Not that I'm advocating anything illegal( ;) ), but IF one were to get an inexpensive distiller like Clive has there, and then took some stainless steel picturing hanging wire, and unraveled it, and cleaned it up well, and threaded about 3 lengths of that unraveled wire(21 individual strands, from the seven strand braided wire) into the Inside of the tube for that top condenser unit, one would have created a more efficient reflux, AND I heard, that the resulting alcohol content might go from about 40 percent alcohol to about 75 percent alcohol, in their first pass distillation. A distillation reflux is where some high surface area compatible material is put into the condensation stream, and provides increased surface area for the vapor/liquid equilibration to be stretched out, and also a little better heat exchange. Also wiring a separate rheostat for input power to the bottom heater unit, which allows fine control of the heat input, allows much closer control of the heat and rate of distillation, which also raises the efficiency. Also, a small cheap digital temperature meter, with a water proof sensor on a long wire, could monitor the temperature of the distillation wash liquid as it boils, and note the changes in temperature when the different stages of distillation occur, the Heads, Hearts and Tails. I've heard.
+Forssa1 You can do what I have done, just for fun, and buy some bread yeast, sugar and spring water or maybe distilled water (don't use any water that had salt added [like Dasani brand] or chlorine or fluoride or ammonia [but any water, even tap water will probably still function, if you are trying to be thrifty, for science purposes]) and put it in a almost sealed container (make sure there is a hole) and watch it start to bubble within maybe 1-3 days. The older the packet of unopened yeast is, the less impressive your results will be. When it is done, you can pour it down your drain, since you didn't use any sterile procedures.
+Henry Simpson Lee i dont get why you would want to put water in your ejuice vg pg nic and flavour done, ive made 80/20 vg juice and had no problems wicking
I've been making my own hooch since I was a teenager. Over the years I have tried all the fancy kits and gear but around 1998 I pretty much perfected this method you are demonstrating. I can make perfectly good grog this way that is neither disgusting or full of spores. I heartily recommend anyone give it a go. The setup costs are like £150 and the stuff you make will be easily as drinkable as any modern £10 bottle of wine or cider and contain a whole lot less pesticides and sulphites! Naturally, as a law abiding subject of Her Madge, I have never and would never, ever, consider distillation .. Tee Hee. But one of the best things in life, I imagine, might be putting wild elderflower you collected in the woods in to such a distillate and serving it with a cube of sugar over crushed ice on a hot summer's day in darkest Devon.
Just to clear up some misconceptions: While it is possible for methanol to contribute to a hangover it is not the main compound responsible for it. Generally there are two components for a hangover: 1. Dehydration 2. Acetaldehyde Dehydration is quite self explanatory and also the only factor you can actually do something against. This is why you have less of a hangover when you drink a lot of water or high sodium broth before going to bed. Acetaldehyde, the main metabolite of ethanol, you just have to suffer through it, as there is so far no way to accelerate it's excretion. This is the compound mainly responsible for headaches, nausea etc. Also if you were to distil your own fermented ethanol solution (I'm sure you aren't or god may have mercy with your souls), just keep a thermometer in the solution as well as one in the steam. Methanol will boil at around 65°C, while ethanol boils at 78°C. In the beginning you keep your temperature between 65°C and 75°C and discard the distillate. Check both thermomethers!. At this temperature range you will boil off most of the methanol, then you raise your temperature to 78°C and discard the first portion as well. From now on you will be left with fairly clean distillate. The higher the temperature of your boiling solution, the more water you will have in the final product. The highest purity that is theoretically achievable for ethanol through distillation is 96%.
Marcel Chb Sulphur Dioxide is added as an antioxidant, each time the wine is siphoned (to take it off the yeast at the bottom of you fermentation vessel, to filter it, or bottle/barrel) oxygen is inadvertently added as the surface in contact with air (unless you purge your containers with CO2). Potassium Sorbate is the chemical added to kill the yeast. Particularly important if any sugar is left, as refermentation will blow up bottles. Sulphur Dioxide (sodium metabisulphite) has to be added with sorbate to prevent a geranium like smell.
SigEpBlue exactly who's gunna catch you ? I'm going to do it if it's legal or not I don't care I'm not hurting anyone part from the tax man but he gets enough as it is so what the hell
Similar state of affairs in Canada. Home brewing is legal here, but distillation requires a permit. That being said, the laws regulating distillation are codified as tax law rather than public safety law, so as long as you're only distilling for personal consumption, even if someone makes a complaint to police, it's unlikely that you would be prosecuted.
@@Dee_Just_Dee it's the same here in Australia any of you use that shitty air still I'd be wanting to run it at least 3 times as you will taste that turbo yeast
This interested me mainly to see what you used to make your brew as I live at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains here in the US, which you may know was (in)famous for bootleg moonshine during prohibition. It is interesting to note it has become popular in the last few years for distillers to market legal "moonshine" sold in the fairly traditional canning jars. They now sell it in different flavours or poured over a jar full of cherries.
I want to say I remember my first experience with moonshine, that implies I remember it. I remember what it was described to me. "Palm heart moonshine! drink it bitch!" They poured it over Maraschino Cherries and tasted like poison should, and a boot shouldn't.
Here in finland making "kilju" (homemade booze from yeast, water and sugar, you just let it sit in bucket) is illegal(nobody gives a shit, not even police), but if you but some berries in it its legal because then it is registered as homemade wine.
The conservatives here in the US of A have been working very hard to overturn some of the idiotic rules that have kept Americans confused over the past hundred or so years since liberals began making laws. The need for a permit to carry a handgun under your coat instead of strapped on your hip has been repealed in many states, where now all that is required is a state Drivers License to prove you are from that State, and a clean criminal record. No background check in necessary any more, but if you are arrested and carrying concealed your record is checked, if you have a Felony Conviction then you are arrested for illegal possession of a firearm. If not, you and your gun are free to go. Pot is becoming legal in more and more States even though the Feds still call it an illegal drug, as a retired cop, I can tell you I have fought many a damn drunk, but most pot smokers are simple lead gently to the back seat of the patrol car to be taken into custody.
Here in "the states" , you're not breaking the law unless you get caught. Illegal is just a sick bird. Here in New Hampshire, our state motto is " Live free or die" . Cheers.
Making for personal consumption is fine. Once you sell it you're in trouble. Small batches like that are more suitable for personal consumption anyways.
@@timmooney7528 In the states distillation no matter the amount or who is using it, personal or otherwise is 100% against federal law. You can make all the beer you want, but spirits get the ATF after you.
@@Goonygoon84 You can make your own wine in the States, as well as beer. Making "spirits" is against Federal law. But really..... If someone used this method to make a "fifth" (750Ml) of vodka strictly for personal consumption and DIDN'T BLAB ABOUT IT. How would the ATF even know? Smoking "pot" produces a smell, (It's 100% illegal where I live and yet I can get a buzz just WALKING in the halls of my apartment building!) If no one cares about that Skunk ass weed smell oozing out of my building, Who would even KNOW if I were to have some "kitchen hooch"?
@@beekeeper8474 not exactly, brandy has to be aged for 3 years minimum at least to be sold legally as brandy, the use of brandy as a term for any generic fruit spirit is kind of complicated, armagnac is a brandy with apple but it has to be predominantly grape based to have the name legally. Fuit based distilled clear spirits get more complicated still, eau d'vie being one of the general terms and depending on region and what you used for the fruit it can be labeled as triple sec, grappa, kirsch and a few other things, in Eastern Europe, Germany and the US Schnapps is also used as a generic term as well. A LOT of names and terms have been locked.down in law since the 18th century or even earlier than that.
@@jediknight1294 Aren't you mixing up some things here? Armagnac is wine brandy from the Gascogne aged in French black oak. Pretty sure you'd irk some authorities were you to use other fruit than grapes in making it. Calvados is apple, but no wine brandy is involved. It may contain pear, though.
@@jediknight1294 as said Jedi, Armagnac is from wine, in Gascogne, Cognac is also from wine but a bit more on north-west and of course, Calva is from apple. What is interesting, is these names are common for a French but can have different significations over the world. And all of our alcohols are different names, not just "eau-de-vie" (term that we use for white alcohols generally, and from fruits, as "schnapps" in Germany as you said)
About yeast; Saccharomyces Cerevisae and other yeasts used in alcohol production are not only completely harmless, but actually quite beneficial for your bowels.
My grandad used to make a few types of 'wine' in the spare bedroom I'd sleep in on the weekends. Its still to this day(roughly 20 years later) the nicest collection of alcohol I have ever tried. Potato wine, blackberry and plum were my personal favourites. The potato used to come out crystal clear like vodka and was about 18-25% depending on how old it was, smoothest taste I've ever had. Just a shame I never thought to ask for the recipes before it was too late
@Black.Flaps .Dont.Match maybe not right after, but I still grab a jar of my nephew's shine when I pass through town because it tastes just like the stuff my Gr Grandpa used to make, it's a quaint reminder of an industrious man
as a kid back in Romania I used to sit for up to a week in the distillery making alcohol (back then it was legal). We only distilled it from fermented plums and for some reason it could only be done in copper stuff. and yes, we always saved the first glass and use it as disinfectant for cuts and scrapes. But we did not stop at making vodka we distilled it again and ended up with something very pure. I don't know how strong was after the second distillation but we always water it down to 51-52%. Now that was a cure for any disease as long as you know when to stop. You can still get it in UK if you know some Romanians from Transylvania that go home for holidays. Is called Țuica or Palinca.
Cosmin Anton a high yield home stilled plum brandy? Common all over Europe, not just Romania. Have lots of foreign friends here in the UK and I always ask for their version from home!
The reason for using copper vessels for distillation is that metallic copper reacts with any volatile sulfur compounds (mainly hydrogen sulfide or alkyl sulfides) which can be produced during fermentation. You don't get very much of these compounds, but because they have such powerful smells and flavours, even tiny quantities can ruin the smell or taste of the resulting drink. Most commercial distillation equipment contains some metallic copper components in direct contact with the distillate for this reason.
+The Kruxed not to sound rude mate, but do you know the difference between distillation and fermentation? It's perfectly legal to make mead, beer, wine, whatever (I actually make beer), it's just illegal to distill it, so basically any type of alcohol except spirits is good to make.
Pawel Korzeniewski Its only rude when you feel the need to point it out as such, instead of just the second half of the comment ;-) That being said, without reading it twice it made it seem the whole processes as I don't make it myself and only ever seen first hand distillation regardless of if it was spirits. My grandad would use it for his wines. Strange to be able to make alcohol but not stronger alcohol
Hey, we call it a demijohn here in Greece too, its pronounced the same and its written νταμιτζανα. It derives from the ancient Venetic "damegiana" (currently a dead language)...
I remember when I lived near Thessaloniki and we'd all sample each others Raki or oozeo ( sorry about the spelling). Fabulous!!! I can remember crawling from my friend's house over an empty lot. God, I miss Greece.
@@PurityVendetta When I worked in Greece the locals drank a bottle of ouzo for lunch. I foolishly tried to keep up and had to sleep the rest of the day, smashed. Then when I worked in Jordan they had a drink called Iraqi which was identical in every way I could tell. Don't know how it's spelled though. The alcohol would crystallise on the inside of your stomach, so if you drank a glass of water next day, you were instantly drunk again, and quite ill.
