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OT:Anybody Know Anything about Making Whiskey?

A

Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
Just curious here...a former co-worker and I used to talk [OK, HE talked, I listened] about making whiskey at home...NOT for sale, but for personal use/"medicinal purposes." At one point he was talking about making his mash from sweet horse feed [cracked corn, cracked oats, and molasses, primarily], sugar, and yeast. Another time he was talking about buying a yard-sale pressure cooker and some soft copper tubing [as opposed to "hard copper" pipe] to make the basis of the "still."

Now...I'm still curious if making whiskey at home, for personal use, is looked upon differently by the authorities than home brewing of beer is. I know state laws may vary, but does anyone know what the federal ramifications may or may not be? Seems like there are a LOT of "Mr. Beer" kits out there; wondering why it would be different.

Anyone have any firsthand knowledge? And I'm referring to US laws, not Canadian or Mexican laws. Thanks for any knowledgeable replies.
 
The law reads 200 gallons of beer /wine per year per person...hard liquor is excluded from this exemption..probably more a political /tax revenue issue than anything else...IF THEY CATCH YOU DISTILLING WHISKEY, YOU CAN GO TO JAIL..... :roll: but the real thing they try catch you doing is selling/distributing . Sooo, if you are not selling your product, and are tight lipped about what you are doing, no one will be the wiser, as the quantities of supplies you will need will be small, and all items are common and easy to find...just don't buy everything at one time & place .. :D ...there are lots of websites that have way more info than you need ...and home distilling is legal in parts of Europe, and there is some good info out there. I did check into the law before I started brewing beer...and after brewing beer, found it was just easier to run down to the store , and buy what I wanted...when I wanted it....no need to try distilling... :eek:
 
Of course, if I was going to produce my own for
drinking, I wouldn't be posting this in a public
forum. But I was curious as to what information was
available out there.

Now...anyone heard of using the sweet horse feed
recipe?
 
It's illegal to distill spirits without a license, but I've consumed such spirits in the past. I have no idea where it came from. Just showed up in a glass in my hand one day.
 
Btw, you could probly find a still intended for water in a scientific supply house. Just a matter of controlling the temperature a little more closely. And the liquor could be made from anything with sugar, so yeah, your cracked corn would work great.
 
looks like those ingredients would work - Mashing refers to the hot water steeping process which activates malt enzymes and converts the grain starches into fermentable sugars. At this point you have a sugar rich solution called the ‘wort’ (pronounced ‘wert’). Yeast will convert the wort to alcohol.
 
Basically you can make it from any kind of grain or fruit. Anything that will ferment will make alcohol. As far as his pressure cooker yes you can make a still from one as long as its stainless steel. If your buddy bought an aluminum one he will end up dead from poisoning. Around here the law doesn"t bother anyone for making some at home for their use. A good friend of mine is a drug task force officer here and he told me they dont bother anyone for making it. He said that is all the ATF doing that.I actually know a guy that got busted in a multi county multimillion dollar drug ring and he had 30 gallons of liquor in his garage when the FBI rolled in on him. They told him they could care less about the liquor. If you want a good book on making wine,liquor,and beer get one called "The Alaskan Boot Leggers Bible". It has all kinds of recipes and it even shows you how to build a still from a crock pot. Me personally I prefer it be made from fruit on a reflux still. Fruit doesnt require the work that corn and grain do to ferment. Corn became popular just because it was cheap years ago.
 

Local guy decided to make a small homemade still, recently. Key point mentioned earlier is DON'T talk about it. He talked, cost him $3400 dollars, confiscation of his still. About 50 years ago a cousin in the family, won't mention which side, made a tiny still as a high school science experiment.(He had access to professional advice) The Feds consfiscated his experiment even though no alcohol was involved. These alcohol laws are FEDERAL, not state, so it would be the same throughout the country.

The key point in distilling is that alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water. Bootleggers would heat the mash in one container, then pipe it to 3 more containers, think barrels, before condensing the vapor into liquid. Then they might boil the resulting liquid again to concentrate it more. Details fuzzy since I have never done any of it.

KEH
 
I took an energy for agriculture class at good old Michigan State University, it had a section on alternative fuels, the university had just built a still for producing ethanol to experiment with for use in tractors and such, in the educational environment they gave tours of the still, folks would like to climb up the ladder to look in the mash tunn, folks running the show thought it would be nice to put a mirror above the tunn so folks of could see in without climbing. Instructor told us two valuable things during the tour, if you requisition a mirror to put on the ceiling from the university you get a lot of unwanted attention real quick and if you have to deal with the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms)you'll find out real quick they're real butt holes. About 7 years later I was going through the US Navy's Explosive Ordinance Disposal School, one of the instructors- a Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant warned us that the BATF would be watching us and that they're real butt holes to deal with, avoid them at all costs.

