r/prisonhooch • u/Stinkystickysock • Dec 12 '22
Too scared to post on r/firewater. Apple juice wine turned to brandy Experiment
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u/supermopman Dec 12 '22
Nice. NGL seeing that nice looking decanter being used as a paper weight sort of scares me though
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
Filled with the perfect amount of crystal-lite wine to keep the pipe in the perfect slope
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u/cantaloupelion Dec 12 '22
yes thats fine OP. It is, really :)
WHY THE FUCK IS IT LIKE .4MM FROM THE EDGE AAAAAAAAAAA
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u/icemonsoon Dec 12 '22
Cool, I'd be worried about the long drop at the end causing evaporation/splash losses
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u/dadbodsupreme Dec 12 '22
My thoughts. He should use another precariously perched decanter to hold the collection glass up.
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u/Bearded-and-Bored Dec 12 '22
Everybody has a first rig. Be proud of your determination and ingenuity. I watched a video of a dude in the jungle use a clay pot rig to distill. He didn't make any cuts so it probably tasted like paint thinner, but it shows that distilling has its roots in janky rigs. Embrace the jank. If you enjoy the process enough, you can always upgrade. Have fun and be safe:-)
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
Thanks man I appreciate it. I plan on doing some modifications tonight to hopefully get the ABV up!
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u/dadbodsupreme Dec 12 '22
At least you're not using automotive RTV to seal the thing.
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u/dwdist Dec 12 '22
That guy was seriously not having it when asked about his sealing practices
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u/dadbodsupreme Dec 12 '22
I wonder if the condom flavor was a bonus for him.
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u/Dounce1 Jan 04 '23
Context?
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u/dadbodsupreme Jan 04 '23
A guy posted his still which he had constructed using automotive RTV silicone. The op wasn't having it that it was a bad Idea. Kept trying to refute the argument "there's stuff in there what's bad for folks to ingest" and I tried the different angle of "it'll make your stuff taste like a petrochemical" but he wasn't having that either.
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u/Hackerwithalacker Dec 12 '22
Just to ease my mind, you are collecting in multiple cups right? Throw away those damned heads and tails my friends
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
Nah mate I just put it in one jar, am I drinking acetone or will it just give off an off flavour
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u/Hackerwithalacker Dec 12 '22
I too love chugging acetone
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u/Lobstershaft Dec 13 '22
Depending on what you're distilling there'll be a varying amount of methanol in the heads. If you're fermenting grapes though, you'll certainly want to chuck out the heads, unless you wanna run the risk of permanent liver damage and/or going blind
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u/Jungies Dec 13 '22
Methanol's distributed evenly throughout the product; it's acetone that's concentrated in the heads.
/r/Firewater's got a lengthy write-up on it.
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1
u/dwdist Dec 12 '22
Making fruit brandy you’ll cut deeper into the heads chasing the flavor. It’s a hard call to make for me
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u/dwdist Dec 12 '22
I would take a portion of that long length of pipe you’re using as a condenser and have it go straight up for a “column” then kick out your “lyne arm”. With as small as your “boiler” is - you don’t need a huge condenser. Get a small coil of soft copper as a condenser and put in a bucket to help your water bill
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u/bmorepirate Dec 12 '22
Looks nicer than some I've seen. If you don't want to take up so much space, just a copper coil of fridge water line through a 5 gallon bucket of ice.
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
I really wanted to get some production yesterday no matter how it looked.. I plan on making a sharp upward slope on the pipe close to the kettle to hopefully bring up my ABV as the water and alcohol steam hopefully separates and water flows back down. Then I'll make a coil with my remaining pipe.
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u/bmorepirate Dec 13 '22
I've heard running a thumper does a nice job re ABV. I've also heard Amazon sells silicone stoppers for Mason jars and jugs so you can add them in line easily.
So I've heard.
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u/LaDivina77 Dec 12 '22
Ahhh yeesss this is fabulous! I've been trying to figure out some of the finer points of my own rigged up still, this gives some good ideas!
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
I was hoping to use my pressure cooker but seeing that 1/2" copper pipe will fit into this kettle perfectly I couldn't pass it up. Honestly it wasnt as strong as I liked (I didn't test it) but it actually tastes really good. I'm gonna guess maybe 20-25%
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u/FAmos Dec 13 '22
you going for the prison hooch aesthetic i see lol cool stuff!
you could also get a glass distillation apparatus for not very expensive
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u/laoreja Dec 13 '22
Lol, when scrolling your post on /r/firewater showed up IMMEDIATELY after this one.