@@aaronmicalowe Yes, they did the same to me at lunch. I crawled home on my hands and knees lol. I guess it's like an initiation for foreigners. I only got caught out the once though 😉 They called it ouzo in Greece and raki in the north of Turkey. I think they're exactly the same drink, one a Greek name the other more Arabic. I'm glad I'm not the only one who failed the bottle of ouzo at lunchtime test 😂
theres a couple of things id like to touch on with this. you shouldnt need to warm your vessel for fermentation, unless your house is less than 50 degrees, you shouldnt have any issue, fermentation might be a little slow, but it will do the job, but normal room temperature is perfectly fine for fermentation. as for the airlock. yes, there is a bit of sanitation to the airlock, but the main purpose is to stop air from going into the vessel. its an anaerobic process, meaning that you do not want air. after the wine has fermented, as long as its above about 10% per volume, its self preserving, and it would be fairly difficult for other microorganisms to live in that liquid. i never really thought about methanol in the way you talked about it here. that is a very good point. i make wine and think nothing of methanol, but if i were to distill, i would be concerned. realistically i shouldnt be concerned, at least not to a large degree. and as far as removing methanol during distillation on a large scale, there are ways to do it, there are methods of removing fusel alcohols from fermentation. the other point i want to make is about the yeast. those packets are designed for a certain amount of "wine," but in all reality, all you need is a tiny bit, because the yeast will reach the same population no matter how much you put into it.
You know, my father was a vodka expert, drinking at least a quart of the clear wonder liquid per day. He used to drink whiskey but someone told him that it was the color in the whiskey that gave you a hang over. He swore to God that he never had a hang over after switching to vodka! It was the Vodka that ended his life so early at 63 years of age though, he hurt his back and was hospitalized, the doctors refused to allow him to have his vodka and he died of the DT'S in a damn hospital bed, I was home on emergency leave from the US Army at the time, sadly I was old enough to have served in Vietnam, but not old enough to go to the liquor store and get my dad the damn liquid that would have perhaps saved his life!
There was a huge case few years back here in Czech republic. But what they did was, they basically destiled some industrial cleaning agents and mixed it with ethanol and then sold it as cheap alcohol, usually in barels. They even knew there is some methanol in it, but they didnt care. As a result, almost 50 people died and some have life long damages. Two guys who were the heads of this illegal scam got life sentences. The really interesting point is that methanol is actually smooth and tastes good.
Methanol is the primary adulterant added to ethanol to make denatured alcohol (methylated spirits in UK speak) While the smell doesn't always tell what it will taste like, I wouldn't pour myself a double shot of methylated spirits on the rocks anytime soon. It smells awful. Could also be some other adulterant they add though. I'll stick to using it when I work on guitars. Soak a rag in it and use it to wipe the wood down during sanding. It takes away the dust and pulls it out of the pores, but because it evaporates so quickly, it doesn't cause the grain to swell. It's also a good fuel for camp stoves.
Mike McKeen Denaturation by methyl actually isn't used as much anymore, exactly because it doesn't smell. Methyl actually tastes even bether than ethyl alcohol and it smells good. They use most often Isoprophylalcohol now, and that is the stuff that really makes it reek.
Mike McKeen They also add some denatonium benzoate to make it taste bad. And I can confirm that methanol tastes good, since my hobby is a methanol fuel drag bike I have on one occasion splashed methanol into my mouth, and it tastes quite floral and unusual, just as it smells. Of course I lost my shit and washed my mouth out for 20 minutes, even though it was only a couple drops.
Yup, denatonium benzoate seems to be used a lot for this purpose nowadays. NileRed has a nice video about making it. He got a little bit on his fingers and couldn't eat anything using his hands for two days because the bitter taste would come through.
cerebellum I've had a similar experience. I was using solvent that had denatonium benzoate in it and for several days I could taste it if I even rubbed my face.
A man after me own heart Clive! I used to distil various brews even old flat beer (Get crude whiskey). I even built reflux stills for others. Quite legal here in NZ as long as it's for one's own use -- can't sell the product. Try to get some good Champagne yeast and use that, it can handle levels of alchohol up to 23%!! Effectively the yeast eats the sugar and pisses alchohol. The origin of brewing yeast came from the Tinea yeast (Athlete's Foot!) that was why the grapes were troden. It inoculated the grape juice with the yeast! Both Port and Sherry still use troden grapes. The 'Heads' (first bit out) I would keep and use as fuel and the 'Lees' (last bit) I kept and used as a cleaner. Nothing wasted. Got a friend who lives in a highrise apartment in New York who has a bee hive on his balcony! The bees will range up to 7 miles from the hive and do their beesey thing! He gets the benefit!
Not sure whether the addition of "foot fungus" really contributes to wine fermentation - the fungi which grow on feet are not usually yeasts. More to the point, fruit fermentation rarely ever requires added yeasts, since naturally occurring yeasts are always on the fruit skins. Wine or cider making does not add any yeast for this reason, even to this day. This is related to the use of "Bordeaux mixture", which is a simple combination of copper sulphate and elemental sulfur powders. This was first used on road-side grape vines in France, to make the grapes unpalatable, to deter peasants from either eating them or making wine from them. It was later discovered that the mixture had broad-spectrum anti-fungal properties, killing off the naturally occurring yeasts and other fungi wherever it was used. So even if anyone was to try and make wine from grapes dusted with Bordeaux mixture, the fermentation probably wouldn't work.
My late dad used to give me a wee dram of Laphroig, but little did I know that he had a distillery in the back of his garden shed, where mum and my sister assumed his kept his lawnmower. On dad's passing we opened his old shed to discover a copper still. On the floor opposite were empty Laphroig bottles! Well, well! 😂 When I came to have a drink of Laphroig at a bar when I was on shore leave, the stuff didn't taste anywhere as wonderful as dad's. He never said a word to anyone - well, of course he didn't! But IMO, he made the best hooch which would have knocked the socks off any of the commercial whisky makers. Dad was in the RAF during the war. We reckoned he learnt his illegal trade with someone in his unit. Nice video, Clive, though you certainly invoked sweet memories of dad. 🤗
Fun fact: 8 years ago I did drink medical grade 90% ethanol and sure enough it didn't give me any hangover at all ! (Even though I drank way too much of it)
Crossing the border - Canada to USA and back - I have bought 190 proof rum. I poured 1 oz in a patio style plastic tumbler 'glass' and the bottom broke off the tumbler ~15min. later leaving a huge permanent stain on the varnished deck! Yowsah!
I was using the still on the kitchen bench (varnished wood). It overflowed and caused the varnish to blister. Just as well we had a new kitchen in the pipeline.
no.... in that kind of still there will always be a certain % of water, even with a good reflux still you would need several passes to remove "most" of the water
You can concentrate the alcohol by freezing the fermented wort. The first crystals that form are mostly water and as the temperature falls the alcohol content of the remaining liquid gets higher and higher. This is traditionally done with barrels of cider in northern regions.
0:13 the name in Czech language is "demižón" (pronounciation is almost the same as demijohn, but without the second D which is in the middle of the word)
Take the brew from the demijohn and pour into small containers. Put them into a freezer until frozen solid. Remove and crush the ice and place into a mesh type colander. Put the colander over a bowl and with all the crushed ice back in the freezer. After a few hours all the alcohol will be a liquid in the bottom of the bowl. I of course use this method with a 9 litre cask of el-cheapo wine, to extract the pure alcohol to fortify any drink. This alcohol is typically added to a homebrew wine that will be judged at an Agricultural show. Others will add vodka and the judges will taste it. Your wine will not have the vodka taste and win first prize. BTW I use a 140 Watt fish tank heater to heat my brew :o)
Drinking beverages with live yeast is totally fine for the vast majority of people. Absolutely. BUT ONE CAVEAT: if you have recently been taking antibiotics or anti fungals (so just a couple examples: amoxicillin, metronidazole) you may want to avoid live yeast. Auto brewery syndrome sounds crazy but it is real. It is rare but part of its rarity is due to live yeast products being rare as well. Not trying to scare anyone, it's not a realistic concern for most people, just good to be aware of.
A hangover is caused by several different factors: dehydration, drop is blood alcohol levels, and leftover toxins because they couldn't be flushed normally.
+Adam R Yeah, and dehydration tends to be the largest contributor to the headache. Drink 16fl oz/500ml after drinking will greatly reduce the hangover symptoms the next day.
+Adam R A lot of people will be queasy when they have a hangover. The best way to help that is to eat something with bread and drink to re-hydrate. You will also be nutrient deficient from trying to process out all of the alcohol. During college, I have devised the perfect way to get over a hangover faster. A glass of V8 juice and toast or a sandwich. Sometimes a sandwich is too hard to make in that state so you just need to put up with toast. It works like a charm. In about an hour I will feel well enough to eat a bigger meal, and after that it's only a small amount of time until recovery.
The best way I've found to avoid a hangover is to drink 3-4 pints of water before going to bed. Even if you don't feel thirsty keep on drinking. The only problem is you have to be sober enough to be able to drink for that long without falling over...
+That Linux Gamer Yeah, drinking as soon as possible is the thing that helps the most (and keep a glass ready bedside and drink every time you should wake up; drunk sleep is the worst anyway). But I have to say, that for some alcoholic beverages I get head aches no matter what. For wine it takes maybe an hour after drinking a single glass until I start to feel throbbing in my head. That even happens when I am given supposedly excellent wine. So there's definitely something in there my brain doesn't like. "Darker" liquors like whiskey or tequila also give me a head ache most times the next day, but wodka, white rum and most importantly beer never (in the wrong dosage they still mess up my stomach quite alot ;) )
+Adam R I thought this too, but now that I'm thinking about it, I have noticed that higher quality liquors don't seem to have the same effect on me that others do. I once drank 1/3 bottle of Maotai in one night, and I didn't get crazy, I didn't get a hangover, and a number of other effects which all happen to me with far less of the normal stuff. I know, anecdotal and all that, but there you go.
I still own the immersion heater that I used as a teenager to try distilling. These days it's used to heat water in an old horse water bucket for bathing when there's power and water outages. Btw, if you make a basket and suspend it over water in the boiler section you can then put plant material in there which then removes the volatile oils from the shrubbery and it ends up floating on top of the distilled water collected. Plant oil distillation.
It's interesting you mention the bit about the methanol. I saw a video the other day on a channel called ChubbyEmu where he documents a medical case report of an unfortunate man who got methanol poisoning from drinking his own distilled spirits. I forget the method he used, but he had consumed a large amount of it in a pretty short time.
This is not quite right. There are basically 3 substances and an additional factor causing hangovers: 1. Dehydration 2. Acetaldehyde (first, toxic metabolite of ethanol 3. Higher alcohols like propanol ("fusel oils") 4. Methanol For the last two, it may again be their aldehyde metabolite that causes the damage (and formic acid for methanol). So these play only a role of included in higher amounts (beer, wine, darker liquors etc.), not so much for pure ethanol or high quality vodka. The dehydration factor is usually the most important and may be avoided with discipline (drink lots of water alongside the booze. However, whatever you do, you'll never get a hangover-free ethanol, because point 2. can't be avoided. Your body will always churn out acetaldehyde from ethanol, and that wreaks havoc on your brain. Then the severity depends on how good your body is in oxidizing the aldehyde further (to acetic acid). So while eliminating hangover reliably is impossible, minimize by: being an alcoholic with veteran oxidizing enzyms, drinking almost pure ethanol/water mixtures and an additional shit ton of pure water (or sports drink or whatever). This has been studied extensively in theory and in practise by our ... research group .... yeah...
According to Thomas Levy, MD (lots of lectures online on YT), if you are in the habit of megadosing vitamin C (ascorbic acid). It speeds up the metabolism of the alcohol. Not sure if that would guarantee no hangovers, but I'll bet it would help. (e.g. speeding up oxidation of the aldehyde). The possible downside is that (according to Levy) it means you don't actually get drunk ...
