Making Meadshine: From hive to hooch.

I'd always wanted to try distilling, but just didn't have room in my life for another hobby.

That changed in March, with the shortage of hand-sanitizer.

Wanting to make my own, I ordered a still from Wal-Mart.

It arrived in June, by which time hand-sanitizer had become available again.     It was put aside for later.   Around the same time my neighbor Justin also expressed interest in distillation, so we made a commitment that we'd unbox and distill together.

Christmas break presented the opportunity to embrace our holiday spirits.

Materials:

A Basic Still from Wal-Mart.   Cost: Around $200.  

A Book on distillation.  The "Home distillation handbook", purchased at "Grapes to Glass" in Glendale.   A concise and practical book that told me exactly what I need to know without unnecessary  recipes or theory.   Recommended.

Hot Plate.   Preferable to gas burner, as open flame and concentrated alcohol play very well together.

Feedstock:  

    Any fermented liquid containing Alcohol can be distilled.  In my case I had a carboy of mead that had spoiled.  Neglect had allowed it to go slightly sour.  It is still good for distilling.

The theory:  

    Distillation works off of the theory that alcohol has a lower boiling point than water.   We heat our feedstock just-enough, and it turns the alcohol into vapor, which is cooled in a condenser coil that reliquifies it.  The condenser output is redirected into another vessel.    

The main event:

1)  Unboxing and assembling the still was done in minutes.      We hardly glanced at the instructions.   It was great to have Justin with me, as his skills as a trained chemist cut through a lot of fussing and uncertainty.   He knew exactly what we were doing and how we were going to do it.    The still was basic and looked almost home-made, but was well designed and of sufficient quality.    

2)   We filled the boiling vessel with the spoiled Mead, clamped on the condenser lid, and turned on the hot plate.    We filled the condenser with snow.      The design suggests it's meant to use flowing tap-water as a coolant, but the snow worked well enough.

3)   The temperature sensor indicates what vapor is coming out of the still.    At 57C, it was evaporating Acetone, which is considered an undrinkable waste product.   Same for Methanol at 64C.    Anything up to 70C was captured in a jar marked "Foreshots/Poison" and set aside.      "Foreshots" is the technical term for the undrinkable crap that comes out first.

4)  By 70C, Alcohol was already coming out, drip drip drip.     It was completely clear.    We let this run for a few hours, keeping the temperature around 85C.     This is higher than the boiling point of Ethanol, but lower than the boiling point of water.      Doing this means that the output will be mostly-alcohol, and lessly-water.

5)  Over the course of 3 hours, the alcohol drip-drip-dripped into a jug.      Periodically I'd top up the water in the condenser with snow to keep it cool.   

6)   When the output became more water than alcohol, we turned off the hot plate.    Tasting indicated there was no alcohol left over in the feedstock, which was simply discarded.

Conclusion:  

    

    Justin's assistance was essential to imparting a deeper understanding of the chemistry, but I still would have muddled through just fine on my own.   Justin really helped me understand the temperature-specific nature of the different outputs.    Distillation seems scary from a distance, but this isn't much harder than brewing a pot of coffee.

It's really all about knowing your boiling points and watching your thermometer.  Your main outputs will be acetone (56C), methanol (64C), ethanol, (78C), water (100C), and acetic acid (117C).     You separate your distillates by what comes out at what temperature.     It's not perfect and there will be some overlap, but it's foolproof enough.      The huge temperature spread between your key distillates provides forgiveness.

The volume of the distillate was about 1/5 of the original feedstock.      If we estimate that the feedstock was 8% Alcohol, and then times by 5, we can guestimate that the resulting alcohol will be 40% (8% * 5).        My palate tells me it's higher than 40%.   We're not exactly running a hospital here, so a margin of error of +/-50% is tolerable.

The resulting mead-shine is clear and potent.    It burns the tongue and mouth.    It doesn't taste like mead, nor is it flavorless like Vodka.     It has subtle floral notes similar to Soju.

I'm currently sitting on liters of mead-shine that I'm not likely to drink, but instead look forward to sharing it with my beekeeping colleagues in the summer.      

Perhaps I'll make another batch of mead and fortify it with this spirit to make mead Brandy.   

We can call it Bee-randy.

Boilerplate warning:   Can't you go blind from distilling, you ask?  Yes, you can if you drink the Methanol.   That's why we capture it up front and set it aside for other use.     Furthermore, I've learned that the amount of methanol is dependent upon the feedstock, and that distilling a liquid fermentable (as opposed to a mash of solids) will have less Methanol content to begin with.