Stick with me because I'm going to teach you how to make your own moonshine or
fuel. The process of making moonshine is pretty much the same for making fuel so
i'm going to show you how to do it.
You're gonna start by heating up some water about three to four gallons
you don't have to be exact here. Then you add your starch of choice for this
demonstration i'm using corn.
We started with six bags of organic yellow cornmeal
now this has been boiled
you got to be careful you don't burn it. You want to bring it up to a good
temperature so the corn will actually absorb the liquid really well. You want
it kind of like a gelatinous mix to get it
so when we put the amylase powder in it will absorb fairly quickly.
At this stage the measurements aren't really exact. Just get a food grade
plastic bucket or a pot and stir this up and you'll be good to go.
So with starches or any kind of fruit you can make alcohol. Yeast just needs
the sugar. In order to get the sugar out
you have to use amylase. In nature this is done
basically when a seed sprouts it creates its own amylase, so sometimes in some
brewing they'll actually throw sprouts or ground up sprouts things like malt.
If you've ever heard of malt liquor multi is ground-up sprouts that they
throw in to get it started.
What I'm going to be doing with this corn fuel alcohol is using amylase
enzyme formula to speed it up.
All you need is a teaspoon here and you'll throw it in as it's cooling down.
We're going to start making what's called the wash the initial fermentation.
If you look there's a large bowl of sugar that is actually 10 pounds of
sugar weighed out.
You see our original bucket now we're not actually going to pour the
sugar into this bucket we're going to put it in a 55 gallon drum because we're
going to put in 30 pounds of this sugar so three of these bowls. To save money
and do this on the cheap
you want to try to find probably non food grade sugar
in other words by it a livestock place. It is way cheaper than going to a big box
store because after all you're just gonna ferment it. Now this is kind of a
cheat way to do it.
Some of the old-timers disapprove of this but it by adding all this sugar you
increase how much alcohol comes out. It's kind of a way to get the most bang for
the buck.
We're going to be adding sugar to this
lots of it. If you plan on making large batches of alcohol
you're going to need a 55-gallon drum notice it has a thermometer and spigot
it
the easiest way to get these is just buy them from a brewing company.
You could try to make your own but it's not usually worth the hassle.
I have a 55-gallon barrel here and the next step that i'm going to do is to
actually put in the cornmeal and the water mix so i have not added the sugar
yet.
Here's a bucket of wash and what this is is the sugar I weighed out and I've got
15 pounds in this bucket that was put into boiling water because the sugar
just breaks down a lot better when you heat it up.
I'm going to fill this tub with about 45 gallons even though it's a 55
gallon tub, and this is the first bucket going in that contains about 15 pounds
of the sugar.
What I'll do is I'll add two of these buckets and then just fill the rest up
with water.
(Water Pouring Sounds)
So the wash is almost finished the 55-gallon drum will be filled up to 45
gallons, and then I had this champagne yeast the champagne yeast.
I'm going to be putting five packets in and this is advantageous because it can
take a lot of alcohol some yeast dies at twelve percent.
This is specifically good for a high alcohol content.
You'll also need something called yeast nutrient you put one teaspoon per gallon
this will put 45 in here and what this does is it's vitamins for yeast.
It keeps them healthy so they reproduce.
Also you'll need something called yeast energizer
this is also a nutrient booster but it propagates the speed it makes yeast
really reproduce quickly and you want to add a half teaspoon per gallon.
At the end
i'm going to add amylase enzyme and you put one teaspoon per five gallons and
again this is to release the sugar so it will start being processed by the yeast.
Before I get into the distillation portion of this realize i'm using a
large homemade unit. Many of you beginners just want to use a simple one you can
buy like this they want about a hundred bucks on amazon and i'll link them in
the description.
This is a good inexpensive way to get started
you can always upgrade and build your own still later. A weeks passed at this
point I've drained it and ran a hose and put it in the distillation unit. Since
the corns left on the bottom, you can reuse it and I explained that here. So
it's been a week
I've drained the bucket and left all the corn on the bottom all the residue.