According to my local home brew shop it's legal to distill so much ethanol for fuel before duty is paid. So they told me all your doing is drinking your fuel. They make flavorings to go in the finished product and also they a different still that makes nearly pure ethanol but it uses a larger column and is considerably more expensive.
+bigclivedotcom I've heard stories about people drinking hospital-grade alcohol and having no hangover (I'm Eastern European, it probably happened in real life since we have trashy drinking habits). So this thing about methanol may or may not be true indeed.
+Local Ork It may vary by country. I believe in the US alcohol that is not intended for consumption is supposed to have stuff added to it that's really quite nasty, dating back to prohibition.
I used to live in France, home wine making is a big deal...but they have mobile distillery's that come to your village, you give them your crap home made wine and they turn it into eau-de-vie, Calvados or brandy for the locals, then they have a great time playing their favourite game, get the Englishman pissed 🤣
To my understanding, sugar washes produce little to no methanol. Wine has it in due to the skins from the grapes. Theres other reasons you would get rid of the 'foreshots' though, such as taste, mind you
You can minimize the amount of methanol being created by the yeast if you minimize the amount of pectin in the wash. Pectin is usually contained in the skin of fruits. So if you make juice of a fruit and were to filter off the solids you would essentially fermenting with a low pectin wash and as a result be more safe from the methanol dangers. However, it is recommended to toss about the first amount of whatever comes out of your distiller (about 10% of the washes volume as a rule of thumb) If you ferment white sugar you shouldn't worry about pectin in your wash since white sugar don't contain any...
You have so much wisdom, Clive. Thank You for educating us with the lesson of how to be safe. What was that temp and ratio? Just kidding, I hate wine. Brrrp. Oh, Excuse me. Still..(No Pun) (Yes, Pun). I was at the Loudon Classic in 1983 (In Laconia). I had a 1972 Kaw H1500. I did the jump. The "gauntlet" cheered. One of the great moments of my life. It was probably 6 feet at the crest and downhill. I only went for a 15 min. ride outside the campgrounds and I come back and they built a ramp out of wood! 50 people on each side. Good thing I grew up riding a dirt bike. My kickstand spring went AWOL. I tied it up with part of my shoe lace to get home (In CT!). I shit you not. The races were good. Honda V45s were the flavor of the year. Nothing compared to the riders of the TT. Those guys are the Masters. (and all you viewers were wondering what this had to do with anything). I'm Scot!
Recently in the news, some American teenagers made a drink they called Dewshine, (Mountain Dew soft drink with an industrial alcohol) 2 of the lads died and the other 2 were at deaths door for some time. The last wine I made tasted almost like vinegar, I bottled it anyhow and put it in the cupboard and forgot it. I re discovered 2 weeks ago and nearly threw it out, I gave it a quick taste and it had transformed into a gorgeous full bodied red.
+Green Silver IIRC, those Tennessee teenagers used *racing fuel*, basically pure methanol. Hard to say how foolish a mistake it was when they paid with their lives. I suppose a good question is, what the heck is going on in Robertson County, where _all four_ of these cases have happened?!
+drkastenbrot They might have heard people say how alcohol based mouthwash can get people drunk, even though most of them are made out of methanol and other alcohols that aren't actually ethanol.
I don't know if I would call that a cure. If it's like for antifreeze they give you ethanol since your body would prefer to digest ethanol. This "distracts" your body from the antifreeze so it can be processed and removed more slowly and safely. I would assume it works the same for methanol.
+bigclivedotcom where I used to work, here in the UK, there was a lot of Polish guys there, who were extremely friendly and very proficient at home brew. They argue that Vodka is a Polish invention and the Russians high-jacked it. Anyway, going back to your comment about pure vodka not causing hangovers, it was something they would certainly confirm. The stuff they would brew would be easily above 65% pure, more times closer to 80%, distilled 3-4 times before bottling. As their drinking sessions were quite epic, I once asked about headaches/hangovers, they said that it wasn't a thing because of the purity of the Vodka they made, and as I was gifted a bottle once, I can testify to that..
I learned more about bigclive than about distilling in this video. And very much OK with that. My respect for bigclive just increased by 37.992 points after watching this video.
I use one of the "Megahome" water distillers you show every day for our drinking water mainly to get rid of the added fluoride and you should see and smell the foul residue that's left! By the way, it only holds 4 litres up to the "full" mark and the activated charcoal filter is there to remove the more volatile molecules and keep your water smelling clean. Fascinating video. Many thanks.
Darren Nash Im sorry, Floride is totally a communist conspiracy, and I am a KGB agent trying to rick people into using fluoride. Its not like its good for your teeth or anything...
I was looking for a sketch, I thought it was dave allen about tax on alcohol, It goes something like "I only bought this at the bottom of my glass but I will have to drink the rest to get to it". And good scotch (slide down thought), No hangover!! Big Thumbs Up.
for people in the United states, like me. if you brew inside your house and not brag, I'm sure your not going to get caught...so many illegal things happen and I'm sure your the least of the govt worries.
+paintballhead03 Okay, so.. I'm considering moving soon, but regardless, right now, I live in the US. I'm fascinated by the brewing process, but the problem is, I don't like alcohol. So if I brew something that's safe to drink, I'd be way too tempted to share it with other people. And even when I got busted, as they're taking apart my still and I'm being dragged off to jail, I'd be like "Oh, hey, guys, if you want to keep some of that, there's empty flasks in the cabinet!" Sooo.. I'll refrain from letting my moonshiner fantasies go wild.
Another item of note related to the point on methanol poisoning: I am diabetic and the way diabetes damages nerves and blood vessels is the excess sugar in the blood gets converted in the body to things like acetone and formaldehyde - essentially a very slow, naturally occurring version of methanol poisoning. I had never realised this before as I had never looked into the method of action for methanol poisoning. Thanks once again Clive!
I used to make beer, cider and wine in my late teens/ early 20s and have quite a few parties with it. During this lockdown, I've started up again. I'm making some rosehip wine with rosehips a foraged back in the winter. Should be ready for Christmas! Mead will be next...
Thanks for this Sir. Have done student brews before and understand stilling but this was informative, cut through a lot of the bulls**t talked on the internet.
bigclivedotcom of course. We usually get the plumes inside big one ton containers and let them ferment for like a month. You can do the same using apples. Everything gives different taste. After they ferment, we use an 100 liters variant of what you got on the table to distil them. Last summer we had arround 8 tons of plumes and got like 400 liters of brandy. 100 liters placed back and distiled it second time. So, in total, we got 40% 300 liters brandy and arround 50 liters 60%.
Well, what we use is not like what you have on the table. Ours is made out of copper (stainless steel or aluminium or basically any other metal is not good because either is toxic, or it gives a bad taste) and we make fire under it. From the main 100 litres container, there is a pipe that goes on a "snake" (pipe coil) placed on a big cold water container. There, the alcohol condensate. Is worth to mention that you NEED to keep a constant fire and not to powerfull since alcohol evaporate at 70 degreese and if you go above 100, you get water during the process.
Also, Distilling small quantities on the fly is best done by cold distillation - take the mix, filter it, then freeze it in the freezer, the Slush Puppy type mixture you end up with consist of frozen water ice, and the liquid is alchohol/water mix. As it melts, keep draining it off into a jar and checking the Specific Gravity.
The only country where it's truly legal is New Zealand. You're right, sugar produces pretty much no methanol. I think it produces more acetone, and only at the beginning. However, turbo yeast is a waste. Bread yeast can do as well, and it's much cheaper. You're pretty well informed. You are definitely Ralfy's brother!
Cooking with Clive.. You should start a separate channel for this type of content lol You do not want to use the water distiller for distilling liquor, you want to use copper tubing not aluminum to avoid impurity leeching between the alcohol and aluminum.(Aluminum is a dirty metal). You may find yourself with metal poisoning or some other nasty sickness. At the very least replace that aluminum tubing with copper. That's why they have the charcoal filter to trap the leeched impurities from the aluminum tubing.. Pyrex tubing is the best but will cost more to have blown into shape and of course more fragile. This is very illegal in the US without proper licensing BUT - cough - it's only illegal if your caught in the woods with a still - cough -
+ElfNet Gaming Agreed, copper, stainless or glass. And no soldered joints if using copper. Interestingly enough, Tesco here in Cz used to sell a glass distillation condenser alongside their wine-making materials. I don't know if they still do, so must have another look.
+ElfNet Gaming The distiller I looked at on Ebay(about 70USD with shipping) claimed it was all stainless, although I suspect the fins on the condenser tubes are aluminum, which would make sense and is perfectly alright, as they don't contact any of the product. Aluminum is terrific for heat transfer as it is easily working into fins and is very good an moving heat.
+ElfNet Gaming Yes. The tubing in the distiller used by Clive is made from stainless steel. Not sure about the fins, but that wouldn't make any difference anyway.
There are only 3 reasons Distilling would be illegal in any country. 1. Companies control beer and spirits and influence government to make laws to make it illegal to cut into their profits. 2. Governments themselves tax it, so would lose tax revenue. 3. You live in a Islamic country.
Well it's illegal in the UK because it tends to cause explosions that kill people. If it was because of either 1 or 2 then wouldn't fermenting be illegal too? I mean the government makes more money off beers and wines than it does of liquor.
Truthfully though - How many still explosions REALLY happen, per year, in all of the UK? I suspect the words "It's just an excuse to maximize tax income" would be more the truth, really. Yes, IF you have a crappy still that leaks ethanol vapors, it COULD explode - Same is true if you're using Alcohol, Acetone, or any other solvent lazily and get enough vapors into the air that you cause the same results. But there's a huge difference between an Air Still and a moonshine still in terms of volume of vapors produced and likelihood of a leak, those air stills don't process 1200 gallons in a run, just 1 gallon...
Toilet wine. I chew up and spit out bread to make the yeast if you cant get marmite, and keep the jug warm in my bed. A very nice sparkling brew, but open the lid very slowly and outside.
Though the gas coming past the stop smells awful, remembering the first time I made homemade wine with a kit I bought from Boots after school one day while in Year 10 and living in Woking.
The least complicated and less time consuming method is by going to the store and buying your alcohol. I tried a beer making kit once and it took so long that I decided I'd just go buy my beer.
"I paid 12 pounds for this bottle of rum." *cries in Australian Even accounting for the difference in value, that would be half of what we pay for a similarly sized bottle. We pay 40-50 Aussie dollars. Being an alcoholic is expensive here.
Another great video ... A few points .. methanol is VERY rare, found mostly in red wines , even then at concentrations less than 1gm per 10 liters so just dump the first few drops ...not a glass full , from distillation . Charcoal is used in water distillers as an end filter in case the feed water has chlorine which would exit with the steam.
In Austria farmers often distill by themselves, but not just one liter. They build much bigger distiller, producing often 50 bottles at once. So the first bottle happens to have much more methanol than you should consume.
Clive -- As someone who has made vast quantities of wine, I can assure you that you don't need all this. Just a plastic bucket with lid + grape juice + sugar + bakers yeast (nothing special). Clean bucket with boiling water - add grape juice, water, & sugar (for 6 L of grape juice I add 1 L of water and 2 cups of sugar). Add yeast (starter in cup with grape juice and sugar works well). Ferment for about 8 days, after which decant or siphon into clean jar. Leave for at least 5 minutes before drinking! Never mind about the air-lock (if plastic bucket has lid) or finings. Who cares if it's a bit cloudy. Cheers !!