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u/Jungies Dec 13 '22
Bless you for posting this on /r/firewater, as I don't think they're ready for its majesty.
You might want to cross post this video on /r/redneckengineering too.
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u/ARockOrSomething2 Dec 17 '22
Can we lend this to the user who hooched the rabbit pellets? Weed n' Feed whiskey
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Dec 12 '22
[deleted]
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u/Hexxas Dec 12 '22
"Don't know much about distilling"
Still tries to be an authority
Why do people do this?
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u/KingSizeDingus Dec 12 '22
I’m pretty sure that the cheap liquor at the store has all that’s stuff in, that’s what makes cheap liquor give bad hangovers
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u/Hexxas Dec 12 '22
No, I mean, why do people chime in with advice when they have no idea what they're talking about?
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
Nah I'm drinking it all, I don't care about the taste much I just want it strong. That methanol stuff is just a myth pretty much. If there's no methanol in the wine, there won't be any after stilling either
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u/OkRecommendation8333 Dec 13 '22
There is methanol in wine, and after you distill it. It becomes much more concentrated.
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u/mattwinkler007 Dec 13 '22
Yeah but so does the ethanol, and ethanol metabolizes before (counteracts, more-or-less) methanol.
Basically, distilled spirit might contain three times the methanol, but you only drink a third as much.
Cutting the heads is still absolutely a good idea, but more of a bonus. Only realistic case where you could accidentally get methanol poisoning would be drinking only the heads from a rather large batch ...so don't do that.
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u/Vassago81 Dec 13 '22
The main idea is to take some or most of it off, because it taste bad. And take the tail off, when the vapors are at around 92 degree, because it taste like wet dog balls
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u/Staidly Dec 13 '22
Make your cuts by taste, not temperature
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u/Vassago81 Dec 13 '22
Uh, if you're not using a puker / thumper and your gas temp at the top of your still is bellow 78 degree, you can be pretty sure that everything that come out can go straight to the jar with the skull on it. I also keep the "not really foreshot anymore but still taste a little like death" in a jar and reuse them in my next distillations, along with the tails.
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u/Staidly Dec 13 '22
Depends on where the thermometer is, doesn’t it? I don’t trust every still to show the same temp at the same time, and we’ve seen that on the various posts to the distilling subreddits.
I mean, I’ll use a refractometer to help me make my tails cuts, and once you learn a specific still you can usually go by temp then, I just don’t think we can make broad claims across all stills given variations between them and where thermometers might be located.
I don’t disagree with you, I just think that using taste is a better way of doing it generally.
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u/Travyhart97 Dec 13 '22
I thought I saw your post earlier today on fire water? Also littler rig man!
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u/99mushrooms Jan 27 '23
My first still used an old crockpot for the boiler and the temp was just right, I soldered a copper coil onto a stainless steel lid that fit the crockpot and used dough around it. The coil was placed in a gallon bucket with a hole for water to drip out of as the ice I filled around it melted. The temp on low was perfect and I could turn it to high to collect some more low wines to redistill, no open flame in case I had a leak either. I love seeing homemade stills!
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u/Stinkystickysock Jan 27 '23
That's awesome man, I wanted to use my pressure cooker but the old lady wouldn't let me wreck it lol
I have a slightly new setup now too with about a 45° incline cooling it with a spray bottle to try to get a higher proof, along with a coil to cool it like a normal person lol
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u/99mushrooms Jan 27 '23
You can get them pretty cheap at second hand stores like goodwill. The best part of mine was that the crockpot wasn't modded in any way and could still be used, all I made was the coil and lid so when I was done I took it off and cleaned it up and you would never even know. I bought an air still off Amazon for like $90 and I love it, it has a fan cooling system built in, that thing is like the instapot of stills.
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u/new_name_new_me Apr 13 '23
Nice machine. I did the same a while back, unfortunately didn't have oak so it didn't turn out as well as it could have, but still enjoyed what I got from a single run.
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u/Stinkystickysock Dec 12 '22
I felt my sketchy looking low budget "still" belonged here. I'm mostly a winemaker and learnt lots here but I thought I'd try something different. Here it is