Originally posted by RU4Real:
Originally posted by RU848789:
Originally posted by RU4Real:
Originally posted by BellyFullOfWhiteDogCrap:
A bit OT, but I heard on the show, "Drinking Made Easy" if you don't know what you're doing while making moonshine, it's possible to distill a product that is deadly/poisonous to drink. Is this just hype?
It's somewhat hyperbolic, but technically true.
The first distillate out of the still, at roughly 145 degrees, is methanol. Methanol is poisonous. Pretty much everyone who has enough brains to run a still knows that you don't keep the first cut of the distillate - some folks pitch it over their shoulders for good luck, some just pour it down the drain. Others, myself included, find that it makes great lighter fluid.
Anyway, there's enough of a temperature spread between methanol and ethanol that you'd have to already be brain damaged to screw it up. Also, methanol tastes like shit so you'd be unlikely to drink it, anyway.
Methanol is deadly, but 4Real is absolutely right that someone would have to be a moron to not know that methanol boils at 148F and ethanol boils at 173F (at atmospheric pressure), and to not separate those distillation "cuts" out of the still. If people are generating a lot of methanol, though, there are plenty of markets for it - especially windshield wiper fluid over the past decade or two.
4Real - I'm assuming you're using a single stage "still" correct? I know they're a lot simpler and less expensive to operate (and buy) than continuous distillation columns (that's why we mostly use them in the pharma industry, when we need to distill, but our "product" is rarely in the distillate, so it's a different issue). I don't know much about the industry - just curious if many distilleries use columns vs. one-pot batch distillation.
Good luck with the business - not a Scotch drinker, but most of the rest of our tailgate crew is - is any of your product out on the market yet (look, I know we argue about stuff - doesn't mean I don't want to see a fellow RU grad and football fan succeed in what I'm sure is a labor of love)?
Pots vs. columns is almost a religion in the industry. From the perspective of pure practicality it's always seemed to me that very high-proof distillates would reasonably benefit from using a column still and in fact the vodka industry has adopted them almost universally. The alleged exception to that rule is Tito's, but they're taking a lot of heat lately for lying about their process, so what they really do is not well understood at this point.
It stands to reason, then, that spirits with actual flavor profiles, i.e. whiskey (including bourbon) and rum would benefit more from a pot still. We're absolutely going that route. The TTB says that whiskey must be distilled at less than 160 proof and must have the general flavor, aroma and characteristics consistent with whiskey. So the question of "why use a column still" is, to me, an easy one to answer - I never would.
Nevertheless, whiskey distilleries are using them. They push the upper limit of the rules for ABV, cut the distillate with water before aging and then generally cut it again at bottling time.
This speaks to my more or less religious conflict with the commercial industry and so speaks largely to my passion for it - I believe that whiskey should taste like more than alcohol and wood. Finding a mass-produced whiskey product wherein the grains are easily discernible is getting increasingly more difficult.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words. Right now the TTB licensing process is 99% complete and we're waiting for a construction start date on the space. Hopefully by football season we can be bringing branded, labeled product to tailgates.