I might be wrong, but I think the most recent research points to the hangover being mainly caused by a massive inflammatory response to the ethanol. Methanol and other congeners (along with dehydration) were found to be only secondary factors.
+SilentS possibly but I don't get hangovers at all if I drink decent quality beer or vodka etc. However with some nasty horrible chemical beers I can get a screaming headache before I get half way down the second pint so I think some of it is the additives.
+Gordon Lawrence Yea unless you over do it, tends to be the case. While cheap shit tends to be laden in chemicals, same with cider and other fruit based things containing sulphates. As thats essentially salt, it doesn't take much brain power to put 2 and 2 together afterwards and why smart people try to drink a pint of water before passing out :-)
The dangers of distilling your own stuff is that cellulose will distill into methanol. Now, since we tend not to have cellulose left in our sugar/treacle/molasses anymore, it's not much of a problem these days. Back when there was still scraps of sugar beet/cane pulp in the sugar source, it WAS a problem.
+Adderkleet Yep, these days the sugar is processed enough to remove the vast amount of "non-sugar" contaminants, Now you can use bags of sugar with very little worry
+Jamie Dallaway This, and competitive inhibition; Since there is a significantly larger amount of ethanol than methanol, the mechanism of action for methanol is blocked, and thus the methanol is excreted in the urine, rather than being processed by the liver into rather nasty chemicals.
+Adderkleet Not just cellulose, but any solids that settle out of the brew during the boiling and stick to the bottom might start to pyrolyze, ie burn, and create all sorts of nasties; methanol probably the least worrisome. A relatively clear sugar yeast ferment is very unlikely to have that happen, especially if you wisely watch it, and keep the heat going in minimal, just enough to slow simmer the process. A giant cauldron still, out in an Appalachian backwoods, filled with a thick sedimenty cornmeal sour mash, and only infrequently attended - all beats are off.
My pet fish used to make moonshine in this style using a water purifier. He was always really careful with removing the first few ml's of each pass though the machine. By the time it was finished (around 180 proof sometimes) it would not give you a hangover. A roommate of ours volunteered himself for science and drank half a bottle (the equivalent maybe two full bottles of vodka? ) and was without hangover when he finally dropped back down to earth. Nobody who drank it would ever have one, my theory is they put stuff in commercially available liquor to give you the hangover - but I like your methanol theory.
+bigclivedotcom Yep, pretty sure, i am not really in a hurry with my mead :) By the way, methanol is produced when pectine is processed by the yeast, which is contained in pretty much any fruit. Honey does not contain any pectine at all, and if you only use honey and water (and not applejuice like most recepies say), you don't have any pectine in your wash and therefore should not produce any methanol.
+muh1h1 I'm not sure how I managed to mix up mead and perry there. No pear flavouring required. I was recently given a taste of distilled mead and told to guess what it was. I got a strong floral taste off it and I'd guess that may actually have bee due to it being derived from plant nectar with the taste normally hidden by the sweetness of honey.
+SigEpBlue only in the USA then, not all of America ;) (sorry, I feel a bit dickish today). Honestly though, I think we should all just start using Kelvin and all will be fine.
+tonymengela that's below the boiling point of ethanol and in normal stills you won't get anything then. The mash should be boiling, and that happens at whatever temperature the boiling point is. The boiling point of the solution will start low and then rise up towards the boiling point of plain water. (15/85% ethanol/water solution have different boiling point than a 1/99 solution.)
m8e I know from experience, not from some books. It always cracks me up when people tell me I'm wrong about things I have first hand experience with. Yes it is 166 deg Fahrenheit, that what we use here. People always want to act like pros on youtube because they watched a video or read a book. Here is a great setup for a still 30 gallon stainless barrel, on bottom of the barrel you have 2 stainless hotwater elements with thermostat control one temp gauge 3 inches above them one in middle and one top. at the top you have a straight SS 2" standpipe going up 18" filled with glass marbles, the bottom screen should be SS with large holes just enough to keep marbles in then top 3/8 outlet and then 3/8 SS chiller tube with about 4 coils going directly into your first sealed glass catch filled with activated charcoal with wall to divide two sides where the tube goes almost to bottom, then another outlet tube 1/4 way from top that also goes to a second final catch. this should be large sealed with a relief tube from top that bubbles into activated charcoal filled with distilled water. first catch will be the dirtier and catch particles and the second will be the final product....... You should also have a sight glass on your boiler so you never boil below your elements....... This is a completely sealed system with no smell and make for a much safer distillation
I've never gotten a hangover and I've always preferred vodka and sugar wash like you showed us in the video, when I'm drinking to get drunk. Fructose causes a higher methanol concentration so that may explain it.
When I was 19, my company sent me to Dublin. I went out (as you do, when you are 19) on the pop, and drank only Guinness. I must have downed 17 pints between 17:00 and 03:00, without food. I woke up at 06:30, felt fine, and took a train to Belfast. Was it the unpasturised Guinness? I don't know.
Ha ha, I am loving this channel more and more :-) Though, you might be interested to know that the strain used in those super turbo nutter yeast products was apparently originally developed for the production of fuel ethanol. Any yeast will make alcohol, but only certain strains produce it with a reasonable flavour, and, as I once found out, that isn't one of them. If you use a wine or champagne yeast with a slightly better source of sugar, and brew it to a marginally lower ABV, you'll find little need to filter. I guess it's another case of you get what you pay for, which is also very much the case with DIY wine kits, as the ones that contain 100% grape juice and don't require additional sugar, far outperform the "bargain" kits. In fact, if you're purely making the stuff to beef up alcohol free wine, I'd say that, at £34 for 23 litres, the "Australian Blend" Shiraz kits on ebay are pretty hard to beat, seeing as they're incredibly straight forward to use and produce a surprisingly convincing red that's actually very drinkable in a few weeks, much to my liver's dismay :-)
No LEDs were hurt during the making of this video.
+Ast A. Moore lolz
Says, "allegedly"
Not that I'm advocating anything illegal( ;) ), but IF one were to get an inexpensive distiller like Clive has there, and then took some stainless steel picturing hanging wire, and unraveled it, and cleaned it up well, and threaded about 3 lengths of that unraveled wire(21 individual strands, from the seven strand braided wire) into the Inside of the tube for that top condenser unit, one would have created a more efficient reflux, AND I heard, that the resulting alcohol content might go from about 40 percent alcohol to about 75 percent alcohol, in their first pass distillation. A distillation reflux is where some high surface area compatible material is put into the condensation stream, and provides increased surface area for the vapor/liquid equilibration to be stretched out, and also a little better heat exchange. Also wiring a separate rheostat for input power to the bottom heater unit, which allows fine control of the heat input, allows much closer control of the heat and rate of distillation, which also raises the efficiency. Also, a small cheap digital temperature meter, with a water proof sensor on a long wire, could monitor the temperature of the distillation wash liquid as it boils, and note the changes in temperature when the different stages of distillation occur, the Heads, Hearts and Tails. I've heard.
Ya, I've heard that too. Not sure if it is true or not. I've never done it. ;-)
I thought everyone distilled their (fire)water that way...
These already produce 60%, you dilute down to 40% and then use activated carbon if you like. Filtering through carbon doesn't work well above 40%
I always love "hearsay" :-)
@@chrismueller8861 better than heresy
Clive youre a true asset to the UK, love your videos
He's doesn't live in the UK though. Isle of Man is a crown dependency, not part of the UK.
hellterminator then I should change that to a true asset to Britain! I had wrongly assumed him Glaswegian
Well, it's not Great Britain either, it's a separate island. :D
But you could say an asset to the Crown.
@@hellterminator
The rules and tax rates on alcohol are the same though. Income tax is lower, but VAT and excise duties are the same.
Alright, Alright, Alright, Big Clive is a true asset to the WORLD!
"Always give the first few drops to the faries, or they will take yer eyes"
Oh god, i'm laughed so hard from this. In Russia we have similar jokes about first drops and eyes.
Ha! Brilliant!
tBe sure!!.
I have no interest in making my own alcohol, or even the general consumption of it. But fuck it, I'll learn something.
yeast
I'm the same I don't really drink much but I do like the Idea or the water purification for making e juice. Another great idea from big Clive 😀
+Forssa1 You can do what I have done, just for fun, and buy some bread yeast, sugar and spring water or maybe distilled water (don't use any water that had salt added [like Dasani brand] or chlorine or fluoride or ammonia [but any water, even tap water will probably still function, if you are trying to be thrifty, for science purposes]) and put it in a almost sealed container (make sure there is a hole) and watch it start to bubble within maybe 1-3 days. The older the packet of unopened yeast is, the less impressive your results will be. When it is done, you can pour it down your drain, since you didn't use any sterile procedures.
+Henry Simpson Lee i dont get why you would want to put water in your ejuice vg pg nic and flavour done, ive made 80/20 vg juice and had no problems wicking
+oldskoolhead0 it's idea from another of bigclives video on making e juice with glycerin from chemists and boiled water as apossed to pg /vg
I've been making my own hooch since I was a teenager. Over the years I have tried all the fancy kits and gear but around 1998 I pretty much perfected this method you are demonstrating. I can make perfectly good grog this way that is neither disgusting or full of spores. I heartily recommend anyone give it a go. The setup costs are like £150 and the stuff you make will be easily as drinkable as any modern £10 bottle of wine or cider and contain a whole lot less pesticides and sulphites! Naturally, as a law abiding subject of Her Madge, I have never and would never, ever, consider distillation ..
Tee Hee.
But one of the best things in life, I imagine, might be putting wild elderflower you collected in the woods in to such a distillate and serving it with a cube of sugar over crushed ice on a hot summer's day in darkest Devon.
its legal to distill in Devon has been for a few years now, for your own consumption only.
wozzlepop
There is a N.Wales brewery which makes a very pale bitter with a noticeable addition of elderflower. IT IS BLOODY DELICIOUS!
It’s a while ago since this comment, but I don’t suppose you’ll share this recipe of good grog you speak of? Just for science you see. ;)
24v supply through a BS 1363 plug, home distillation of alcohol, the crimes are racking up. ;P
Just to clear up some misconceptions:
While it is possible for methanol to contribute to a hangover it is not the main compound responsible for it. Generally there are two components for a hangover:
1. Dehydration
2. Acetaldehyde
Dehydration is quite self explanatory and also the only factor you can actually do something against. This is why you have less of a hangover when you drink a lot of water or high sodium broth before going to bed. Acetaldehyde, the main metabolite of ethanol, you just have to suffer through it, as there is so far no way to accelerate it's excretion. This is the compound mainly responsible for headaches, nausea etc.
Also if you were to distil your own fermented ethanol solution (I'm sure you aren't or god may have mercy with your souls), just keep a thermometer in the solution as well as one in the steam. Methanol will boil at around 65°C, while ethanol boils at 78°C. In the beginning you keep your temperature between 65°C and 75°C and discard the distillate. Check both thermomethers!. At this temperature range you will boil off most of the methanol, then you raise your temperature to 78°C and discard the first portion as well. From now on you will be left with fairly clean distillate. The higher the temperature of your boiling solution, the more water you will have in the final product. The highest purity that is theoretically achievable for ethanol through distillation is 96%.
Another contributor to the headaches is sulfur dioxide that gets used to stabilize wines.
@@emilychb6621 in ciders too. I get horrible headaches after q few cans of cloudy Thatchers haze
Yes sir, drink some chicken noodle soup before going to bed after a night of drinking.
