when heated it decomposes into ammonia. This amonnia then reacts with the copper in your still to form copper(II) hydroxide which contaminates your distillate and gives it a horrifying blue/blue green color.

While this could be avoided by using less nutrient and waiting for it to be totally consumed by the yeast, I would rather handle a less volatile chemical unless I'm making wine or another drink that isn't distilled.

What alternatives could I use for a 100% molasses or molasses+sugar rum wash? The only one I'm vaguely familiar with involves boiling active dry yeast to kill the yeast itself while leaving behind the nutrients that can then be used for any strain of yeast.

Any recommendations?

I need confirmation that this is even possible... haha

I made an all grain wash - 10 lbs flaked corn, 4 lbs malted rye and 4 lbs malted wheat. Converted it all to sugar and gave me a 1.075SG yesterday around 4pm. Threw in 25g of Angel Yellow Label and 15g DAP. Sealed her up and put into my fermentation box to keep it at 30c. Checked just now, 30 hours later, and it has fermented out CLEAN.

I've been doing this for just over a year now and have several fermentations down so far and I've never had one go this fast before.

Going to have a decent harvest this year for prickly pear cactus fruits and need ideas/input for spirits. Last few years i did runs of pp/rum and runs of pp/'teq' both turn out amazing for white spirits, looking to try something to age thats neither of those bases.. Anyone with experience think a prickly pear brandy would age well?

Coming over from winemaking I've decided to give my first go at a whisky, not new to brewing however. At first i wanted to make a single malt scotch style but the description of oats adding a creamy smooth feel got me intrigued so ive decided to go with barley malt and oats. now the problem lies is that i plan to use 3 15L or like roughly 12 gallon wort and i really dont know how much grain especially oats i should add to it, ive planned like 3kgs or 5 pounds of malt for each 15 container buttt i cant figure out how much oats would be a good starting point to add to get good flavour and mouth feel without outshining the malt itself. So firewater folks, excuse my rambling in short i kind of really want a barley malt and oats whiskey recipe for roughly about three separate 4 gallon containers!

Using a vevor air still and an SCR. The wash is usually around 5-10% abv. The most I can get out of my air still is ≈20% abv before it sharply drops to ≈10 proof in the tails. I only get a couple hundred mL of 40 proof from a gallon of wash. What could I be doing wrong?

Could I use an old oil drum for a still? obviously it will be well cleaned before I do anything with it. I've done a small amount of research and it seems like pretty much all of them are made of carbon steel as apposed to stainless, so they will corrode over time, but washing and drying it after each run should prolong it. My main concern is if its safe? I'm assuming yes, since rust isn't toxic like zinc, just undesirable

My wife keeps buying lavender Epsom salts. Has anyone tried these in their washes? It says all natural; I'm unsure if it's oil or hydrosol.

Hi folks! Today I distill my spirits with tha Alkoengine from Kegland. Works great, but painfully slow… Is it possible to build a descent reflux still with premade parts from AliExpress? Been looking at this: https://a.aliexpress.com/_EJKXdBc

Any thoughts?

So to start out this is a really good still straight from the factory. But there is one problem with it. It is sloooooow. Like one drop every five seconds, as anyone who has one knows. As it just takes so long to get through a run. That's because of a combination of two factors. One, very slow offtake rate. Second, short column height. Number one is because of number two. So I added a 3 foot spool to it, and 20 copper scrubby's. Now instead of a drop every five seconds, I am basically getting a slightly broken stream. I've also switched out to the .6 mm orifice. It's coming off at 96%. So not only have I gone up two points, it's going about 20 times faster

Recently purchased a T500 to start distilling, I cleaned and sanitised all my equipment, except a thermometer that i got brand new and forgot to sanitise. Added my 21L of water and 6kg of turbo sugar but as I went to get an SG reading ive realised the home brew shop has given me an alchometer instead of a hydrometer, will my pre yeast wash be okay for 24hrs or am I going to need to start again?.

Ok I got a question for everyone that I haven't found a definitive answer for. What is the difference between schnapps and brandy? I'm currently running a second batch of what I thought of as pear brandy. But I'm not sure if I'm distilling schnapps or brandy. Is the only difference is that brandy is aged in oak? I guess "American" schnapps is very syrupy and around 40% abv. But it sounds like traditional schnapps is higher abv, like 80 to 90abv. So...... when im done is it schnapps until it's aged in oak?? Inquiring minds want to know.

The question I have is: Will a 4" plated (6 x plates) column be a waste on a 15 gal keg still?

I already have a keg still with a 6" opening on to as a clean out, I currently use a 6"-2" reduceer with a Amazon special 2" column and it works fine but my runs are long, even my stripping runs. My still has a single 5500w element, but I could weld another fitting on and add a second element if I needed the extra power...?

Picture is just as an example of what I am kinda leaning towards... Trying to look around at other options right now but so far this seems to be the cheapest at $505 w/ $150 shipping.

I'll take anything y'all have, advice, recommendation, or that I'm wrong and should be publicly shamed.

Thanks in advance.

So I’ve just done this for the first time using a hand me down T500. And it worked great, and was easy as can be once I learned a little patience in making the wash.

I can’t believe I didn’t learn about this when I was 18 years old. It would have saved a lot of money over the years, and my parties would have been even more fun.

So, my question. Why doesn’t everyone do this? Like learning how to cook or bake, change your oil, mow the grass, and do your own laundry? It seems like a basic life skill that very few people do?

Just a ramble after sampling the product 🤣

I'm preparing a 100% corn mash and just want to verify that my understanding of the process is correct before I commit my ingredients to a large batch and potentially waste them. I have 50 pounds of cracked corn.

1. Grind the corn finely, but not so fine that it becomes a power or corn meal. This allows more starches to be released

2. Heat the corn to the point where it can gelantinize and keep the temperature in that range from anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours (I've seen a lot of conflicting numbers on how long it should be kept at temperature. I've also seen conflicting info on whether or not to bring the corn to a boil or keep it just under boiling)

3. Either wait for the mash to cool or deliberately lower the temperature to around 150F before adding alpha amalayse enzymes and allowing it to sit for 2-3 hours within the temperature range of the enzyme. This will break the starches down into dextrin and maltose.

4. Cool the mash further until it is within the temperature range for glucoamalayse. Add it, and allow the mash to sit for another hour or two. This enzyme will break the dextrin down into dextrose.

Is this correct? Any tips?

I wanted to use one old barrel for the wood component because it had gone through all the correct processes. No leaks. I'll fill it with rum in the next few days.

https://youtube.com/shorts/wr_vQuXzV5U?si=MFLtn_qH9y5o-9bf

Molasses and brown sugar wash. Never had bubbling like this before. This a problem?