A fellow known only by the moniker “NaOH Jones” gave me permission to run his description of his homemade distillery setup on Boing Boing.

In your book, Made by Hand, you list several projects that you wanted to attempt. One of them is to build a still, so I thought I’d share my experiences in home-distilling.

Distilling is fun — but it’s really best as an addition to home-brewing or home wine making. Distilling is a great way to recycle a bad batch of wine or beer by converting it into brandy/vodka. You mentioned the importance of failure as part of the DIY process in your book. Distilling turns failed wine/beer experiments into booze, and I call that a success.

Home distilling has two camps — purists who aim for the cleanest, clearest neutral spirit, and adventurers who take advantage of the ability to play around making concoctions that won’t ever be found on liquor store shelves. Personally, I fall into the latter, in part because I don’t have the technical know-how to really fine-tune my still. I make a “bierschnapps” at Christmas-time. Beer is essentially made from the same stuff as whiskey, but with the added bittering of hops. When distilled, beer becomes a great aperitif, with a peppery citrus finish.

This is my inline reflux still. After digging through several hobbyist forums on Yahoo, I found several great plans in the forums at homedistiller.org. They range from tea-kettles with refrigerator tubing soldered to them for pot stills to retrofitted pony-kegs with digital temperature controls. I based my still on one of many excellent design sketches posted by a fellow named Bokabob – it’s a variant on his popular “mini-still” design called a “two-cups” still.

Even though I didn’t invent the design I
made a point of drawing out my plans several times from
scratch. I find that drawing out plans myself is a good way to
make sure I understand how the thing works.

The
boiler is a 20L stainless steel milk pail. Got it on eBay. I
had a metal shop cut a hole into the lid and asked them to weld
a threaded coupling to the opening. I told them I was building
a robot.

This was my first stumbling block. The shop I went to
told me they couldn’t weld stainless directly to copper – but
they could braze brass to stainless. Brass isn’t ideal because
there is often traces of lead in the alloy. I did some research
and learned how to chemically strip lead from the fixture. Once
the lid and coupler were brazed, I made a mixture of 1 part 3%
hydrogen peroxide and 2 parts white vinegar. Soaking the lid in
that solution for about 5 minutes cleaned the brass of any lead
in the fitting’s surface. I used a chemical lead-test to check
and it came up clean. For safety, I repeat the treatment every
few months since high-proof alcohol is a solvent.

The
rest of the still is copper.

The
column is made of 3″ copper pipe and stands 4′ tall. It has
three segments: The “main column”, the “head” and the
“condenser”.

The main column is a 2′ segment of copper
pipe that is packed with copper pot scrubbers. Steam rises from
the pot, up the column, through the mesh. The surface area of
the mesh provides the steam plenty of surface area to collect
and condense and fall back down the column, essentially
creating an environment where the alcohol is continuously
distilling, or refluxing, and getting more and more pure the
higher it rises up the column. If I take out the scrubbers, I
can operate the still like an old-fashioned pot-still.

From
the main column, it passes through the head. This was the first
thing I ever soldered and it shows. Check out that giant glob
of silver solder on it. It shames me every time I look at it.
Steam passes through the T-joint in the head and up into the
condenser. I built in a port for a thermometer that is
positioned right at the top of the main column, so that I can
gauge the temperature of the steam, (which in turn allows me to
know what is being collected, as different alcohols come off at
different temperatures, and you always want to ditch any
potential methanol – which is easy because it comes out first.)

Once
the steam passes through the head – it moves into the
condenser. I coiled about 20′ of 1/8″ copper tube around a
broomstick, annealing with a torch the entire way to keep the
tube from collapsing or kinking due to work-hardening. The
center of the coil is also packed with copper mesh. It fits
pretty nicely into the second segment of copper pipe. The
column is left open at the top to avoid a pressure-build-up
(pressurized alcohol vapor = bomb).

A pond-pump in a
bucket of ice water circulates cold water through the coil.
It’s important to monitor the circulating water temperature and
add ice as-needed to make sure that the alcohol vapor isn’t
lost out the top. Some people attach their condenser coils to
the faucet…but I prefer to use a closed system so that I can
reclaim the water and put it to use in the garden.

Back in the head, the collected liquid has two paths
it can take – I can open the collection valve, and it will
drain off to be collected in a mason jar, or I can close the
valve and the liquid level will rise until it reaches the
overflow level in the T-joint and get returned to the column to
be further distilled. By adjusting the collection rate at the
valve, I’m able to increase or decrease the potency of the
collected spirit.

A still needs a heat source. I use a
gas turkey fryer to bring the liquid almost to temperature, and
then I turn off the flame and turn on an electric industrial
bucket-warmer belt – it’s got a thermostat that allows me to
adjust the heat throughout the process. I could use the
bucket-warmer to bring the whole thing to temperature, but it
would take forever. That said, flames + alcohol vapor =
fire-extinguisher on hand at all times. That’s another reason
to have a built-in thermometer that’s reading the vapor
temperature.

If I just let ‘er rip with the valve
wide open, this still can pull beer from 6%ABV to 45%ABV in one
go.

Last weekend, I played with the reflux rate and
pulled 7 bottles of two-buck-chuck (the cheapest wine Trader
Joe’s sells at $1.99/bottle) into just over 1.5 quarts of 80%
ABV neutral spirit. I split that up into small batches and am
soaking a few different fruits and herbs for a week – at which
point I’ll dilute down to 40% ABV. I’m pretty stoked about the
ginger and the orange zest. I’ll end up with almost 2L of
various flavored spirits.

If I had better conditions,
I could probably pull upwards of 90% ABV for a really clean
vodka (obviously you don’t ever DRINK it at that ABV, you
always dilute to 50% or lower). But since I’m doing this in the
backyard in the dead of night, always watching for Johnny
Taxman…I’ll have to settle for what I can
get.