When, why and at what age did you start home brewing / home distilling?

Lloyd

Yet another post that brings a tiny tear to the corner of my eye... please excuse me for a moment while I compose myself.

@grnch it sounds to me that the stars in the heavens lined up, you made the great ferment and distilled it taking and blending the best cuts. Man, I hope you wrote all that on a paper somewhere to replicate it!

Smaug

Nice Grnch, good luck moving forward.

SDeurope

@grnch, indeed a wonderful story! And yes, a peach brandy done right is something very special, because the aroma is hard to catch in its entirety. Looks like we'll have to visit you some day and take a few bottles with us. ;)

grnch

Ill make sure to bring some when I visit the store ;)

captainshooch

@Lloyd said: I started distilling the day I turned legal age, 18, that was just a few months ago.

=))

heartcut

Was living in a small country town in the 60's, 9th grade, and it was near impossible to find an adult for buying beer- most knew me and my parents. Made "wine" from fruit juice nectar and baker's yeast with a balloon air lock. Read an article in Popular Science about distilling, then used my parent's oats, my sugar and Mom's yeast to make a wash and a pressure cooker, brake line and two wooden barrels to make a still, steam extraction on the grain, creek water for the condensor (huffed like crazy), into Mason jars (Mom again, hope she doesn't read this), what's a cut? Absolutely had to mix that stuff. Never hurt a person (much), but it killed 3 cars. Started again in the early 2000's along with beer brewing, 2" double cup Boka, good stuff but slow as paint, 2" CM, better but still slow, 2.5" CM, good flavor and takeoff, lately 2ea 4" SD bubble sets with a 1/4" coiled dephlegm and a 24" liebeg, all improvements. Some folks might say I started at the bottom and worked my way down.

Drunkas

Grate story's I am one of these people that likes to fix broken things build things from scratch and Experiment. When I first started fixing and building things it was to save a bit of cash now days I do it for the love of it. The net has been a god sent for new iders and finding grate forums like this one. And thats how I ended up in the hobby of home distilling. At home one day surfing the net and found some picks of a home made still and thought that would be very ezy to build with my work back ground. Few weeks later I had my first copper pot still head that went on to a gas powered 50 lt keg. Now its almost 2 years later I have a dash 4inch with 6 plates a 120 lt boiler that will be here in a week with some luck. I also started making beer and I have never liked beer. Terns out if you become mates with your local HBS he will let you try his best beers. I make all my own minny mash beers. I have a herb garden coming along just nice and with some luck should have some hops in ready for the next spring. Got a home made kegorator. I cant remeber the last time I had a rum. At the moment I am hooked on beer.

Sunshine

@Drunkas: interesting - someone who does not like beer starts brewing it. \m/ And now...where love falls! ;) With hops you should have a easy play, hops is really a plant, that likes to grow everywhere. Just keep an eye on the breed, they have different tastes - like everything in distilling or brewing. We have large hops plantages in our surrounding countryside, they use Austrian hops to brew Bavarian beer, too!

Drunkas

@Sunshine hops are the best part of the beer. I like the fruity citrus types.

Lloyd

I've always (or at least for the past few years) wished I had a garden that grew alcohol crops. Haha, not alcohol plants but plants to be used to make alcohol.

But what the hell, they genetically modify crops to do some crazy stuff... so 5%ABV potatoes, 8% corn, 12% sugar beets? :D

Kapea

My parents lived in Bavaria from 1980 to 1989. During my many trips to visit them there I got hooked on German bier, especially weissbier. When they moved back to the States I couldn't get fresh German bier anymore. The stuff available to me in the States was all at least several months past being fresh. A friend told me that I could brew my own, showed me how, and we started a home brew club in 1989.

At a club meeting 1990 someone gave me a bottled of mead to try. I realized I had found the solution to a goal of mine. I wanted to brew something that women would like to drink, and when they drank it they would fall over backwards and their legs would spread. Mead was it. So I became a meadmaker.

