Not at $29.99 per bottle of the unaged starter.
A slight hijack, but I don’t understand the problem with methanol poisoning. Surely all you need to do is use a fractionating column? Methanol boils at 65C, ethanol at 78C - plenty of difference.
Specific gravity is different for methanol and ethanol. if you were very exacting (the difference is small) you have calculate it by comparing what readings you have with the volume of the liquid. Specific gravity is higher for methanol, so if your reading is higher than expected for ethanol, you know you have some methanol.
I’m a home winemaker. It costs me about $40 dollars (if I buy the fruit) to make approximately a six-gallon batch.
The equivalent amount of cheap wine in the liquor store costs me about $210. Fine wines could run into the thousands.
If I am not picky, I can ask the grocer for fruit he is about to discard anyway, and he gives it to me. That makes a six gallon batch cost about $12.
And of course there are those who have fruit trees etc. growing for free on their property.
Even buying the fruit, I can quadruple my money charging liquor store prices.
To counter the perpetual “BUT YOU’LL GO BLIIIIIND” argument, I’m surprised nobody mentioned the stunningly obvious fact that activities that are legal tend to be more safely done than things that are illegal.
Unsafe legal hobbies exist, and because they are legal, you can’t swing a stick without someone saying “Don’t forget step 2a or you will die.” To be quite frank, some people get quite sanctimonious about the safer-than-thou in some dangerous hobby circles.
Leaving aside the argument that governments must get revenue from somewhere, and that its better to tax strong liquor rather then say babys milk compound, anyone who distills at home is going to make a fair amount I’d imagine.
Which raises the question could they REALLY, REALLY be trusted not to give any away, or much more likely sell it?
Especially after they’d been sampling their efforts ?
And while no doubt there are responsible people who’d only distill as a hobby akin to doing chemistry experiments (yeah right ), I would not be stunned with surprise if there weren’ people, who if they weren’t alcoholics to start off with would soon be after they started practising their" hobby".
Incredibly cheap alcohol on tap, day or night ?
I wouldn’t fancy living in the same street as the distiller, let alone next door to him/her.
And when they were seen getting into their car, I’ll bet the street would empty of traffic quicker then a zombie apocalypse.
If we’re goimg to go this route why not make it legal to manufacture industrial chemicals in residential areas ?
How about letting people make their own fireworks at home ?
Of course they’d have to promise that it was only for their own use.
How much is your time and effort worth per hour? At, say, $12/hour, what would you say the total cost would be?
I think you are making the problems overblown. I actually started drinking less when I decided to no more go to the liquor store and save money by making it at home. While cost is cheaper, the sheer physical volume needed for this “endless tap” whereby people drink alcohol night and day would preclude using a “home” for much other than making the whiskey. I suppose I could sleep on top of a vat and move my bed out, but I’d really not be inclined to call such a place “home.” I’d call it a distillery.
It takes weeks or months to manufacture a drinkable alcoholic beverage. I could get a gallon or two of whiskey from a starter vat holding two hundred gallons of corn mash. I bet I could drink a gallon a day, if I was just gonna cut loose all the stops. Of course then I’d forget to take the proper steps to keep all this fermenting/distilling going, but never mind that. So I’m figuring I’d need around fifteen huge vats to keep a supply of a gallon a day going. This is far beyond ANY concept of “home distilling” I could dream of.
On the other hand, without devoting too much space and effort to it, I’m guessing I could make a half-gallon of whiskey a month. Were I a whiskey drinker, I could easily dispose of that without sharing.
My time in actually making each batch of wine:
1/2 hour to mix all the ingredients to begin fermentation.
3 times, ten minutes to rack.
1/2 hour to bottle at the end.
A hundred times, two seconds to see if the ferment is still blowing CO2 out the airlock.
3 minutes if I decide to add more yeast.
So to be genrous for this consideration, add $25 to my cost.
All we need to know is that “deregulation will make us less safe” and that without regulations “the body count will be much much higher.”
While stated mantra-like kneeling before the altar of “proactive” illogic.
When hard liquor cosumption goes up, then so do the crime figures.
I’m not against the home brewing of wine or beer, but spirits ?
No way.
High quality liquors are (almost) always distilled in copper “pot stills”. These must be filled with the mash or wine, and boiled off to capture the alcohol, and then, the first batch of alcohol is then re-distilled.
Obviously, a very expensive, labor-intensive system.
Cheap liquors (like vodkas and gins) are distilled in a "continuous still)-where fresh mash is fed into the still, and the thing runs automatically.
I don’t see how the pot distilled stuff should be any better-is it?
But before I’d agree with your statement I’d want to know what evidence you have that allowing home distilling would cause people to drink more.
I don’t think that’s a valid assumption.
Many home brew beers are as strong as wine but still drunk in beer quantities.
Distilling doesn’t “produce” any ethanol at all, it just concentrates it.
IMHO the main reason spirits are still viewed as “evil” is due to a moral exception for wine due to religious use and beer as weak beer was safer than water until germ theory was understood.
The Methanol myths are pure FUD, a product of prohibition and the fears have very little basis in reality.
Any person who would spend the significant amount of time and energy required to still beer will pull off most of the very nasty smelling heads, this reduces the Methanol amount below what you would intake for the same amount of ethanol in beer and or wine.
It is also very obvious when you get into the hearts and not many would be willing to cut much into the heads.
If they wanted to maximize their drunkenness it would actually be better to just make beer as you lose a large amount of the ethanol during the process.
Often the home brew beer will actually have much more Methanol per ML of ethanol compared to distilled products.
You have 4 companies in the world that produce the majority of the worlds liquor, they are all massive operations and care much more about batch to batch and year to year consistency.
If you use better ingredients and spend more time you can produce a better product.
You can not actually make a good vodka without plates or a column still, you need it to reach the purity that the product requires.
Many of the “pot still” distilled vodka and gins are actually purchased as neutural grain spirit (commercial ethanol) and re “distilled” as a marketing tool.
If you want the most “pure” vodka this is actually a good thing, e.g. skyy vodka is delivered by the train car.
Many of the “higher end” vodkas actually get their “smoothness” from adjuncts that are added.
These adjuncts are very limited in the US but the one that is really obvious if you know what it tastes like is glycerin. It reduces the true acrid taste of pure ethanol while providing a bit of sweetness.
Other brands will use water with devolved limestone to bring it down to bottling proof.
Whiskey and brandy and other spirits that should pull over more of the mash flavor do better in pot stills, Many commercial versions are done in continuous still s and are fine.
To be honest most of the flavor of Whiskey comes from the wood it is stored in, this is where the big guys have an advantage.
They will blend many barrels to get the profile they want.
“Small batch” in the current massive corp world means that vs. mixing 20000 barrels ( about 1 Million gallons) they only do ~100 or about 3200 gallons at barrel proof at a time.
That is not very small if you ask me but it allows them to adjust and make a product that is familiar to their customer and it also allows them to “hide” the bad stuff below the nose of the better stuff.
So I guess I would say yes, just like cooking it is easy to meet if not best the quality you would get by going out, you can make something very very good, just probably not the same way every time.
Why don’t you just bring some home from work?