So the wash is now i'll show you where it went into a
into a distiller but you're taking a look here and what you can do is you can
recycle all that corn that was on the bottom you throw in some more sugar
fill it up with water and it is fermenting away again for another run.
As you do this over and over the mix will grow more sour and it's considered
sour mash.
It's the same stuff if you've ever heard a sour whiskey. You'll use it until the
corn kind of turns white and gets spent when there's no more starts left.
so this is a homemade still you can use this to actually do your own distilling
now this is a demonstration i'm setting up here. You can take a look
you can buy these drums on the Internet as well as bowls just right out at a a
normal stores like Target or home goods store. To buy the piping here at home
depot this copper piping and it goes all the way up in the pipe splits
now i'm going to explain why it does that here in a second
so what you're looking at here is a reflux distillation column. The section off
here at the split, this is the condenser. This is what turns alcohol vapors it
cools it back off and put it back into its liquid form.
Alcohol actually boils off at 170 where water boils off at 212.
We're mechanically separating them when we heat them up. The alcohol
steam raises up this column goes into the condenser to the left and you'll see
some water pipes running into the condenser those actually go inside a
coil that's in there and that cool temperature of the water,
the alcohol steam collects to the coil and then drips back down in here so it's
a faster way to get everything alcohol to condense and it runs all the way into
a barrel called the thumper.
Now this is running down
- this thing that some people call the thumper but really it's a bucket of
water.
You'll see the copper coil here going down in it now inside that copper is the
alcohol and some of its still steamed so when it hits this cold water
it condenses it even further so you don't lose so much steam and you get a
better alcohol flow. The old-timers also call that copper coil a worm at the
bottom of the thumper is a tube that comes out and simply a drain and this is
where you catch your alcohol.
Now this same process is used to make fuel so in some countries where this is
legal
you could actually drink this right now but in the u.s. usually have to turn
into fuel by throwing wood alcohol in it.
One of the most expensive parts of distilling is the fuel this propane tank
is actually not that expensive and it allows you to control the flame in a
much more precise manner but if you want to go old school or you need to save
some money you can just burn wood under here and monitor the temperature and
adjust as you go.
Well this is the final collection bucket here you can make a pretty good amount
of alcohol off that 55-gallon drum. Depending on the proof you could run
this through the whole cycle again and get it purer and purer alcohol and raise the
proof. You can use multiple distillations to get where you want. In the u.s. it is a
federal permit
basically you have to say that you're going to make alcohol get a little permit, I
don't think it is very expensive like a twenty-dollar permit. Then throw wood
alcohol the end and tell them.
You are allowed to distill your own fuel again if you're watching this
somewhere else in the world
you can pretty much drink it right now. Whenever you brew something the yeast
produce more than the ethyl alcohol they actually produce something called
congeners. Congeners are what actually give you a hangover.
so if you remove them out the beginning you can drink this and
not get a hangover. When you buy the cheap rotgut liquor
it always gives you a bad hangover because they're not real careful about
removing the congeners. When you get the high-end double and triple distilled
you go out drinking and not get the hangover.
This first part that comes off the run is called the heads.
Usually you want to remove that to be safe. Now the premium stuff is in the
middle of the run
it's called the body and it's mainly what you want to collect drink or quote
"use for fuel."
As the temperature progresses the run that comes off will be more the
temperature of water and there will be a lot more water in it. What you get off is
something called the tails.
You can take those tails and recycle them into your next batch and put them
back through the distillation over and over to try to get as much alcohol as
you can out. The reason you don't drink the tails is because it's not very tasty
you get a lot more flavor of everything that went into it to make it. So your
best recycling it or using it for fuel.
One last comment is you know you're basically dealing with flammable liquid
into vapor form and it can be very dangerous if you get leaks
these things can blow up. Make sure that you keep safety in mind first try
to find someone who is much better at this to show you how to do it safely.
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