Home Brew Digest

• Jim K posted: 02 Mar at 8:51 am

  Home distilling? Now there’s a good idea.

• andrew b posted: 02 Mar at 6:04 pm

  Check it out…Take a whole bottle of rubbing alcohol and a loaf of bread. Set up the loaf of bread over a container with a coffee filter on the bottom. Pour contents of rubbing alcohol through the top of the loaf of bread and it will pass through every slice and finally the coffee filter. This will give you pure grain alcohol.

• GMoney posted: 03 Mar at 3:46 pm

  Home distillation is illegal in the United States and is very dangerous if not properly supervised.

  Home brewing and home winemaking are legal in the United States if you are of legal age to consume alcohol (21) . Perhaps the easiest alcohol to make at home is hard cider. If you live near an apple orchard or have access to unpasteurized apple cider you are set. Get a 3 gallon glass carboy (like a water cooler jug) a rubber stop, a funnel and an airlock (a home brew store should have all these). Also get some wine yeast (available at home brew store). Get two gallons of cider. At home wash the carboy, airlock, funnel and stop with a dilute bleach solution - 1 cap per 5 gallons water. Let them air dry while the cider comes to room temperature. When hardware is dry put cider into carboy using funnel. Rehydrate yeast in warm apple juice for about 10 minutes. Add yeast/juice to cider. Cap with stop and airlock. Within a week or so you should see fermentation in the cider - bubbles rising. When this action begins to subside you should have dry hard apple cider. Chill the cider and drink up.

• IanP posted: 06 Mar at 2:29 pm

  Cider and beer are not distilled, and very easy to make, but you will need some containers, preparation and patience…

  Distillation, if not done under very carefully controlled conditions, can be very dangerous indeed… not only is there a risk or fire/explosion, but, if you get it even slightly wrong, you can distill the wrong kind of alcohol… the toxic kind.

  However, there is an alternative… freezing.
  Make very, very strong cider.. freeze it. The water content will freeze, the alcohol won’t. Pour off the still-liquid alcohol. Freeze it…
  Keep going until it just won’t freeze any more… and you have Applejack.

  You may want to check your local laws, though… manufacturing alcohol is pretty strictly controlled in most places, for reasons of safety, and taxation

• Trid posted: 09 Mar at 9:14 am

  You don’t need machines, just containers big enough.

  You can do wine or beer/cider easily at home. Here are some good places to start:

  Then do a google search for home brewing stores in your area. The people there are always helpful. They carry all the books you’ll need, the ingredients, the tools, and so on.

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