Marcel Chb
Sulphur Dioxide is added as an antioxidant, each time the wine is siphoned (to take it off the yeast at the bottom of you fermentation vessel, to filter it, or bottle/barrel) oxygen is inadvertently added as the surface in contact with air (unless you purge your containers with CO2). Potassium Sorbate is the chemical added to kill the yeast. Particularly important if any sugar is left, as refermentation will blow up bottles. Sulphur Dioxide (sodium metabisulphite) has to be added with sorbate to prevent a geranium like smell.
Excellent information!!!
Remember kids: everything is legal, until you're caught. ;)
SigEpBlue exactly who's gunna catch you ? I'm going to do it if it's legal or not I don't care I'm not hurting anyone part from the tax man but he gets enough as it is so what the hell
🙈🙉🙊... though aside from a few bi laws here in the states I am pretty sure nobody cares about alcohol unless you are selling it
Similar state of affairs in Canada. Home brewing is legal here, but distillation requires a permit. That being said, the laws regulating distillation are codified as tax law rather than public safety law, so as long as you're only distilling for personal consumption, even if someone makes a complaint to police, it's unlikely that you would be prosecuted.
@@Dee_Just_Dee it's the same here in Australia any of you use that shitty air still I'd be wanting to run it at least 3 times as you will taste that turbo yeast
Who cares what the "Government" says! Freedom.. It's only illegal if you allow yourself to be ruled by sociopaths
This interested me mainly to see what you used to make your brew as I live at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains here in the US, which you may know was (in)famous for bootleg moonshine during prohibition. It is interesting to note it has become popular in the last few years for distillers to market legal "moonshine" sold in the fairly traditional canning jars. They now sell it in different flavours or poured over a jar full of cherries.
I want to say I remember my first experience with moonshine, that implies I remember it.
I remember what it was described to me. "Palm heart moonshine! drink it bitch!" They poured it over Maraschino Cherries and tasted like poison should, and a boot shouldn't.
The US Space engineering giant Ball makes the best Moonshine Canning Jars.
Good 'Ol USA; as American as puppies and apple pie.
That double snake packet looks so much like the advertising on a packet of quasi-legal synthetic cannabinoid from when I was a teenager.
Here in finland making "kilju" (homemade booze from yeast, water and sugar, you just let it sit in bucket) is illegal(nobody gives a shit, not even police), but if you but some berries in it its legal because then it is registered as homemade wine.
#soSoumi
Good thing I saved that half a strawberry from my dessert earlier.
Good news! Making kilju is legal now.
The conservatives here in the US of A have been working very hard to overturn some of the idiotic rules that have kept Americans confused over the past hundred or so years since liberals began making laws. The need for a permit to carry a handgun under your coat instead of strapped on your hip has been repealed in many states, where now all that is required is a state Drivers License to prove you are from that State, and a clean criminal record. No background check in necessary any more, but if you are arrested and carrying concealed your record is checked, if you have a Felony Conviction then you are arrested for illegal possession of a firearm. If not, you and your gun are free to go. Pot is becoming legal in more and more States even though the Feds still call it an illegal drug, as a retired cop, I can tell you I have fought many a damn drunk, but most pot smokers are simple lead gently to the back seat of the patrol car to be taken into custody.
It's always tickled me that it's hooch that's literally pronounced like "kill you" with a Finnish accent.
Here in "the states" , you're not breaking the law unless you get caught. Illegal is just a sick bird.
Here in New Hampshire, our state motto is " Live free or die" . Cheers.
Cheers from a fellow NH native.
I believe it's 100% legal to make your own alcohol in the states, as long as you don't sell/ship it
Making for personal consumption is fine. Once you sell it you're in trouble. Small batches like that are more suitable for personal consumption anyways.
@@timmooney7528 In the states distillation no matter the amount or who is using it, personal or otherwise is 100% against federal law. You can make all the beer you want, but spirits get the ATF after you.
@@Goonygoon84 You can make your own wine in the States, as well as beer. Making "spirits" is against Federal law. But really..... If someone used this method to make a "fifth" (750Ml) of vodka strictly for personal consumption and DIDN'T BLAB ABOUT IT. How would the ATF even know? Smoking "pot" produces a smell, (It's 100% illegal where I live and yet I can get a buzz just WALKING in the halls of my apartment building!) If no one cares about that Skunk ass weed smell oozing out of my building, Who would even KNOW if I were to have some "kitchen hooch"?
This is the most informative video on this subject I’ve ever seen, and I’ve studied this for years
Distilled "crap" wine, which is then aged in oak casks, is called Brandy. Just saying.
The folks drinking this hooch are in too much of a hurry to "age" their spirits.
Anything different distilled from fruit is a brandy.
@@beekeeper8474 not exactly, brandy has to be aged for 3 years minimum at least to be sold legally as brandy, the use of brandy as a term for any generic fruit spirit is kind of complicated, armagnac is a brandy with apple but it has to be predominantly grape based to have the name legally.
Fuit based distilled clear spirits get more complicated still, eau d'vie being one of the general terms and depending on region and what you used for the fruit it can be labeled as triple sec, grappa, kirsch and a few other things, in Eastern Europe, Germany and the US Schnapps is also used as a generic term as well.
A LOT of names and terms have been locked.down in law since the 18th century or even earlier than that.
@@jediknight1294 Aren't you mixing up some things here? Armagnac is wine brandy from the Gascogne aged in French black oak. Pretty sure you'd irk some authorities were you to use other fruit than grapes in making it.
Calvados is apple, but no wine brandy is involved. It may contain pear, though.
@@jediknight1294 as said Jedi, Armagnac is from wine, in Gascogne, Cognac is also from wine but a bit more on north-west and of course, Calva is from apple. What is interesting, is these names are common for a French but can have different significations over the world. And all of our alcohols are different names, not just "eau-de-vie" (term that we use for white alcohols generally, and from fruits, as "schnapps" in Germany as you said)
About yeast;
Saccharomyces Cerevisae and other yeasts used in alcohol production are not only completely harmless, but actually quite beneficial for your bowels.
Central Intelligence Agency
Also a source of vitamin B complex.
yep...drink 6 pints of Weissbier n see what ur like next morning lolol....total shitfest!
@@Martin-lp4yg Well 6 pints of weissbier also contain a bunch of alcohol, which can easily end in a sour stomach my itself.
My grandad used to make a few types of 'wine' in the spare bedroom I'd sleep in on the weekends. Its still to this day(roughly 20 years later) the nicest collection of alcohol I have ever tried.
Potato wine, blackberry and plum were my personal favourites. The potato used to come out crystal clear like vodka and was about 18-25% depending on how old it was, smoothest taste I've ever had. Just a shame I never thought to ask for the recipes before it was too late
Lol exactly what my Grandad used to do Potato Wine
Surely he had notes or ingredients in the house somewhere.
@Black.Flaps .Dont.Match maybe not right after, but I still grab a jar of my nephew's shine when I pass through town because it tastes just like the stuff my Gr Grandpa used to make, it's a quaint reminder of an industrious man
@Black.Flaps .Dont.Match
So I should just sell the house without going through it?
@Black.Flaps .Dont.Match pictures and recipe books. after you pass 35 that's what yer lookin for
Dear sir, I have revisited this video, and learned even more. I thank you for this information. pierrre from New Mexico
as a kid back in Romania I used to sit for up to a week in the distillery making alcohol (back then it was legal). We only distilled it from fermented plums and for some reason it could only be done in copper stuff. and yes, we always saved the first glass and use it as disinfectant for cuts and scrapes. But we did not stop at making vodka we distilled it again and ended up with something very pure. I don't know how strong was after the second distillation but we always water it down to 51-52%. Now that was a cure for any disease as long as you know when to stop. You can still get it in UK if you know some Romanians from Transylvania that go home for holidays. Is called Țuica or Palinca.
Cosmin Anton a high yield home stilled plum brandy? Common all over Europe, not just Romania. Have lots of foreign friends here in the UK and I always ask for their version from home!
I don't know about UK, but in the US that is most often sold as slivovitz. French plum eau de vie (mirabelle) is pretty close to the same thing.
The reason for using copper vessels for distillation is that metallic copper reacts with any volatile sulfur compounds (mainly hydrogen sulfide or alkyl sulfides) which can be produced during fermentation. You don't get very much of these compounds, but because they have such powerful smells and flavours, even tiny quantities can ruin the smell or taste of the resulting drink. Most commercial distillation equipment contains some metallic copper components in direct contact with the distillate for this reason.
my dad does this and here in Belgium it's legal as long as you only use it for personal consumption
In Oregon it's legal to drink underage as long as you brew it yourself :)
+Megabobster NOT true. urban legend.
oh
+hannes hebben lol
+Megabobster It's only illegal if you get caught. :p
In Sweden it's illegal to even possess distillation equipment. Sucks even more for people who just like to do some chemistry at home.
+Pawel Korzeniewski Same in the US to a point..
+Pawel Korzeniewski Are you sure? A certain famous youtuber from that very country uploaded a video of him making mead
The Kruxed Well certain people think they are above the law too..
+The Kruxed not to sound rude mate, but do you know the difference between distillation and fermentation? It's perfectly legal to make mead, beer, wine, whatever (I actually make beer), it's just illegal to distill it, so basically any type of alcohol except spirits is good to make.
Pawel Korzeniewski
Its only rude when you feel the need to point it out as such, instead of just the second half of the comment ;-)
That being said, without reading it twice it made it seem the whole processes as I don't make it myself and only ever seen first hand distillation regardless of if it was spirits. My grandad would use it for his wines.
Strange to be able to make alcohol but not stronger alcohol
Hey, we call it a demijohn here in Greece too, its pronounced the same and its written νταμιτζανα. It derives from the ancient Venetic "damegiana" (currently a dead language)...
We call It demizson here, pronounced the same way. But as we know every word comes from a Greek word.
I remember when I lived near Thessaloniki and we'd all sample each others Raki or oozeo ( sorry about the spelling). Fabulous!!! I can remember crawling from my friend's house over an empty lot. God, I miss Greece.
@@PurityVendetta When I worked in Greece the locals drank a bottle of ouzo for lunch. I foolishly tried to keep up and had to sleep the rest of the day, smashed. Then when I worked in Jordan they had a drink called Iraqi which was identical in every way I could tell. Don't know how it's spelled though. The alcohol would crystallise on the inside of your stomach, so if you drank a glass of water next day, you were instantly drunk again, and quite ill.
@@aaronmicalowe Yes, they did the same to me at lunch. I crawled home on my hands and knees lol. I guess it's like an initiation for foreigners. I only got caught out the once though 😉
They called it ouzo in Greece and raki in the north of Turkey. I think they're exactly the same drink, one a Greek name the other more Arabic. I'm glad I'm not the only one who failed the bottle of ouzo at lunchtime test 😂
@@thombaz and Greek words derive from Macedonian words which is a far older civilization.
theres a couple of things id like to touch on with this.
you shouldnt need to warm your vessel for fermentation, unless your house is less than 50 degrees, you shouldnt have any issue, fermentation might be a little slow, but it will do the job, but normal room temperature is perfectly fine for fermentation.
as for the airlock. yes, there is a bit of sanitation to the airlock, but the main purpose is to stop air from going into the vessel. its an anaerobic process, meaning that you do not want air. after the wine has fermented, as long as its above about 10% per volume, its self preserving, and it would be fairly difficult for other microorganisms to live in that liquid.
i never really thought about methanol in the way you talked about it here. that is a very good point. i make wine and think nothing of methanol, but if i were to distill, i would be concerned. realistically i shouldnt be concerned, at least not to a large degree.
and as far as removing methanol during distillation on a large scale, there are ways to do it, there are methods of removing fusel alcohols from fermentation.
the other point i want to make is about the yeast. those packets are designed for a certain amount of "wine," but in all reality, all you need is a tiny bit, because the yeast will reach the same population no matter how much you put into it.
