Summer Fun! (Long)

[T_FLeX]

I just felt like I would tell you guys what I did over the summer.

 

Over the summer I got bored and decided to build a distillery, because I was genuinely interested in the subject. I figured that the field I will be going into deals a lot with fermentation, and chemistry, I thought this would be a great learning experience, and believe me it was.

 

Before we actually built the still, we needed to make some base alcohol. At first we used regular old baker's yeast we found at Winn Dixie, I read in a book the yeast needed all kinds of things to help them grow and produce alcohol such as folic acid, free nitrogen, and vitamins, We had no idea how much of which we needed so we put in all kinds household items we thought could help. Needless to say the first couple of batches were downright deadly, we read that they needed free nitrogen, not just something with protein in it so we tried to use ammonia (which my bro assured me would be fine..lol) when we heated that batch up it gave off a horrible smell that I’m almost positive was dangerous to inhale.

 

After these first couple of batches my brother got discouraged and kinda gave up, but I'm not one to quit. I did a little research and found some super yeast which is known as turbo yeast. It's awesome stuff, it's about 4 bucks a pouch and makes 6.5 gallons, and all you have to do is add sugar and water. This seemed a lot easier than the other way so I've been using turbo yeast ever since.

 

About a month after originally thinking up the project, I got started on the still. I wanted something I could set up in my kitchen, and be easy to store away easily. My first design was made out of copper pipe and a 3 gallon pot; I had 2 cooling tubes running through the main column. This design was decent and we would get some pretty pure distillate but, I did a lot of research on the subject, and found that it's better to have just a long column with no cooling through it except maybe at the top. This is because a tube through the middle would disrupt the equilibrium. So I chopped up this design and began work on a better still. (I’m a perfectionist)

 

This whole time I still had nothing I felt was drinkable, the last still worked good but was only getting around 60-70 pure alcohol, which came out dirty and smelled like Plummer’s putty(another long story..lol)

 

At this point I ran out of money. So I tried to recycle the old still, by cutting off just the top (condenser) which took me a long time to get right, because I had already soldered everything in place. I had no other tubing but a piece of 1 inch pipe that was maybe 3 foot tall. This was not the length that I wanted for the column, but I didn’t have the 10 bucks to buy another pipe, so I used that. This new design which was basically a column filled with copper scrubbers and a modified condenser at the top worked a lot better than the last one, and was a lot easier to clean.

 

The first run I did with it worked flawlessly. I don’t have an alcometer so there is no way I can tell the purity of the distillate, but from experience with other alcohols it is around 80-90 pure. I throw out the first 20-30ml of a run, and then collect until the temperature goes above 180-185. I get 2 full bottles (375ml) every run, and put the leftover (tails) back into my main wash. I can get around 7-8 bottles with every batch which cost me around 4$(yeast) + 4$(sugar)= 8 bucks for 7-8 bottles of 90% alcohol. Rounding it off that’s around 1 dollar a bottle.

 

The day I distilled my first batch I was so excited! I wanted to try to do some experiments on the optimum alcoholic consumption for a good time, or at least do some preliminary runs to make sure the distillate had no adverse effects, but my friends came over and peer pressure got to me: ( It probably wasn’t very smart but everyone got drunk and had a good time. The next day no one had a hangover or anything. Now they keep asking me to buy some of my stuff, but I have decided not to sell my product. I did not make a distillery to make money. I do not let anyone drink my liquor unless they are under my direct supervision, and drink a bottle from a batch I have already tested myself. There is always a risk of something going wrong and I would be held responsible.

 

Please don’t make me out to be some kind of alcoholic, which I am not. I only drink every now and then, and that’s usually as a reward for studying all day or something. I basically just wanted to see if I could do it. I learned an enormous amount while doing this project. I just thought I would share this story with this forum, because it seems as though we have similar interest.

[Glider]

Stills are known to produce two types of alcohol; ethanol and methanol. Only one ethyl bridge differentiates the two, and apparently, the distillation temperature is critical, and is a determinant of which kind you get. Whilst there is only a small difference between the molecules, the differences in their effects are quite large:

 

Ethanol: Drink, get drunk, have fun, wake up with a headache.

Methanol: Drink, get drunk, have fun, wake up with a headache, go blind, die.

 

Ehtanol is metabolised into formaldehyde, to which, for some reason, the cells of the retina are particularly sensitive. This is what blinds you. By the time you start going blind, formaldehyde created in first-pass metabolism will have done the liver and other organs significant damage also. It takes a little while of course, but it might still be as well to find out which kind of alcohol your still is producing, rather than how much, or at east read up on it a bit so you can be certain you're getting the distillation temperature right.

 

Of course, you may already covered this in your research, in which case, ignore me, but in case you hadn't, learning from the mistakes of others is never a bad thing.

[YT2095]

as a general tip, because the BP of both is a little different (not much though) throw the 1`st half a cup of your distilate away. the rest will be ok(ish) though. it`s only a ROUGH guide however.

and never drink pure ethanol, mix it with orange Juice or something. as Glider said methanol will oxidise into formaldehyde (embalming fluid, chemical toilet disinfectant) so you`de literaly pickle yourself! and be carefull with the Ammonia too! it will set up Amines, some of which despite being toxic can also be explosive (think hexamethaleneTetramine, "Hexamine fuel tablets" also a precursor for RDX!)

avoid lead (solder) as well. and keep it all well ventilated, wouldn`t want to waste all that booze in a big Fuel/Air explosion!

I made my 1`st still when I was 15, I used an old presure cooker, the tubing from the back of a refrigerator (that went into the top valve with PTFE tape to seal) and the second hole (pressure releif) had my cooks thermometer in it (pressed into a cut down rubber cork) It worked great

 

So... When`s the party?

[T_FLeX]

Glider,

 

Yes I read lots of information of methanol, Lots of different info actually. Some sites said that methanol is produced by bacteria, and not the yeast, and then others said that anything you make using yeast (as long as you sanitize everything) is drinkable, and that moonshine making you go blind is just a myth. In the times of prohibition, factories that produced alcohols for fuel, were required to "denature" the alcohol rendering it poisonous by adding methanol or other chemicals, and that some people would try to drink it and go blind, not knowing it had been modified. This in turn led to the big myth of moonshine making you go blind. Either way I toss out the first 100 ml of every batch just in case, because of the lower boiling temp of methanol. Does anyone know the truth? Does a simple yeast, sugar brew yield methanol?

 

oh and, YT2095, what’s wrong with drinking just pure ethanol?

[Glider]

Glad to know you've done the background stuff

I just thought I'd mention it, just in case. Yeast will only produce ethanol and CO2 as a waste product; anything brewed with yeast (and that has not been contaminated) is safe.

 

As to the pure ethanol question, hospitals use 70% pure ethanol as a hard-surface cleaner, because it kills everything. It destroys cells, bacterial and otherwise. You can sterilise your hands with it, but I wouldn't want to apply it to mucous membranes. Even tequila is only around 40%w/v.