So back to the post question if you distill you're very likely to end up dealing with the BATF and they're real butt holes. If you and I were to discuss (legal term "conspire") distilling alcohol and then one of us goes and purchases something for the purpose of distilling untaxed spirits we have both committed a felony. Probably don't want to mess with the BATF, this is the same organization that brought us such memorable events as the Davidian Complex stand off/massacre at Waco Texas and the Ruby Ridge shoot out.
 
My former co-worker lives in a MUCH more rural area than I do; I live in a subdivision. I DO have woods on 2 sides of my property...but I'm sure the smell of disposing of used "mash," even in the woods, would draw a lot of unwanted attention. I don't own a pressure cooker, and I don't have that first bag of horse feed, this is all simply theoretical in nature. So I'm just asking questions.

While the idea of distilling my own whiskey fascinates me, I'm pretty sure I could never pull it off.
 
I would be interested in knowing why the pressure cooker could not be aluminum. I would guess that almost no aluminum would ever be in the evaporated alcohol in the "pot", at least at the temperatures and pressures I believe you would want to have for proper distillation. I don"t see where a "poison" would be made. Can you explain the chemistry?

On the other hand, all of the home canner pressure cookers I have come across seem a bit small for a still "pot". They would produce very small quantities of drinkable liquor for each "pot". As I understand it, it is very important to not try to use the first distillate, as it probably has some methanol in it. The part that might have deadly methanol, you have to throw away or use some other way besides drinking it. So the net amount of "drinkable" liquor would be quite small.

I have tried a bit of white lightning. It has a LOT of kick, but fairly little taste. I would not call what I tried whiskey, but it was more like the cheapest, poorest vodka I ever had. Whiskey gets most of its flavor from the process of aging the liquor in oak barrels that have been charred inside. This is a long process...not something the average homeowner could do, and probably no one can do in a very short time.

What others have written about BATF is gospel. No sense of humor at all. I would suggest talking to a lawyer with knowledge of the specific laws before setting up any kind of a liquor still.

In some places in Europe lots of people do small scale distillation, producing mostly brandy-type liquor for their own consumption. But it is either legal, or at least tolerated there. Not here! I would be very worried about huge legal problems resulting from any distillation experiment.

And like I wrote above, the white lightning I have tried was pretty crummy liquor, not something that compared favorably to any of the CHEAP legal brands I have tried.

I suggest just legally buying your liquor and enjoying it, rather than having to worry about a swat team raiding your home and maybe sending you to jail, fining you a fortune, and maybe even confiscating your property. Good luck!!!
 
Life is too short to drink bad hooch. Just a few hours of working at what you know how to do(mowing, raking, baling,carpentry, electrical, welding. plowing) will buy enough good whiskey to last a winter.

Same with wine and beer. Leave the making to the experts and the drinking to the connoisseurs. It is important in life to focus on doing what you are good at....and have the tools to do.
 
Owning a still is not against the law. You can find many on the internet.

Using a still to make alcohol is against the law without a permit. Even small amounts for home use.

Getting a permit to make drinking alcohol is very hard.

Getting a permit to make motor fuel alcohol is much easier.
 
Almost anything acidic will react with aluminum. I have heard of people using an aluminum canner to make a large quantity of chicken stew and if any was left in the vessel for an extended period of time, would make people very ill.
Unscrupulous bootleggers some times use old automobile radiators as condensers. The alcohol will react with the lead in the solder used to assemble the radiator and it will poison and even kill someone consuming it.
Stills are advertised on the net. Just Google "whiskey still" and you will be surprised at the number of places. But they use silver solder where needed.
BTW, If the moonshine you drank was as bad as you described it, whoever made it didn't know how to properly make moonshine.
 
OK John in IA has it right.

You can own a still. Many places sell them and they are legal to possess.

You CAN NOT make sprits with it legally. As John said that requires a federal permit.

The biggest reason for this is because you can kill yourself or others with home made booze.

Like with home made beer or wine. There is a limit as to how much you can make. 200 gallons a year per adult in a household I think. You CAN NOT sell it and if you offer it free to others you must tell them it's home made to be legal. Any good brewing supply place can tell you the laws and most can order you a premade still.

You can distill water with it but not booze. So your wife takes in laundry and business is VERY good. Or you have lots of batteries to maintain.

As far as aluminum pressure cookers there is something about the reaction to the booze, heat and aluminum that isn't healthy. I don't remember what.

