Tres posh indeed.

Mine was held together with corks and blobs of resin. I used to catch the distillate in small shot glasses. You test it by taking a teaspoonfull and putting a lighted match to it. When you start producing condensate that won't ignite, you do a couple more shots and then those last shots go into the next batch.

I had a friend come round who laughed at it, assured me that it would never work, and casually tossed down the shot glass I gave him, which was the first one off a good batch. Nearly pure alcohol. Next second he had his face under the kitchen tap, desperately washing his mouth out.

Happy days....

They were indeed Bill......
The stuff we made was near pure alcohol too, it was good for fortifying the wine we used to make...twenty demijohns were always on the go at different stages... back in those days we use to have lots of dinner parties.

The good thing is that you can use anything that contains sugars to ferment into alcohol. Potato peelings, the works.

We too had several bottles with the little water traps at the top glooping away. When it stopped glooping, it was ready for the still.

You can also freeze distill I think.

So how on earth do they make this stuff then ?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/s...st/8517607.stm

or this,

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...ed-in-scotland

If you read the links, it says

"the production process is intricate and expensive. "We freeze the beer down to about -70 celsius repeatedly. The water freezes before the alcohol does, and the ice crystals are extracted, concentrating the flavour and the alcohol content. We repeat that process several times."


To expand what I said, to the very best of my knowledge there is no yeast that can survive much above 15% alcohol, so when the yeast turns the brew into 15% alcohol, it dies off. Therefore, you cannot brew anything stronger, and all alcoholic drinks above 15% are either fortified or distilled.

A footnote I made was that you do not need fractionating columns, condensers and the like but you can freeze distill.

OK?

My local ferreteria seems to sell things which look a lot like stills, Of all sizes) to me!

I imagine they will.....
Some of the best 'moonshine' I've ever had was here in Spain, in the campo producing the stuff is a national pastime .

I had no idea that the Spanish were a nation of moonshiners.

And I had no idea meg was a moonshine drinker!

Rather endearing tho, isn't it?

They say the quiet ones are the worst.

Oh....thank you Bill.

Ahhh, us old folks have to stick together, and have our little vices, eh?

Cheeky......not so much of the old.

Well, we are both retired, or was that retarded? I don't remember any more...