StillDragon® Community Forum

Welcome!

Be part of our community & join our international next generation forum now!

In this Discussion

New and overwhelmed

Hey guys and gals. I have been distilling for about 5 years now and thought I was pretty good. After reading the stuff on this site for the past 5 hours I have come to see that I need to start from scratch. Holy crap have I been doing things the hard way. I started with a pressure cooker in my kitchen, and now own a small 8 gal reflux still from Brewhaus. I am in the process of becoming legal and hopefully in the near future hope to open a distillery/restaurant. I am a big fan of StillDragon and will do business in the future. I have really only messed with sugar based stuff.

  1. Cane
  2. Brown
  3. Molasses
  4. Honey
  5. Panella

I am completely overwhelmed and thankful I found this wealth of knowledge.

Comments

  • Welcome @LocalGoat, I'm glad you like it here. Feel right at home and dig in deep! :)

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • Welcome LocalGoat.

    This is a good group here. Lots of help to be found.

    So far it looks like you are a rum guy?

    StillDragon North America - Your StillDragon® Distributor for North America

  • I love rum. I love whiskey even more. But at this moment vodka and gin are my strong suites. More so because of, the ageing process. I live in an area that juinper is in abundance and we are ready for a business that is our dream not working for somebody else.

  • Its funny I'm deployed with the military in Maine and I'm distilling with a stainless stockpot at the moment in my hotel room. I guess I'm an addict.

  • 5 years experience with sugar? I bet you have a ton of knowledge to share.

  • Honestly I've produced stuff with honey and oak chips that was near identical to name brand Cognac. Expensive but was really good. I'm excited to see what I can produce with knowledge of baking soda and such. I've been using a tomato paste recipe for a while. I'm glad that isn't just folklore.

  • edited March 2015

    Current setup in hotel room. I'm pulling 192 proof after 5th run. 10 lbs white sugar turbo yeast and nutrient. 2 weeks ferment. Brita water filter for purity.

    image

    hotel_room_setup.jpg
    600 x 800 - 59K
  • My suggestion would be to ditch the turbo yeast, find a brewery that is willing to sell you 5 gallons of wort off their boil, kettle (tell them you are a homebrewer), pitch a packet of us-05 yeast and ferment at 65-68...

    Also, either use dominoes or homemade mini staves with less end grain, as your tasting ability improves, you will notice the harshness that end grain gives spirit..

    Also, if you visit these guys and work towards making as good of vodka as my friend brought back (he summers at his lake cabin there) you will be doing pretty good ;-)

    Cold River Vodka - The spirit of maine

    my friend heads back up in a couple months, I will send along an extra bottle and maybe he can find you...

  • Judging from the picture I'd say you are the perfect candidate for a 30L Stove Top Boiler + Baby Crystal Dragon. ;)

    Your Place to be >>> www.StillDragon.org <<< Home of the StillDragon® Community Forum

  • That must be one of the most rustic - yet effective- setup I've seen!

  • Props for the rig. Like Cotherman said, lose the turbo yeast.

  • @CothermanDistilling said: My suggestion would be to ditch the turbo yeast, find a brewery that is willing to sell you 5 gallons of wort off their boil, kettle (tell them you are a homebrewer), pitch a packet of us-05 yeast and ferment at 65-68...

    Also, either use dominoes or homemade mini staves with less end grain, as your tasting ability improves, you will notice the harshness that end grain gives spirit..

    Also, if you visit these guys and work towards making as good of vodka as my friend brought back (he summers at his lake cabin there) you will be doing pretty good ;-)

    Cold River Vodka - The spirit of maine

    my friend heads back up in a couple months, I will send along an extra bottle and maybe he can find you...

    When I leave here in April we were going to head to every distillery we come across from Maine to Texas. That was one I really wanted to go to.

  • I only used the Turbo while I'm up here. I was going for quantity not quality. They only give us one day off a week and I was trading it for more time off. A few passes through the Brita cut with distilled water Honey and root beer extract and the stuff is delicious.

  • Yeah, yeah

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • whenver @Smaug gets the baby on the website, he needs to have a pelican case 'fly-away version for those JSOC special ops missions...

  • Dragon Team Six

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

Sign In or Register to comment.