Home made wine

[BEngo]

I am told that the test is to put some of the foreshots in water.  If it goes cloudy run a little longer then try again. Ic it stays clear you are in the spirit run.

 

Not sure about the test for feints/aftershots, but these go back into the next wash stilling anyway.

 

N

[cuthound]

On 04/08/2023 at 18:41, Peanut said:

I seem to recall that putting it in the freezer does the trick. The water freezes out and the liquor can be decanted.  Not sure, as I've never tried it.

 

I had a friend who made a type of cider called "apple jack" by fermenting the apples and freezing the mix to extract the alcohol.

 

It was an acquired taste that after the first sip I decided not to acquire...

 

[Hudds Lad]

7 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

I had a friend who made a type of cider called "apple jack" by fermenting the apples and freezing the mix to extract the alcohol.

 

It was an acquired taste that after the first sip I decided not to acquire...

 

Too much of that stuff and you'll enjoy the worst hangover of your life, affectionately known as "apple palsy"  

[cuthound]

On 05/08/2023 at 21:06, Wanderer Vagabond said:

You obviously weren't doing it right I used to home-brew beer about 25 years ago and adopted the recipes of the Belgian beermakers and didn't put any sugar in it. The beer was brewed using pure malt extract and the results were awesome

 

I used to home brew in the mid to late 70's. I quickly found that malt extract gave the beer the "distinctive" taste that  @MtB mentioned, so used to buy the malted grain at a local homebrew shop and mash it in a Burco boiler with a modified thermostat. That made some very acceptable brews.

 

Nowadays you can buy boilers with very accurate 150 degree C thermostats specifically for brewing.

 

I once brewed some lager, using Saaz hops and a special low temperature yeast. I put the mash into a plastic wine cube and fermented in the fridge (after removing most of the food). For some reason Mrs Hound wouldn't let me use the fridge for brewing after that.

[sigsegv]

On 06/08/2023 at 10:22, HenryFreeman said:

And if you're making a spirit you'd actually want to drink, you're more likely than not to be throwing away the first 15-20% of the distillate - which would contain the foreshots and the heads - so you're not going to be keeping anything that contains methanol.

Or, you throw away the foreshots, then store the heads, hearts and tails separately. You can then use the heads and tails in another run to extract more ethanol (since the stills, especially if it's a homebrew job, certainly aren't going to be mega accurate for fractional distillation). In theory.

[HenryFreeman]

Just now, sigsegv said:

Or, you throw away the foreshots, then store the heads, hearts and tails separately. You can then use the heads and tails in another run to extract more ethanol (since the stills, especially if it's a homebrew job, certainly aren't going to be mega accurate for fractional distillation). In theory.

 

Yep, that is quite correct. Someone I know was doing just that with their all grain whisky the other day and has about 4 litres of heads/tails to put into the next batch. So he tells me.