Homemade Spirits Part 2: Distillation

PLEASE NOTE: Home distillation may be illegal in your country - I live in NZ where the government allows this. Make sure you check local and/or federal laws before attempting to follow this procedure

Here is part 2 of my guide - the distillation part.

You should now have a fully fermented drum of alcohol wash - this should be added to your still and the lid tightly secured. Turn the element in the still on and wait for the thermometer to hit 50 degrees Celsius. You can now turn on the water running through your column. Once the thermometer reaches 78 degrees liquid will begin dripping from the column. This is methanol which must not be drunk and you should throw away the first ~100ml of distillate to ensure your alcohol is free of methanol.

Then you will be collecting delicious alcohol - it will be coming out around 85% depending on the type of still you have.

Here is a video of my still in action:



Once all the alcohol has been collected it can be filtered through a carbon filter, I will include this information in my next post.