In 2008 while researching distilling and distilleries I found mention of the Home Distilling website on the ADI forum. I studied up on hobby distilling there, but was put off by the abrasive attitudes of those in charge of the HD forum. Minime invited me to join the Artisan Distiller forum, where I learned how to build my own stills, and did in 2009. Then I taught myself how to run them with help from the guys on the AD forum. It still amazes me that I was able to build my own equipment and learn how to run it well, guided only by words on a computer monitor, from people thousands of miles away, all around the world. I did not meet another hobby distiller face to face until last spring at the ADI conference in Seattle.

Sunshine

@Kapea said: I wanted to brew something that women would like to drink, and when they drank it they would fall over backwards and their legs would spread. Mead was it. So I became a meadmaker.

Oh dear, I did not read that - did I?

And did it work? :bz

Kapea

Yes, it does. Mrs. Kapea loves my meads. ;)

Ginger

Definitely not the first time I have heard of mead's magical powers

dellae

Started winemaking in the 70's (our farm had a huge selection of grapes in the orchids), moved onto beer. gave it up for a while as I was away so much with work then decided to get seriously into distilling a few years ago.

fadge

@Kapea said: Yes, it does. Mrs. Kapea loves my meads. ;)

I really need that recipe !

Fadge

ozarks_irishman

Got a chemistry set when I was 10, 60 yrs ago you could actually make good stuff..like gun powder, rocket fuel etc. So,one day while my folks were gone I decided to try distilling using their wine...all I had was rubber tubing which gave a terrible taste to the results. Fast forward 45 yrs, began home brewing. Quit that for many years, re started brewing 5 yrs ago. One day, I thought why not just carry this on out to distilling?? So, a year ago I built 2" Boca. Got my son in law interested. He bought a keg for the boiler and a 15 gal. pot for mashing, so he is as much invested in this as I am. Missouri allows us to distill 100 gal. Per adult resident. However, we don't ask, tell or sell.

Grip

First brew was a vermouth wine kit in circa 1972. My girlfriend then said it tasted like onions! Didn't stop her from drinking it as I recall. Lots of wine kits, beer kits, and other experiments lead me ultimately to open a commercial brewery in 2005 (Battledown - Google it!)

Got a distillers license in 2013 at which point my kids took over a bit and formed a new company - Sibling Distillery (Google that too!) I'm now the old git who gets in the way and screws things up for them, a job I appear to be born for! :-B

Smaug

I did Google the Sibling Distillery. Very nice.

I love your bottle and the packaging in general. A real feel of quality.

Also your distillery pics are very clean. The equipment really photos well. Looks fantastic.

And finally, your family is beautifully handsome. So much to be proud of.

As an aside,,,,I did notice that your threaded rods could use some back up nuts on the CD flange. Or was that just a quick mockup for the photo shoot?

TheMechWarrior

Congratulations @Grip, it looks lovely too I must say.

For me? My mother was a home brewer and so is my mother-in-law so I had exposure to brewing going back near on 30 years ago.

A mate of mine took up a leadership role at a distillery back in the 90's, it wasn't long after that I started researching how to make it. I didn't get around to doing anything until 2010 when I found myself living away from home and with plenty of idle time that needed to be filled.

Knocked out a 2" VM with the help of the HD forums, started with sugar and turbo yeast and have worked my way up over time to AG and specific yeasts. None of it would have been as doable without the cooperation and support of the online communities.

Grip

Eagle eyes @Smaug - It was one of those Gremlins that crawls into your bed at 3.00am. What if one of the glass sections collapsed? The whole lot could go down one after the other without some degree of support. The next day I took the column apart and fitted nuts and washers either side of the flanges. Now I sleep better, or I would do if I didn't worry about.....well just about everything! Thanks so much for the compliments - that'll make me happy while I lie awake!!

Grip

Thanks @TheMechWarrior for your kind words.

Your comment about the value of the forums (or is it fora?) is so right. It's fantastic to have this vast bank of experience and staggering amount of knowledge to lean back on. Thank you all.