Moonshine Stills

Moonshine still image credit to Brian Stansberry under CC 3.0

Yep, who wouldn’t want to make their own at home? All the things you need for home-brewing can be found on the internet.

You may be thinking something like: That’s great! Getting the equipment without building it from scratch like your great-granddad had to is possible, but what then? How do I go about taking those first steps in building a (possibly illicit) whisky empire?

Fortunately you won’t have to cobble the equipment together yourself, like your great-granddad did.

Apparently it’s a seven-step procedure, you’ll have to:

1. Select your ingredients, i.e. the various grains you intend to use for the mash
2. Crush them to make it easier to extract starches, sugars, and enzymes during the mashing process.
3. Cook the crushed grains.
4. Let the resulting solution start fermenting.
5. Once fermentation is done, it’s time to distill.
6. The distilled spirit should then be allowed to age in wooden casks.
7. Shazam, home-made whisky!

The distillation process, which is where you’ll need the still, involves heating the fermented mash until it vaporises. The vapour is then led through cooling pipes to condense, this time with a higher alcohol content.

The procedure is similar but uses different ingredients for vodka (include potatoes) and brandy (which is distilled wine). There’s slightly more to it than that, and choosing the correct balance of ingredients matters, but those are the basics.

It’s worth noting that the resulting distillate contains more alcohol than regular whisky, which is diluted; so if you do try this at home, be careful to avoid alcohol poisoning or methanol poisoning (rare, but it has happened).

There is more info and tips on the internet, but you’ll have to check if they’re allowed to be put into practice in your region without a license. In that case we’ll have to recommend you visit the Wines & Spirits section instead.

But hey, distilling water is always allowed!

For more info:

Distilling and Legislation

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