Still It

Today I wanted to showcase 4 drinks (and a couple of runner ups) that I hope will get you excited to distill in 2021. These are not on the board because they are the most tasty or have the best recipes. They are on the board because something about the process or concept of them inspired me. I hope it can do the same for you! Sorry, I said TPW (tomatoes paste wash). I meant TSFFV (teddy sad's fast fermenting vodka):

I like ramen, I like distilling. Why not make alcohol from ramen and distill it! Turns out it works! It may be an "acquired taste" though.

People often ask me how I deal with cuts when double distilling or triple distilling. For me its pretty simple . . .

Inverted sugar claims to help "remove the table sugar" flavour from our distilled drinks. I decided to test it out and see how it worked for me! Table sugar vs invert sugar. . . . . . . .with another little test thrown in for good measure.

Justen Wren led Joe Rogan through a single barrel pick of Buffalo Trace on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE). This seemed like a great opportunity to talk about what Justin and Joe got right/wrong in the process. But also to use it as a great example of how whiskey nerds and casual drinkers can come together.

This is the ultimate step by step guide to taking the next step in home whiskey making. This recipe will take you past using sugar only washes and teach you how to make an all-grain whiskey.

Sometimes things that should be obvious slip by us, sometimes things we know intellectually don't save practically. I hade a mistake like that recently. I wanted you to be able to learn from my mistake :)

Mamajuana is a popular drink from the Dominican republic made with a mix of rum, red wine and honey. And of course a special mix of wood, herbs and spices. Before this I had never heard of it before. But I have to say I am very pleased I know now how to make this at home! Its DELICIOUS!

How much does it cost to make a bottle of homemade spirits? Seems like a simple question. But it can be a little more tricky than you may think. Even worse things kinda change based on how you look at the hobby. Obviously, you could go even deeper. What about the amount of space you dedicate in your house etc? But I think the examples given make the point! At the end of the day, for me, I do this because I love the process. Its my hobby, so I am happy to invest money into it, not "save money". But that's just me. You may see things totally different, and that's cool!

One of the local home-distillers decided to buy a very nice still direct from China. But was it worth it? Did it turn up in one piece? Was it a quality still?

Up until this little experiment, I have never tried vapour infusing a gin. So, lets make two gins. Same basic recipe for both. One is made by maceration added to the pot (including the botanicals) the other has the botanicals in the vapour path for some good old fashioned vapour infusion. The whole point is to see if there is even a difference. If there is do I have a gut reaction to one vs the other in terms of preference? In other words, this is a super basic test that almost has no point other than to give me inspiration. Inspiration to get me moving forward on my gin quest!

1 month ago I made a whiskey in the T500 still. Since then its been ageing on wood, now its time to taste it!

It's been a little while since the last QnA style video here on the channel. So let's give it another go and see if you guys like it. If not, no problem! If you do drop your questions down below for the next one.

Sometimes it's nice to just shoot from the hip and make a lazy attempt at something. In this video, I make an all-grain vodka the lazy way! No planning, no recipe development, no-boil and no mash! Just 50% wheat and 50% oats + a little bit of yellow label angel yeast! Recipe: (or as close to one as I had) Roughly 19kg rolled wheat (42 lb) Roughly 19kg rolled oats (42 lb) Yellow label angel yeast Will the fermenter up to around 200 l total volume (53 gal) Let it ferment until it's done

Im really glad to continue the tradition of the CHIMERA run. Im growing to really love doing these. Its a great way for me to reflect on everything I have made and done since the last chimera. What the hell is a chimera run? Think of it like infinity bottle meets all feints run. I save up the feints from almost everything I make, add a few other things to it and distil it all together. I totally suggest you giving it a go as well!

To be honest "I don't care" is a little bit of an overstatement. I really do care about making great cuts. Its more that I think the idea of being very particular about the foreshots themselves is a bit of a moot point. If you make an effort to make really great cuts based on what tastes good you are going to be leaving so many "heads" behind that the foreshots are somewhat irrelevant.