Next up: Run a speakeasy from home. (Dubious legality in some cities.)
Do not attempt in Chicago.
@@theRPGmaster fuck it, if it's good enough for Al Capone it's good enough for me.
You know, my father was a vodka expert, drinking at least a quart of the clear wonder liquid per day. He used to drink whiskey but someone told him that it was the color in the whiskey that gave you a hang over. He swore to God that he never had a hang over after switching to vodka! It was the Vodka that ended his life so early at 63 years of age though, he hurt his back and was hospitalized, the doctors refused to allow him to have his vodka and he died of the DT'S in a damn hospital bed, I was home on emergency leave from the US Army at the time, sadly I was old enough to have served in Vietnam, but not old enough to go to the liquor store and get my dad the damn liquid that would have perhaps saved his life!
There was a huge case few years back here in Czech republic. But what they did was, they basically destiled some industrial cleaning agents and mixed it with ethanol and then sold it as cheap alcohol, usually in barels. They even knew there is some methanol in it, but they didnt care. As a result, almost 50 people died and some have life long damages. Two guys who were the heads of this illegal scam got life sentences. The really interesting point is that methanol is actually smooth and tastes good.
Methanol is the primary adulterant added to ethanol to make denatured alcohol (methylated spirits in UK speak)
While the smell doesn't always tell what it will taste like, I wouldn't pour myself a double shot of methylated spirits on the rocks anytime soon. It smells awful.
Could also be some other adulterant they add though. I'll stick to using it when I work on guitars. Soak a rag in it and use it to wipe the wood down during sanding. It takes away the dust and pulls it out of the pores, but because it evaporates so quickly, it doesn't cause the grain to swell.
It's also a good fuel for camp stoves.
Mike McKeen
Denaturation by methyl actually isn't used as much anymore, exactly because it doesn't smell. Methyl actually tastes even bether than ethyl alcohol and it smells good.
They use most often Isoprophylalcohol now, and that is the stuff that really makes it reek.
Mike McKeen They also add some denatonium benzoate to make it taste bad. And I can confirm that methanol tastes good, since my hobby is a methanol fuel drag bike I have on one occasion splashed methanol into my mouth, and it tastes quite floral and unusual, just as it smells. Of course I lost my shit and washed my mouth out for 20 minutes, even though it was only a couple drops.
Yup, denatonium benzoate seems to be used a lot for this purpose nowadays. NileRed has a nice video about making it. He got a little bit on his fingers and couldn't eat anything using his hands for two days because the bitter taste would come through.
cerebellum I've had a similar experience. I was using solvent that had denatonium benzoate in it and for several days I could taste it if I even rubbed my face.
A man after me own heart Clive! I used to distil various brews even old flat beer (Get crude whiskey). I even built reflux stills for others. Quite legal here in NZ as long as it's for one's own use -- can't sell the product. Try to get some good Champagne yeast and use that, it can handle levels of alchohol up to 23%!! Effectively the yeast eats the sugar and pisses alchohol.
The origin of brewing yeast came from the Tinea yeast (Athlete's Foot!) that was why the grapes were troden. It inoculated the grape juice with the yeast! Both Port and Sherry still use troden grapes.
The 'Heads' (first bit out) I would keep and use as fuel and the 'Lees' (last bit) I kept and used as a cleaner. Nothing wasted.
Got a friend who lives in a highrise apartment in New York who has a bee hive on his balcony! The bees will range up to 7 miles from the hive and do their beesey thing! He gets the benefit!
Not sure whether the addition of "foot fungus" really contributes to wine fermentation - the fungi which grow on feet are not usually yeasts. More to the point, fruit fermentation rarely ever requires added yeasts, since naturally occurring yeasts are always on the fruit skins. Wine or cider making does not add any yeast for this reason, even to this day.
This is related to the use of "Bordeaux mixture", which is a simple combination of copper sulphate and elemental sulfur powders. This was first used on road-side grape vines in France, to make the grapes unpalatable, to deter peasants from either eating them or making wine from them. It was later discovered that the mixture had broad-spectrum anti-fungal properties, killing off the naturally occurring yeasts and other fungi wherever it was used. So even if anyone was to try and make wine from grapes dusted with Bordeaux mixture, the fermentation probably wouldn't work.
My late dad used to give me a wee dram of Laphroig, but little did I know that he had a distillery in the back of his garden shed, where mum and my sister assumed his kept his lawnmower. On dad's passing we opened his old shed to discover a copper still. On the floor opposite were empty Laphroig bottles! Well, well! 😂
When I came to have a drink of Laphroig at a bar when I was on shore leave, the stuff didn't taste anywhere as wonderful as dad's. He never said a word to anyone - well, of course he didn't! But IMO, he made the best hooch which would have knocked the socks off any of the commercial whisky makers. Dad was in the RAF during the war. We reckoned he learnt his illegal trade with someone in his unit. Nice video, Clive, though you certainly invoked sweet memories of dad. 🤗
Ayyyyy big Clive watches photon, Clive mate you've just got even better
Too bad he went off grid a couple of years ago. : (
Last I heard, his wife was finally allowed in the UK.
@@psygn0sis thats good
A lot of hangover symptoms are actually just dehydration, you can prevent many of them by just drinking lots of water before bed.
Fun fact: 8 years ago I did drink medical grade 90% ethanol and sure enough it didn't give me any hangover at all !
(Even though I drank way too much of it)
Crossing the border - Canada to USA and back - I have bought 190 proof rum.
I poured 1 oz in a patio style plastic tumbler 'glass' and the bottom broke off the tumbler ~15min. later leaving a huge permanent stain on the varnished deck! Yowsah!
@mug wump 190 proof is good sipping booze.
I was using the still on the kitchen bench (varnished wood). It overflowed and caused the varnish to blister. Just as well we had a new kitchen in the pipeline.
Oh Clive, just add vodka to non-alcoholic wine lol Love it!
Can you not keep the first 50ml for cleaning pcbs? ;)
no.... in that kind of still there will always be a certain % of water, even with a good reflux still you would need several passes to remove "most" of the water
Probably less water content than the crap 99.9% isotropy I bought on ebay lol
+arcadeuk you can add it to your windscreen water wash bottle in winter as an antifreeze, or for a fondue burner
+arcadeuk it's sticky though
+arcadeuk you could use it to wash your windows.
You can concentrate the alcohol by freezing the fermented wort. The first crystals that form are mostly water and as the temperature falls the alcohol content of the remaining liquid gets higher and higher. This is traditionally done with barrels of cider in northern regions.
Yes "freeze distillation" and it's legal in the US, at least here where I am at.
I wonder if it's possible to separarate off the methanol with that method?
That's how apple jack was originally made. plonk it in the snow, and pour off the cider, leaving behind ice.
0:13 the name in Czech language is "demižón" (pronounciation is almost the same as demijohn, but without the second D which is in the middle of the word)
3:20 - What the good man means is "AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!"
Fascinating... I never knew water distillation could be so much fun ;)
Best explanation I have ever seen covering this subject.
Take the brew from the demijohn and pour into small containers.
Put them into a freezer until frozen solid.
Remove and crush the ice and place into a mesh type colander.
Put the colander over a bowl and with all the crushed ice back in the freezer.
After a few hours all the alcohol will be a liquid in the bottom of the bowl.
I of course use this method with a 9 litre cask of el-cheapo wine, to extract the pure alcohol to fortify any drink.
This alcohol is typically added to a homebrew wine that will be judged at an Agricultural show.
Others will add vodka and the judges will taste it.
Your wine will not have the vodka taste and win first prize.
BTW I use a 140 Watt fish tank heater to heat my brew :o)
That is the old recipe for "Applejack" It contains Methanol... not a recommended method ;)
Yes that will work but like the first guy said you also concentrate methanol. Not the best idea unless you know the recipe well.
It also concentrates flavours , so if you freeze distil use a weak flavoured starter a strong flavour will carry through.
This is congelation; you can't lose the methanol
Just checked and home distilling is legal in my home country New Zealand, looks like I’m gonna start a new hobby.
You're drawing of the distiller resembles a Dalek with erectile dysfunction.
Drinking beverages with live yeast is totally fine for the vast majority of people. Absolutely. BUT ONE CAVEAT: if you have recently been taking antibiotics or anti fungals (so just a couple examples: amoxicillin, metronidazole) you may want to avoid live yeast. Auto brewery syndrome sounds crazy but it is real. It is rare but part of its rarity is due to live yeast products being rare as well.
Not trying to scare anyone, it's not a realistic concern for most people, just good to be aware of.
A hangover is caused by several different factors: dehydration, drop is blood alcohol levels, and leftover toxins because they couldn't be flushed normally.
+Adam R Yeah, and dehydration tends to be the largest contributor to the headache. Drink 16fl oz/500ml after drinking will greatly reduce the hangover symptoms the next day.
+Adam R A lot of people will be queasy when they have a hangover. The best way to help that is to eat something with bread and drink to re-hydrate. You will also be nutrient deficient from trying to process out all of the alcohol. During college, I have devised the perfect way to get over a hangover faster. A glass of V8 juice and toast or a sandwich. Sometimes a sandwich is too hard to make in that state so you just need to put up with toast. It works like a charm. In about an hour I will feel well enough to eat a bigger meal, and after that it's only a small amount of time until recovery.
The best way I've found to avoid a hangover is to drink 3-4 pints of water before going to bed. Even if you don't feel thirsty keep on drinking.
The only problem is you have to be sober enough to be able to drink for that long without falling over...
+That Linux Gamer
Yeah, drinking as soon as possible is the thing that helps the most (and keep a glass ready bedside and drink every time you should wake up; drunk sleep is the worst anyway).
But I have to say, that for some alcoholic beverages I get head aches no matter what. For wine it takes maybe an hour after drinking a single glass until I start to feel throbbing in my head. That even happens when I am given supposedly excellent wine. So there's definitely something in there my brain doesn't like. "Darker" liquors like whiskey or tequila also give me a head ache most times the next day, but wodka, white rum and most importantly beer never (in the wrong dosage they still mess up my stomach quite alot ;) )
+Adam R I thought this too, but now that I'm thinking about it, I have noticed that higher quality liquors don't seem to have the same effect on me that others do. I once drank 1/3 bottle of Maotai in one night, and I didn't get crazy, I didn't get a hangover, and a number of other effects which all happen to me with far less of the normal stuff. I know, anecdotal and all that, but there you go.
I've been brewing for about a year, I really like this kind of content, cheers clive
Moonshine, psychedelic lights..... when's the party?
I still own the immersion heater that I used as a teenager to try distilling.
These days it's used to heat water in an old horse water bucket for bathing when there's power and water outages.
Btw, if you make a basket and suspend it over water in the boiler section you can then put plant material in there which then removes the volatile oils from the shrubbery and it ends up floating on top of the distilled water collected.
Plant oil distillation.
If distilling is illegal where you live look into freeze concentration. That's usually a legal way to do it.
That reminds me of cold water extracting codeine from paracetamol. Hmm.
It's interesting you mention the bit about the methanol. I saw a video the other day on a channel called ChubbyEmu where he documents a medical case report of an unfortunate man who got methanol poisoning from drinking his own distilled spirits. I forget the method he used, but he had consumed a large amount of it in a pretty short time.
