Homemade Brandy 30 days and Don't Plan On Driving Recipe/Easy

Any fruit makes good wine!

Racking is just siphoning the juice (working wine) out of one container into another. Then rinsing out the first container and putting the juice back in.
I usually make wine with 5 clear gallon milk jugs with air locks stuck in the cap. I siphon all 5 jugs into a plastic tote, making sure not to suck up any sediment (dead yeast) and then pour the juice back into the jugs after I've rinsed them out. It's not super high-tech at all.

 

Explosive is right!! I put a cork and tube in it to keep out wild yeast, and it almost put a hole in my ceiling!!
I use wadded paper towels now, and sit inside a big turkey frying pot!

 

I’ve heard of the wet paper towel trick. Sometimes I lay one on top of my air lock to keep the dust out but still let the CO2 out. The air lock is honestly the only “real” wine making gear I’d recommend. It cuts the risk of having to patch your ceiling hahaha

 

You can put it in the fridge too, the sediment settles too the bottom more quickly. We transfer it after the 30 day period is up then cool it and syphon it 2 times. We usually get about 3 1/2 gallons per batch. Not really big drinkers anymore, it lasts a long time. It mellows out a lot after about 6 months. We use Strawberries.

 

I'll try the fridge technique next time. Sounds like a winner. I'm looking for some fruit right now and getting ready to make about 20 gallons for the summer.

 

20 gallons? Holy Crap!!!

Let me know how you like it!!

 

Haha Mine usually siphons off to only 4 gallons and, by the time everyone catches word that it's ready, it's gone! I like to share but come on I need some for the home reserve. I just so happen to be a couple days away from owning a 30 gallon food safe plastic drum so I can't pass up the opportunity to fill it!

 

Made my first batch tonight. Used blackberries that were picked from my hunting property. Can't wait for the next blackberry season to start, just a few months away, ok 4 months, but time will fly by!

 

That was an amazing series: I watched the first few episodes on NetFlix, and I was thinking that it was so believable: the disciplined, experienced scientist finds out that chemistry is the least of the challenges, and that the biggest problem is dealing with all the losers who crawl out from under rocks when there's easy money to be had.

I thought it was great that the writers named him "Heisenberg": that was delicious irony.

 

I've got two questions for you:

1. Are all the stories I read about distilling true, or are they just FUD put out by the ATF? It seems that every article I read about "Home brew" has some sky-is-falling warning about how you'll -
   • Go blind
   • Become Sterile
   • Turn into a girl
   • (whatever you're most afraid of)
     
     ... if you try to distill beer into anything stronger.
     
2. Can I distill hard cider by freezing it again and again, or is that another cock-and-bull story?

Thanks for helping.

William Warren

 

Both are true, you can damage your optic nerves if you don't know what you're doing, and yes you can make apple Jack fairly easy!

 

Alcohol evaporates around 170* F the process is pretty basic, rednecks have been do'in it for centuries, it is ILLEGAL to make moonshine!
Better think about it before you do it. You can buy pure grain alcohol at the liquor store pretty cheap.If you find yourself in a Survival situation Legality is not even in the Equation, so learning how to do it and having the parts to build it laying around un-assembled couldn't hurt.

 

OK, question time. I made a batch of this earlier this year, and i'm getting ready to make another batch.

With the fruit used, is it blended, chopped, or left whole?

My wife works for a yeast company (American Yeast/Lallamand) and on a recent trip to the home office got some wine yeast samples so I will use this yeast instead of the standard baking yeast.

We have lots of blackberries from our property so I'll make another batch of blackberry wine
TIA

 

For what propane, sugar, and time are worth, it's cheaper to go to the store and buy a bottle. Sitting around watching lighter fluid drip out at 2 drips per second while the propane is burning at a considerably faster rate is not economically sound, not to mention somewhat unpleasant if your garage is 100+ frikkin degrees. Corn is cheaper than sugar, unless you factor in the additional time it takes to get the corn out when you're ready to still and then the sugar is well worth the additional expense.

Or so I've heard.

Back to the garage....

 

I put the plums I grew in ther blender and it taste's great. Blended fruit takes longer to separate and settle though.

 

Not entirely accurate. There are a number of states where it is legal to make moonshine (or other distilled liquor) for private consumption. Some states allow you to do it without a permit or license, others require a permit or license even for personal consumption and cap the amount you can produce because going above that would mean, it their eyes, you are selling it.

Yes, some states ban home distillation (of alcohol) completely but permit the use of a distillery (or still) for water or possibly for non-consumption (lab) use. In addition, there is a federal law that allows for the registration of stills over 1 gallon and there is a federal permit required in order to distill both liquor and fuel alcohol.

The blanket statement that it is ILLEGAL to make moonshine, however, is not completely accurate.

 

I stand corrected!