This channel is long overdue for some barrel action! Let's condition this barrel up so we can fill it up with the love child (watch this space)! So how do you stop a barrel leaking? Barrel Conditioning! Its important to understand that many barrels will not be ready to put spirits into right away. They will leak all over the place. We need to condition the barrel first. By hydrating the wood staves we cause them to expand and create a tighter fit, hopefully, a watertight one. If after 10-14 days of refining the barrel doesn't stop the leaking you have a few options. 1- Beeswax, rub it in or melt it and pour it on 2 - More aggressive hydration 3 - Tighten the hoops

I'm really proud of how this South Island Peat Single Malt is tasting after 1 year. Let's taste it to get you up to speed on how it's tasting. Then we can throw around some ideas on how to improve it for next time!

Brewbird has been making "behind the scenes" youtube videos from commercial distilleries since she went pro around 2 years ago. In that time she has worked at 4 distilleries making a range of different products.

Deciding if you should build or buy a still is one of the first decisions you will need to make in this hobby. There are pros and cons to both building and buying. I cant tell you what you should do. But I can give you a few things to think about to help make up your mind!

Improving your cuts game is one of the fastest ways to improve the quality of your distilled product. This video will walk you through 19 tips and tricks to improving your cuts, resulting in more effective and reliable results when making homemade spirits. Enjoy Jesse's Ultimate guide to kick-ass cuts for distillation! Nail your heads hearts and tails when making whiskey, whisky, gin vodka or rum.

I got my hands on 44 pounds of peaches so its time to make peach brandy or peach rakia! If you want to make your own you can follow this recipe: Use whatever amount of peaches you want. I used 20 kg / 44lb and it ended up making around 4 l at 45%.

The T501 Next Step whiskey is now roughly 6 weeks old (when I recorded this anyway). So its time to taste it again. Spoiler alert, one of the variants is ready to bottle! The other . . .. well it still needs some time!

This week we have Marine and Deon from hang 10 distilling who are using unsold bread to make gin!

I have always wanted to make mead and distil it. Today I FINALLY got to give it a try. But will the taste and smell of honey make it through into the finally spirit? Recipe: 15 gallons / 56 l of water 39 lb / 17.7 kg 2.1 oz / 60 g Fermaid K (I had to use O ) 4 packets of Lalvin 71B Narbonne yeast Dissolve the Honey in the yeast, make sure to mix it vigorously to get as much oxygen into it as possible (right before pitching the yeast). Let it ferment until dry (close to 1.00 on a hydrometer). Distill, your option of full stripping run and spirit run (double pot stilled). I did a "one and a half run" with 1 plate. Make solid cuts. If you want to follow along with me age at 54% abv / 108 proof with second use US white oak.

Did you know Scotland has ANOTHER national drink? IRN Bru! Its so popular with the scots that it actually outsells Coke! So I decided to distil it. Why? Well, why not. But also there seemed to be something poetic to distilling Scotlands other, non-alcoholic, drink! Will the flavours carry over? Will it even be drinkable? Make sure to come and hang out at Roys "virtual pub" / live stream the day after this video is released! I will be live with Roy discussing a few things:

A while ago I made video talking about Turbo Yeast. There were a LOT of you that wanted me to go back and just make it again as per the instructions. So here we are! First up I made a Turbo "vodka" as per the instructions on the packets/box. To be honest its a little unfair to judge this as "vodka" as its intended to be mixed with flavourings etc. Then, with the help of Nick from Still Spirits, I made another version using 9 tips and tricks. Then I brought in the Final Boss to help evaluate these products. In summary: The still spirits products make it easy for beginners to get a solid start in the hobby right out of the box. But with a little extra time and effort (and switching around to a few other still spirits products), you can definitly improve things.

There was a bunch of extra information I really wanted to put into last weeks video but it was getting REALLY long. Mostly I wanted to explain my thoughts on the 9 tips and tricks a little more. But I also thought I would take some time to react to some of the comments.

It seems there are a lot of people moving from beer brewing over to distilling. This question pops up more than I assumed it would. Do you need to sanitize everything for distilling? No . . . . .but kinda!

Matt Pietrek helps unpack the interesting history of Royal Navy Rum. From its beginnings in the 1600's through to a point in time where the British navy had nuclear weapons and dolled out rum regularly to its sailors!

Pirates and rum. Rum and pirates. They just go together . . . . . right? This video sets out to decide if that was actually a real thing. Perhaps it's just a Hollywood trope? If it IS real, what would a real pirate rum have tasted like? What would it have been made from? How would a pirate rum have been distilled? Let's make a historic pirate rum!