Rick
 
The ethanol or methanol I can"t remember which it is off the top of my head that comes out first is taken care of by the charcoal that the liquor is ran thru when it comes out of the worm.
 
Better half gave me a book for Christmas last year, about moonshiners in Stearns County, MN. Can"t remember the name right now, (passed it to my kids) but my uncle is in it....Dad said he (uncle) paid for the farm back in the 30s by cooking moon. Uncle Math chickened out when the Feds got close, but many continued. Some still do.

Shared that info with my insurance man, from Holdingford. Told him I figured if I found the right guy in that area, I could find moon. HE said, you want some "applejack"? HE cooks it! Yes, it was good, first moon I ever had....sent me home with some.

Also said back in the 30s, moonshiners were the only ones who could afford new brick houses......there are a bunch of yellow brick houses in that area. Drive down I 94......there is one on the North side of the freeway, Avon, St. Joe area...

August, 1965, last thing on our Army Green Beret training was jumping into the Pisgah mountains, Western NC, for a 2 week FTX, one A-Team playing war games against the other in a 5x5 mile area. Every morning....look across the beautiful countryside and see wisps of smoke in "uninhabited" areas! Then remembering the weekly news articles about shiners being caught!
 

JMS, there is a legal way to make "apple jack" You make apple wine (or some other flavor) and "freeze distill" it. Just means that you set it out when it's cold, below freezing and every few hours skim the ice off the top. 5 gallons of wine will make about 2 gallons of jack. It's legal because it isn't really distilled. The water part is what freezes while the "good" part doesn't.

Rick
 
I"ve drank quite a bit of it back when I was younger, that"s why I said I would rather it be made from fruit rather than corn. It didn"t seem to give you as bad of a hangover. I have made wine but I was always afraid to make liquor not just because it was illegal but if you spring a leak in the still while it"s running and the vapor makes it back to the flame then you will have one big explosion. I checked into making ethanol legally and to be honest there is probably as much paperwork and rules to doing that as there is running a distillery. All it boils down to is your making a dollar and uncle Sam wants his part of it. The was a moonshiner around here and his name was Popcorn Sutton and he made a point one time in one of his videos. He said I paid the taxes on the copper, on the sugar, on the corn, I paid taxes on everything here. He is on YouTube and had a video out called This Is The Last Dam Run of Likker I"ll Ever Make. He shows you the whole process but it wasn"t the last run he made. He got busted a few years later and he was running three 500 gallon stills. Yes three 500 gallon stills! He later killed himself but now you can buy his moonshine legally. They opened a distillery up and use his recipe and anyone can buy it legally.
 
As I understand the law, that process is still illegal. 26 USC para 5601 a (8) specifies it is illegal to make distilled spirits by distillation [b:654c4848f0]or any other process[/b:654c4848f0]
 
Sergeant Rick, I thought our jobs as troopers was to consume that stuff, not make it. Where did I go wrong?
 
(quoted from post at 23:18:45 09/14/13) Sergeant Rick, I thought our jobs as troopers was to consume that stuff, not make it. Where did I go wrong?
Click to expand...


Scott that's cause you went into law enforcement. Us professional soldiers knows what's important! Women, whiskey and money!

Rick
 
Speaking of central Mn. My former boss's Dad was telling stories way back in the 60's. He had started a dray line* during prohibition, in Brown County. Local big time "shiner" was setting up along the river & wanted someone to haul sugar from railroad to his still. To try to throw the Feds off, he had boxcar of sugar spotted on a remote siding**. Anyway, Carl lost the bid by 2 bucks a wagonload.
Poetic justice, the Feds busted the guy who got the job on his first trip.
* dray line- delivering stuff from the railroad to the stores uptown using horse team & wagon.
** remote siding- town of Milford if you are familiar with Little House on the Prarrie tv show.

Slightly OT, Milford Siding was/is a spot in Milford township. When the railroad couldn't pull a full train out of the river valley, they would break the train, pull half up onto flat ground, let it sit on the siding, then back down into the valley to get the rest of the train, recouple on flat ground. Alternative was to send message to Mankato to send a pusher to help up the hill. More than you wanted to know.
Willie
 
what bothers the he** out of me is why E85 costs around $3 a gallon and whiskey costs more than 10 times as much! It's practically the same.
 
Pop Corn Sutton, RIP, knew his stuff. Learned it from when he was really young. They say he could turn out a batch that equaled bonded in purity and could have been used to run the truck in an emergency. Watch the video and you'll notice he gets you to the edge of knowing what it takes but holds back a touch on information that will get you over the top.
 
