Home distilling and home brewing have become quite popular hobbies worldwide. The most obvious reason for this is the love for alcoholic beverages or the love for experimenting and inventing new things. However, there is more to the love about home distilling. For one, more and more people are starting to support smaller businesses. Moreover, do-it-yourself projects, sustainable living, reusing, reducing waste and one’s own carbon footprint have become something many people strive for.
Get the Right Products
Of course, making your own alcoholic beverages isn’t something new. For centuries, people have been distilling alcoholic beverages, making wine and brewing beer at home across the globe. But making your own favourite beverage has been made as simple as possible, with products that will help you ease into it without a fuss. For instance, you can buy Still Spirits products that will cover everything from start to end. And, with a little bit of guidance, which you can easily find on the internet, you will be drinking the first glass of your own spirit in no time.
For Making the Wash
Before getting their final form – namely the alcoholic beverages we like to consume –, all hard liqueurs have been something that is called a wash. The wash is essentially a finished product of fermentation, and it’s made by combining water, yeast and sugar in a fermenting bucket. Placed under a certain temperature, and left for a certain period of time, the yeast processes the sugar into alcohol, or in other words, it ferments.
After the wash is ready, in order to create the intended spirit, it needs to be distilled. As a rule of thumb, the clearer the wash, the higher quality of the end result, or the spirit you are making. For this, you should get the best quality supplies, like the Still Spirits Turbo Carbon and Turbo Yeast. Before moving on to distillation, you need to make sure that the wash is absolutely clear. Once fermentation is done, you can clean your wash with the Turbo Clear.
For Distilling
In simple terms, distillation is the process of purifying a liquid. And in terms of alcohol, it is the process that gives you beverages with higher alcohol levels. To distil a liquid, you bring it to boiling point. As it boils, the liquid evaporates and passes through tubes or pipes at a lower temperature, and as a result, it cools down. The cool vapour condenses and becomes a distillate. All liquids boil at different temperatures, which is why distillation is also used to separate mixtures of two or more liquids.
The way distilling systems work is by heating the fermented wash. When the liquid starts vaporising, the vapour rises reaching the top of the still through the column. When it reaches the condenser, the vapour comes in contact with the cold surface, and as a result, condenses back into a liquid state. Because all the different chemicals that are produced during the process of fermentation, including methanol, ethanol, acetone and isopropyl have different boiling points, they also start vaporising at different temperatures. And because alcohol vapour is lighter than water vapour, the distiller segregates the other chemicals and gives us purer ethanol.
There are different Still Spirits products dedicated to distilling, called distilling systems or distilleries. There are many different types, and it all depends on what you want to do. For a home distillery, one great option is to get the 25-litre system, the Turbo 500 Reflux Still if you want to produce a large quantity. If you want to produce even smaller quantities, you can get also the Air Still, a smaller distillery that essentially looks like a kettle or any everyday kitchen appliance. You can use this advanced and very easy to use distilling system to make a 1-litre bottle of quality spirit. The distillation takes just two hours.
For Filtration
The next step towards your first homemade alcoholic beverage is filtration. This is a very important part of the process, which gives you even more guaranty that the result will be a quality spirit. What you need for this step is a carbon filter. When the distilled liquid is filtered, the carbon filter catches and removes any unwanted chemicals left in the spirit, which removes the flavours and smooths out the taste. The end result is a clean, pure spirit.
For Flavour
The last step is flavouring. The pure spirit you get will be similar to vodka. Traditionally spirits like whiskey, scotch, bourbon and so on, get their colours as well as specific flavours from the oak or other hardwood in which they are stored and aged. However, there is another option, and that is flavouring, which makes things a lot easier, and faster. Still Spirits offer a large number of different types of flavourings, and as soon as you decide which type of beverage you are going from, you can choose from hard liquors, including different types of whiskeys, gins, rums etc., cream liqueurs, cocktails, and so on.
Moreover, you can use Still Spirits flavourings even without all the other steps of the process. All you need to do is buy vodka, since it doesn’t have a strong flavour and use it instead, as a base to create your alcoholic beverage. Aside from these flavourings, you can also get essences or seasonings to create different tastes.