After making the pirate rum (link below), I wondered if I could essentially squeeze out some more rum for free using the dunder left in the pot and some feints I had been collecting. But is "free" any good?

Thanks to Still Spirits for sending me this challenge and a challenge it was! Adding hops to a distilled beverage seems like a great idea. But it can go horribly wrong. Often tasting like a slightly strange, oily, flat version of the hop, rather than being bright and fresh. So I tested a bunch of different ways to incorporate hops into a distilled beverage. Then made two different distilled hop gins. The air still was a great little tool to rock all of these experements!

You guys asked for it, an update on how the distilled mead is tasting. I mean what do we call it? Honey shine? Honey brandy? I don't really know, but it's starting to get interesting!

I'm a little shocked I didn't make this video earlier! I really enjoy the topic of yeast and what yeast selection can bring to the table. So here are 7 yeast suggestions for different home distilling scenarios.

This whiskey has been sitting for a while now. . . .in fact possibly too long! Dah dah . . . ... dahhhhhhhhhhhhh :( I made the Irish Peated whiskey over 2 years ago its time to taste it and blend it!

This spirit was so bad I completely discounted it when blending my Peated Irish Whiskey. But can we reuse it by distilling it again? What's going to happen? Will it taste like fresh newmake again? Still just a bad just concentrated? Let's find out together.

Eric runs a farm distillery in upstate New York. He is also fascinated with very old still designs. Could they be viable in the modern world of distilling?

Its time to taste the unaged, white peach brandy next to the oak-aged version (which is now ready to bottle). There are a few really interesting differences between the two that suggests I may need to up my game next time. This is what 44lb of peaches tastes like after being turned into brandy.

Fermentation chambers give you a whole lot more control over the temp of your wash, beer or wine as it ferments. While not necessary they are very helpful, especially if you have hard-swinging seasons.

In my mind, there are 5 categories of products that we can ferment to create alcohol for distilling (or beer, wine, cider, etc etc). If you understand these 5 different types of sugar sources you have the power to ferment all sorts of things. The supermarket will become a mind-blowing source of distilling inspiration! Dissolvable Sugars Mashable Malts Mashable Adjuncts Base Malts Cookable Adjuncts

Jamerson's, Redbreast, Green Spot, Tullamore D.E.W, Bushmills and yes even proper 12. IRISH Whiskey! This is a popular and generally approachable, easy-drinking part of the whiskey world. It makes sense that a lot of people want to learn how to make Irish Whiskey at home. Ideally, if you wanted to make this kind of whiskey at home you would make a full all-grain mash (no table sugar). But I get it, that can be a little intimidating for the newer distiller. So we are going to take the next step past a sugar wash using a REAL all-grain mash. It's really not that tricky. However, for peace of mind, we have a big old table sugar safety net. Even if you mess the all-grain mash-up this will still ferment and create a tasty product.

Preloaded ageing is something that I have been thinking about and experimenting with for a long time. It seemed like it was helping me to force more flavour into my whiskey's (whisky) and rums. But up until now, I had never tried a more formal test to see if it was really doing anything. So here is the first test. The results are . . . . .intereseting!

Often the pH of a fermentation doesn't need to be interfered with, especially if it's grain or molasses-based. Sometimes things do go sideways and an adjustment is needed. Other recipes like sugar washes and generational based spirits tend to be a little bit more of a problem. Either way, it turns out seashells can be a HUGE help in buffering the pH of our fermentations. Happy yeast, happy distiller! Pretty much any shell is going to work. Even eggshells!

Wouldnt it be great to make your favourite commercial whiskey, whisky and rums at home? To clone your favourite bottle of spirits? The beer guys talk about this all the time. But its not much of a thing in the home distilling world. Why? Because its REALLY tricky to do it. There is still an element of luck, some may even say "magic" to aging a spirit in a barrel. This is a problem I have been thinking about for a long time. Today I want to share my thoughts on how we can work towards cloning commercial spirits at home.

Wild turkey is a popular bourbon. In this episode, I take the standard wild turkey ( American whiskey) at 43% abv or 85 proof and re distill it. I will be distilling with the Still Spirits Air Still instead of using any of my larger pot stills. The distilled Wild Turkey is added back into more wild turkey to make WILDER TURKEY! I specifically used enough home-distilled wild turkey bourbon to proof it back up to 101 proof or 50.5% abv. The same proof as the cask strength Wild Turkey 101. The fun begins when we compare the two to each other. Is the re home distilled version better than wild turkey 101?