This is not quite right. There are basically 3 substances and an additional factor causing hangovers:
1. Dehydration
2. Acetaldehyde (first, toxic metabolite of ethanol
3. Higher alcohols like propanol ("fusel oils")
4. Methanol
For the last two, it may again be their aldehyde metabolite that causes the damage (and formic acid for methanol). So these play only a role of included in higher amounts (beer, wine, darker liquors etc.), not so much for pure ethanol or high quality vodka. The dehydration factor is usually the most important and may be avoided with discipline (drink lots of water alongside the booze. However, whatever you do, you'll never get a hangover-free ethanol, because point 2. can't be avoided. Your body will always churn out acetaldehyde from ethanol, and that wreaks havoc on your brain. Then the severity depends on how good your body is in oxidizing the aldehyde further (to acetic acid). So while eliminating hangover reliably is impossible, minimize by: being an alcoholic with veteran oxidizing enzyms, drinking almost pure ethanol/water mixtures and an additional shit ton of pure water (or sports drink or whatever). This has been studied extensively in theory and in practise by our ... research group .... yeah...
According to Thomas Levy, MD (lots of lectures online on YT), if you are in the habit of megadosing vitamin C (ascorbic acid). It speeds up the metabolism of the alcohol. Not sure if that would guarantee no hangovers, but I'll bet it would help. (e.g. speeding up oxidation of the aldehyde). The possible downside is that (according to Levy) it means you don't actually get drunk ...
According to my local home brew shop it's legal to distill so much ethanol for fuel before duty is paid. So they told me all your doing is drinking your fuel. They make flavorings to go in the finished product and also they a different still that makes nearly pure ethanol but it uses a larger column and is considerably more expensive.
I really liked your explanation about methanol thank you. I will however do my own research since this is the internet.
+EngineerNick Absolutely. It's always good to double check.
+bigclivedotcom I've heard stories about people drinking hospital-grade alcohol and having no hangover (I'm Eastern European, it probably happened in real life since we have trashy drinking habits). So this thing about methanol may or may not be true indeed.
+Local Ork It's been known for alcoholics to drink ethanol based hospital hand sanitiser.
+Local Ork It may vary by country. I believe in the US alcohol that is not intended for consumption is supposed to have stuff added to it that's really quite nasty, dating back to prohibition.
+starsunwanted "denatured alcohol"
Wow, thanks for the information about Methanol. Best part of this entire vid!
I used to live in France, home wine making is a big deal...but they have mobile distillery's that come to your village, you give them your crap home made wine and they turn it into eau-de-vie, Calvados or brandy for the locals, then they have a great time playing their favourite game, get the Englishman pissed 🤣
To my understanding, sugar washes produce little to no methanol. Wine has it in due to the skins from the grapes. Theres other reasons you would get rid of the 'foreshots' though, such as taste, mind you
I would really like to see you carbonate some Buckfast tonic wine!
You can minimize the amount of methanol being created by the yeast if you minimize the amount of pectin in the wash. Pectin is usually contained in the skin of fruits. So if you make juice of a fruit and were to filter off the solids you would essentially fermenting with a low pectin wash and as a result be more safe from the methanol dangers. However, it is recommended to toss about the first amount of whatever comes out of your distiller (about 10% of the washes volume as a rule of thumb)
If you ferment white sugar you shouldn't worry about pectin in your wash since white sugar don't contain any...
Well that's one vid I'm saving for later analysis ;-) cheers mate.
You have so much wisdom, Clive. Thank You for educating us with the lesson of how to be safe. What was that temp and ratio? Just kidding, I hate wine. Brrrp. Oh, Excuse me. Still..(No Pun) (Yes, Pun). I was at the Loudon Classic in 1983 (In Laconia). I had a 1972 Kaw H1500. I did the jump. The "gauntlet" cheered. One of the great moments of my life. It was probably 6 feet at the crest and downhill. I only went for a 15 min. ride outside the campgrounds and I come back and they built a ramp out of wood! 50 people on each side. Good thing I grew up riding a dirt bike. My kickstand spring went AWOL. I tied it up with part of my shoe lace to get home (In CT!). I shit you not. The races were good. Honda V45s were the flavor of the year. Nothing compared to the riders of the TT. Those guys are the Masters. (and all you viewers were wondering what this had to do with anything). I'm Scot!
Recently in the news, some American teenagers made a drink they called Dewshine, (Mountain Dew soft drink with an industrial alcohol) 2 of the lads died and the other 2 were at deaths door for some time.
The last wine I made tasted almost like vinegar, I bottled it anyhow and put it in the cupboard and forgot it. I re discovered 2 weeks ago and nearly threw it out, I gave it a quick taste and it had transformed into a gorgeous full bodied red.
+Green Silver IIRC, those Tennessee teenagers used *racing fuel*, basically pure methanol. Hard to say how foolish a mistake it was when they paid with their lives. I suppose a good question is, what the heck is going on in Robertson County, where _all four_ of these cases have happened?!
not really surprising. how would they survive drinking lots of methanol?
+drkastenbrot They might have heard people say how alcohol based mouthwash can get people drunk, even though most of them are made out of methanol and other alcohols that aren't actually ethanol.
Methanol poisoning is cured by taking IV ethanol or drinking ethanol.
I don't know if I would call that a cure. If it's like for antifreeze they give you ethanol since your body would prefer to digest ethanol. This "distracts" your body from the antifreeze so it can be processed and removed more slowly and safely. I would assume it works the same for methanol.
Another enjoyable video with interesting information to tuck away in the mind.
+bigclivedotcom where I used to work, here in the UK, there was a lot of Polish guys there, who were extremely friendly and very proficient at home brew.
They argue that Vodka is a Polish invention and the Russians high-jacked it.
Anyway, going back to your comment about pure vodka not causing hangovers, it was something they would certainly confirm.
The stuff they would brew would be easily above 65% pure, more times closer to 80%, distilled 3-4 times before bottling.
As their drinking sessions were quite epic, I once asked about headaches/hangovers, they said that it wasn't a thing because of the purity of the Vodka they made, and as I was gifted a bottle once, I can testify to that..
Interesting! I'll try this with 96% alcohol.
I learned more about bigclive than about distilling in this video. And very much OK with that. My respect for bigclive just increased by 37.992 points after watching this video.
I use one of the "Megahome" water distillers you show every day for our drinking water mainly to get rid of the added fluoride and you should see and smell the foul residue that's left! By the way, it only holds 4 litres up to the "full" mark and the activated charcoal filter is there to remove the more volatile molecules and keep your water smelling clean. Fascinating video. Many thanks.
+fej fish Good to see people still wear tin hats, fluoride is good for you dummy.
Darren Nash Im sorry, Floride is totally a communist conspiracy, and I am a KGB agent trying to rick people into using fluoride. Its not like its good for your teeth or anything...
Look bud, the only people that think fluoride is bad are bunch of nut cakes, you find one piece of evidence and I will believe you.
+Owen Major You are welcome to drink sodium flouride. Just don't ask me to. I'd rather drink Clive's wash thanks.
+Owen Major
>Toxic industrial waste
>Good for you
I was looking for a sketch, I thought it was dave allen about tax on alcohol, It goes something like "I only bought this at the bottom of my glass but I will have to drink the rest to get to it". And good scotch (slide down thought), No hangover!!
Big Thumbs Up.
for people in the United states, like me. if you brew inside your house and not brag, I'm sure your not going to get caught...so many illegal things happen and I'm sure your the least of the govt worries.
+paintballhead03 yeah, typically the ATF will only go after you if you distribute.
+paintballhead03
Okay, so..
I'm considering moving soon, but regardless, right now, I live in the US.
I'm fascinated by the brewing process, but the problem is, I don't like alcohol. So if I brew something that's safe to drink, I'd be way too tempted to share it with other people.
And even when I got busted, as they're taking apart my still and I'm being dragged off to jail, I'd be like "Oh, hey, guys, if you want to keep some of that, there's empty flasks in the cabinet!"
Sooo.. I'll refrain from letting my moonshiner fantasies go wild.
Lina M.
As long as you’re not selling it I think you’ll be fine. Only give to friends and family. People you trust.
Send it to me!
Thanks Clive as a fellow scotsman love your style and I watch the with a dirt beer hangover thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject 😊
Another item of note related to the point on methanol poisoning: I am diabetic and the way diabetes damages nerves and blood vessels is the excess sugar in the blood gets converted in the body to things like acetone and formaldehyde - essentially a very slow, naturally occurring version of methanol poisoning. I had never realised this before as I had never looked into the method of action for methanol poisoning. Thanks once again Clive!
William Thomas Ramey so if the diabetes is like the methanol poisoning, won't the same cure slow the problem... ie increase your ethanol intake.....
I used to make beer, cider and wine in my late teens/ early 20s and have quite a few parties with it. During this lockdown, I've started up again. I'm making some rosehip wine with rosehips a foraged back in the winter. Should be ready for Christmas! Mead will be next...
Drinking game:
Take a shot of methanol every time Clive says "fundamentally"
maybe ethanol?? please?
I'm Blind
i can't read this after i tried this... but then how can i know what are your talking about?? (x-files music plays)
@@Hopgop1 Methanol drinker says,, Drink quicker, getting dark!!!
@@i.george2321 The end result would be the same, though... he says it too many times!
Thanks for this Sir. Have done student brews before and understand stilling but this was informative, cut through a lot of the bulls**t talked on the internet.
Come to Romania, man. I make over 300 litres of brandy from plumes every year :). Mostly 40% alcohol and some 60% alcohol
Do the plums leave a taste in the distilled spirit?
bigclivedotcom of course. We usually get the plumes inside big one ton containers and let them ferment for like a month. You can do the same using apples. Everything gives different taste. After they ferment, we use an 100 liters variant of what you got on the table to distil them. Last summer we had arround 8 tons of plumes and got like 400 liters of brandy. 100 liters placed back and distiled it second time. So, in total, we got 40% 300 liters brandy and arround 50 liters 60%.
bigclivedotcom also here, we sell one litre of 40% for like 4 dollars and one litre at 60% is arround 6$
Well, what we use is not like what you have on the table. Ours is made out of copper (stainless steel or aluminium or basically any other metal is not good because either is toxic, or it gives a bad taste) and we make fire under it. From the main 100 litres container, there is a pipe that goes on a "snake" (pipe coil) placed on a big cold water container. There, the alcohol condensate. Is worth to mention that you NEED to keep a constant fire and not to powerfull since alcohol evaporate at 70 degreese and if you go above 100, you get water during the process.
I went to Romania on vacation once. They had me try something called Palinca, and I don't remember the rest of the vacation...
Also, Distilling small quantities on the fly is best done by cold distillation - take the mix, filter it, then freeze it in the freezer, the Slush Puppy type mixture you end up with consist of frozen water ice, and the liquid is alchohol/water mix. As it melts, keep draining it off into a jar and checking the Specific Gravity.
I wish photonic still uploaded fairly often.
ITS TIME TO STOP.
Sample Textᴴᴰ Where are your parents?
+IT'S TIME TO STOP NO MORE!
Sample Textᴴᴰ If you like franku you should check out the video I uploaded today. :P
this guy is well informed in any subject he talks about
After watching that I just fancy a nice cuppa T.
The only country where it's truly legal is New Zealand. You're right, sugar produces pretty much no methanol. I think it produces more acetone, and only at the beginning. However, turbo yeast is a waste. Bread yeast can do as well, and it's much cheaper. You're pretty well informed. You are definitely Ralfy's brother!
Cooking with Clive..