This info is all good except for the aging process. I have found that my tractors run better,sound better,look better,have more power,have better traction,etc,when I drink 16 year old Scotch.Waiting for the 16 year aging to take place would result in having to endure a long dry spell.I don"t know if I have that many more years on the green side of the grass. W4
 
Many years ago in N Indiana, farmers had mint stills. Each year Govt Officials came around to inspect the stills were used for mint and nothing else.
 
(quoted from post at 07:20:33 09/15/13) This info is all good except for the aging process. I have found that my tractors run better,sound better,look better,have more power,have better traction,etc,when I drink 16 year old Scotch.Waiting for the 16 year aging to take place would result in having to endure a long dry spell.I don"t know if I have that many more years on the green side of the grass. W4
Click to expand...
Well maybe another solution would be to get a better tractor :twisted: :twisted:

Rick
 
The comment about NC brought back memories.

When I was stationed at Cherry Point, NC, I dated a local gal who had a brother-in-law who was a tobacco farmer and hauled moonshine on the side.

He had an old, beat up, Ford farm pickup. He'd load the bed with jugs of shine, stack a couple of layers of hay or straw bales on top, and putt down the road 40 mph. Nobody ever questioned him, and as far as I know he never did get caught. He did have a Lincoln engine under the hood, "just in case".

But back then it was a game, more than anything. A lady named Edith Laughinghouse had a roadside tavern between New Bern and Vanceboro, NC where she sold shine over the bar. Every six months, the local Sheriff would bust her, fine her maybe a hundred dollars or so, and next day she'd be back in business. She and the Sheriff were both making money so they were both happy.
 
The Sweet Feed recipe is found on the net if you L@@K !!! Find a ten gallon cream can. Use your imagination.
 
My dad immigrated from Czecho-Slovakia (now trhe Slovak Republc) and made a 120 proof plum brandy (shlivo vits phonetically)that was the customary home brew in that country.
Dad made a condensor out of an old hot water tank and some copper tubing. He rigged Mon"s canning pressure cooker to distill the mash. He prepared the mash in a big oak barrel with a water vent to allow the CO2 to vent off the fermenting mash.And he didn"t always use plums. Sometimes peaches or cherries, what ever we had a big supply of. He used a hygrometer to determine the alcohol content and it usually took two distillations to get to 120 proof. My Mom had a big vegetable garden and she had a compost pile and that"s where the mash went when Dad was done.
One of my fondest memeories from my childhood was of dad "cookin" mash" and reading his prayer book to the drip drip of the booze into a big jug. He had a special little oak cask that was about 5 gallons that he aged the stuff in. It was a clear fluid that smelled like whatever fruit it was made from.

I wish I would have learned how to do it from Dad! In fact, I wish I"d learned a lot more things from Dad!
 
This fellow cut a pressure cooker and welded the top half to a barrel to make the cooker. IIRC the name of the book is Minnesota 13. Comes from popularity of using the open pollinated MN 13 corn for cooking.
 
I can see how an aluminum vessel might put some aluminum into the mash or wert and contaminate that. But I don"t think humans usually eat what is left over in the "pot" after distillation. It might be relished by hogs or other animals though. I don"t see how much, if any, aluminum would be transferred to the alcohol vapor that goes out through the copper tubing to be cooled and condensed into drinkable liquor. I was just asking if anyone knew what the chemistry might be that would make the LIQUOR poisonous using an aluminum vessel.

I think the problem with using an automotive radiator for distillation is that the liquid alcohol (and maybe the vapor too) would leach lead from the solder in the radiator. I wonder what might happen using an aluminum radiator that doesn"t have any solder. Maybe aluminum would leach out. Everything I ever read suggested using copper tubing for the condensation tube, though I don"t see why a glass distillation mechanism, like we used in Chemistry class, would not work fine assuming you had good cold water flow.

Maybe you are right about the white lightning I have tried, and maybe the people who made it aren"t very skilled. The several times I have tried such liquor, I was not a bit impressed. It didn"t taste very good. On the other hand, no one died or went blind from drinking it. I do enjoy good whiskey on occasion. But I think it is a better plan to just legally buy the high quality booze for the little bit I ever use, rather than risk a whole lot of hassle trying to make something myself that is much inferior to what I can buy, and which might get me into a WORLD OF TROUBLE!!!
 
The first ~10% contains toxic methanol and other nasty light organic carbon compounds. Usually this fraction is discarded. The distillery I visited in Scotland had a glass box with a spout on a handle so they could switch from the discard tube to the collection tube off of the still.
 
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