You should start a separate channel for this type of content lol
You do not want to use the water distiller for distilling liquor, you want to use copper tubing not aluminum to avoid impurity leeching between the alcohol and aluminum.(Aluminum is a dirty metal). You may find yourself with metal poisoning or some other nasty sickness. At the very least replace that aluminum tubing with copper. That's why they have the charcoal filter to trap the leeched impurities from the aluminum tubing..
Pyrex tubing is the best but will cost more to have blown into shape and of course more fragile.
This is very illegal in the US without proper licensing BUT - cough - it's only illegal if your caught in the woods with a still - cough -
+ElfNet Gaming Agreed, copper, stainless or glass. And no soldered joints if using copper. Interestingly enough, Tesco here in Cz used to sell a glass distillation condenser alongside their wine-making materials. I don't know if they still do, so must have another look.
+ElfNet Gaming The distiller I looked at on Ebay(about 70USD with shipping) claimed it was all stainless, although I suspect the fins on the condenser tubes are aluminum, which would make sense and is perfectly alright, as they don't contact any of the product. Aluminum is terrific for heat transfer as it is easily working into fins and is very good an moving heat.
Thus why CPU coolers and heatsinks are aluminium.
+ElfNet Gaming Yes. The tubing in the distiller used by Clive is made from stainless steel. Not sure about the fins, but that wouldn't make any difference anyway.
ok stainless makes more sense in a distilling unit. The radiator fins would have to be aluminium for efficient heat transfer.
It's interesting you talked about the high purity spirits possibly not causing a hangover
There are only 3 reasons Distilling would be illegal in any country.
1. Companies control beer and spirits and influence government to make laws to make it illegal to cut into their profits.
2. Governments themselves tax it, so would lose tax revenue.
3. You live in a Islamic country.
Well it's illegal in the UK because it tends to cause explosions that kill people. If it was because of either 1 or 2 then wouldn't fermenting be illegal too? I mean the government makes more money off beers and wines than it does of liquor.
Truthfully though - How many still explosions REALLY happen, per year, in all of the UK? I suspect the words "It's just an excuse to maximize tax income" would be more the truth, really. Yes, IF you have a crappy still that leaks ethanol vapors, it COULD explode - Same is true if you're using Alcohol, Acetone, or any other solvent lazily and get enough vapors into the air that you cause the same results. But there's a huge difference between an Air Still and a moonshine still in terms of volume of vapors produced and likelihood of a leak, those air stills don't process 1200 gallons in a run, just 1 gallon...
Toilet wine. I chew up and spit out bread to make the yeast if you cant get marmite, and keep the jug warm in my bed. A very nice sparkling brew, but open the lid very slowly and outside.
Though the gas coming past the stop smells awful, remembering the first time I made homemade wine with a kit I bought from Boots after school one day while in Year 10 and living in Woking.
The least complicated and less time consuming method is by going to the store and buying your alcohol. I tried a beer making kit once and it took so long that I decided I'd just go buy my beer.
"I paid 12 pounds for this bottle of rum."
*cries in Australian
Even accounting for the difference in value, that would be half of what we pay for a similarly sized bottle. We pay 40-50 Aussie dollars. Being an alcoholic is expensive here.
I heard that goon was cheap at Fraser's crossing!
Another great video ... A few points .. methanol is VERY rare, found mostly in red wines , even then at concentrations less than 1gm per 10 liters so just dump the first few drops ...not a glass full , from distillation .
Charcoal is used in water distillers as an end filter in case the feed water has chlorine which would exit with the steam.
In Austria farmers often distill by themselves, but not just one liter. They build much bigger distiller, producing often 50 bottles at once. So the first bottle happens to have much more methanol than you should consume.
Clive -- As someone who has made vast quantities of wine, I can assure you that you don't need all this. Just a plastic bucket with lid + grape juice + sugar + bakers yeast (nothing special). Clean bucket with boiling water - add grape juice, water, & sugar (for 6 L of grape juice I add 1 L of water and 2 cups of sugar). Add yeast (starter in cup with grape juice and sugar works well). Ferment for about 8 days, after which decant or siphon into clean jar. Leave for at least 5 minutes before drinking! Never mind about the air-lock (if plastic bucket has lid) or finings. Who cares if it's a bit cloudy. Cheers !!
liked you other vids relly dude... but this made me subscribe XD dont ask why
I might be wrong, but I think the most recent research points to the hangover being mainly caused by a massive inflammatory response to the ethanol. Methanol and other congeners (along with dehydration) were found to be only secondary factors.
+SilentS possibly but I don't get hangovers at all if I drink decent quality beer or vodka etc. However with some nasty horrible chemical beers I can get a screaming headache before I get half way down the second pint so I think some of it is the additives.
Seems likely.
I can't drink alcohol because it ALWAYS triggers a migraine.
+Gordon Lawrence Yea unless you over do it, tends to be the case. While cheap shit tends to be laden in chemicals, same with cider and other fruit based things containing sulphates. As thats essentially salt, it doesn't take much brain power to put 2 and 2 together afterwards and why smart people try to drink a pint of water before passing out :-)
The dangers of distilling your own stuff is that cellulose will distill into methanol. Now, since we tend not to have cellulose left in our sugar/treacle/molasses anymore, it's not much of a problem these days. Back when there was still scraps of sugar beet/cane pulp in the sugar source, it WAS a problem.
+Adderkleet Yep, these days the sugar is processed enough to remove the vast amount of "non-sugar" contaminants, Now you can use bags of sugar with very little worry
+Jamie Dallaway This, and competitive inhibition; Since there is a significantly larger amount of ethanol than methanol, the mechanism of action for methanol is blocked, and thus the methanol is excreted in the urine, rather than being processed by the liver into rather nasty chemicals.
+Adderkleet Not just cellulose, but any solids that settle out of the brew during the boiling and stick to the bottom might start to pyrolyze, ie burn, and create all sorts of nasties; methanol probably the least worrisome. A relatively clear sugar yeast ferment is very unlikely to have that happen, especially if you wisely watch it, and keep the heat going in minimal, just enough to slow simmer the process. A giant cauldron still, out in an Appalachian backwoods, filled with a thick sedimenty cornmeal sour mash, and only infrequently attended - all beats are off.
My pet fish used to make moonshine in this style using a water purifier. He was always really careful with removing the first few ml's of each pass though the machine.
By the time it was finished (around 180 proof sometimes) it would not give you a hangover. A roommate of ours volunteered himself for science and drank half a bottle (the equivalent maybe two full bottles of vodka? ) and was without hangover when he finally dropped back down to earth.
Nobody who drank it would ever have one, my theory is they put stuff in commercially available liquor to give you the hangover - but I like your methanol theory.
It is funny how i have my mead bubbeling away right next to me at this very moment :)
+muh1h1 Are you sure you don't want to buy some pear flavouring and make turbo-mead in a single day?
+bigclivedotcom Turbo mead. I like the sound of this.
+bigclivedotcom Yep, pretty sure, i am not really in a hurry with my mead :)
By the way, methanol is produced when pectine is processed by the yeast, which is contained in pretty much any fruit. Honey does not contain any pectine at all, and if you only use honey and water (and not applejuice like most recepies say), you don't have any pectine in your wash and therefore should not produce any methanol.
+muh1h1 I'm not sure how I managed to mix up mead and perry there. No pear flavouring required.
I was recently given a taste of distilled mead and told to guess what it was. I got a strong floral taste off it and I'd guess that may actually have bee due to it being derived from plant nectar with the taste normally hidden by the sweetness of honey.
bigclivedotcom Haha, no worries :D
remember if distilling alcohol not to bring temp higher than 168 degrees 166 is the most optimum
It'd all get boiled away at that point (together with water). The boiling point of ethanol is 78 degrees mate ;)
+Pawel Korzeniewski Not in America, it isn't. hehe We use the Fahrenheit scale.
+SigEpBlue only in the USA then, not all of America ;) (sorry, I feel a bit dickish today). Honestly though, I think we should all just start using Kelvin and all will be fine.
+tonymengela that's below the boiling point of ethanol and in normal stills you won't get anything then.
The mash should be boiling, and that happens at whatever temperature the boiling point is. The boiling point of the solution will start low and then rise up towards the boiling point of plain water. (15/85% ethanol/water solution have different boiling point than a 1/99 solution.)
m8e I know from experience, not from some books. It always cracks me up when people tell me I'm wrong about things I have first hand experience with. Yes it is 166 deg Fahrenheit, that what we use here. People always want to act like pros on youtube because they watched a video or read a book. Here is a great setup for a still 30 gallon stainless barrel, on bottom of the barrel you have 2 stainless hotwater elements with thermostat control one temp gauge 3 inches above them one in middle and one top. at the top you have a straight SS 2" standpipe going up 18" filled with glass marbles, the bottom screen should be SS with large holes just enough to keep marbles in then top 3/8 outlet and then 3/8 SS chiller tube with about 4 coils going directly into your first sealed glass catch filled with activated charcoal with wall to divide two sides where the tube goes almost to bottom, then another outlet tube 1/4 way from top that also goes to a second final catch. this should be large sealed with a relief tube from top that bubbles into activated charcoal filled with distilled water. first catch will be the dirtier and catch particles and the second will be the final product....... You should also have a sight glass on your boiler so you never boil below your elements....... This is a completely sealed system with no smell and make for a much safer distillation
Everything Is legal in the Isle of Man
I wish it was.
+flagpoleeip if your not selling the stuff and your still dose not explode it is unlikely anyone is going to care no matter where you are.
+bigclivedotcom Do they still have corporal punishment?
Sadly they got rid of corporal punishment a long time ago.
bigclivedotcom kinky old 🐻
I've never gotten a hangover and I've always preferred vodka and sugar wash like you showed us in the video, when I'm drinking to get drunk. Fructose causes a higher methanol concentration so that may explain it.
I have been wanting to do this for a long time! just haven't gotten of my ass to do it! lol
been making mead a lot lately this was very informative and help alleviate some of my fear around distilling.
When I was 19, my company sent me to Dublin. I went out (as you do, when you are 19) on the pop, and drank only Guinness. I must have downed 17 pints between 17:00 and 03:00, without food.
I woke up at 06:30, felt fine, and took a train to Belfast. Was it the unpasturised Guinness? I don't know.
awnnerd How in God’s name did you down 17 pints??
@@diamondfailer11 In ten hours. Easy!
@@diamondfailer11 teenagers can down a ridiculous volume if they try
When I was at university, that kind of performance would have been categorised as "lightweight".
Where I come from, a carboy is a giant plastic container with a tap used for holding bulk chemical reagents.
8:40
Near beer, decaf coffee, and non-alcoholic wine. Is their no limit to the depths of depravity? :P
There is always vegetarian mince "beef" he you want to get really dirty.
Ha ha, I am loving this channel more and more :-)
Though, you might be interested to know that the strain used in those super turbo nutter yeast products was apparently originally developed for the production of fuel ethanol. Any yeast will make alcohol, but only certain strains produce it with a reasonable flavour, and, as I once found out, that isn't one of them. If you use a wine or champagne yeast with a slightly better source of sugar, and brew it to a marginally lower ABV, you'll find little need to filter. I guess it's another case of you get what you pay for, which is also very much the case with DIY wine kits, as the ones that contain 100% grape juice and don't require additional sugar, far outperform the "bargain" kits. In fact, if you're purely making the stuff to beef up alcohol free wine, I'd say that, at £34 for 23 litres, the "Australian Blend" Shiraz kits on ebay are pretty hard to beat, seeing as they're incredibly straight forward to use and produce a surprisingly convincing red that's actually very drinkable in a few weeks, much to my liver's dismay :-)