The idea is pretty simple. Running a pot still slower will allow you to slightly raise the ABV/proof of the spirit you are producing. Resulting in a slightly "cleaner" overall whiskey or rum. But does that actually work in practice? If it does why should we actually care as distillers?

First of all, this Banana Brandy is insanely tasty. In fact, I think it's one of the best things I have made so far. Wifey certainly thinks so! You can call it different things. Banana Vodka, Banana Rakjia etc. But at the end of the day, this is something I would completely recommend trying. The recipe is written out below in both metric and imperial and 20 and 40L batches.

Tobias and Johan from ETOH in Denmark explain the technical process of using their Whiskey Reactor to accelerate the ageing process of whisky and rum. They also share the ehtos, convictions and creative flair behind the technique.

Forced aging, can an ultrasonic cleaner and sous vide machine help make "old" whiskey at home in a matter of days?

This is a simple case of you asked for it . . . . I recently released a video making Banana Brandy (linked below). In the end, I was left with two different versions (made with two different yeasts). A BUNCH of you asked why on earth I didn't try blending them. . . . . .so here we are!

Ok, I know I know. Another "pumpkin spiced" . . . thing. But here is the thing. All of the flavours in pumpkin spice (cinnamon, clove, ginger and nutmeg) already pop up as tasting notes in whisk(e)y. I actually really like all of those flavours when they show up. So lets make a whiskey and then give it gentle nudge towards the pumpkin spice flavours. The nudge is there to make sure we get those specific spice notes, but we don't want it to be overwhelming. Ideally it sits right on the edge of not really being able to tell if the spice is a happy accident, or "wait, is this is spiced whiskey or not?". We will also be using REAL ACTUAL pumpkin. Shocking, I know!

Is distilling at home legal for you? Great! If however it's illegal you may be looking for a way to scratch the itch of creating alcoholic beverages at home without breaking the law.

These flashy shots taste amazing and look even better. Time to show off at your next party and bring the bling!

The Irish Safety Net Whiskey is now 2 months old (don't they grow up fast!). So its time to taste it for a little progress report. Hows it tasting now? Whats the future look like?

Normally a whiskey is made peaty through the use of peated malt (Normally barley). Today we are going to do something a little bit different. Time to break out the cold smoke generator!

Coffe, WHISKEY and vanilla. Three awesome things to be sure. But what happens if you blend all of those flavours together? Do they become more than the sum of their parts? This time I had the opportunity to try making a Coffee Vanilla Whiskey. I didn't want to just macerate the "flavourings" in whiskey. So everything went through the process of distillation. The outcome is AWESOME with one flaw I think you could fix pretty easily!

3 months ago I set up a little experiment to see if "preloading" wood into a whiskey before aging it would give it the best start to life (they don't really grow up that fast). Here is the original video if you would like to check it out:

A little over a month ago I made a pumpkin spice whiskey. Unfortunately, things have not gone 100% according to plan with the aging of this whiskey. I'm hoping you have a few ideas to help out. . . . . I got an idea about halfway through the video and got distracted. Sorry about that! haha

I have been curious for a while, what happens if you distil peated malt and corn? Basically a peated bourbon? Sounds pretty tasty in theory right? Turns out it's rather tasty in practice as well! This is exactly how I made it . . .

Today I am distilling M&M's. Spoiler alert, this worked way better than I thought it would! All right team, I have too much alcohol sitting around that I am never going to drink. I could just throw it all into the feints jar, or I could try something crazy first.

Corn for bourbon and molasses for rum. What happens if they have an illegitimate love child though? I decided to find out by distilling a corn and molasses wash and putting it into a french oak barrel. Long time viewers will know that this barrel has been sitting around since the channel hit 100L. im FINALLY filling it! Thanks to the patrons for helping with the ideation and decision making of what should go into this barrel!

It turns out that YES, Hot Tamales CAN fix average vodka. This turned out way better than I could have hoped for! Its Meme Spirits time. The kind of video where I take some spirits that should really go into the feints jar (cause they are just not that great) and see if we can meme them into being awesome. If it works AWESOME! If not . . . they were going into the feints jar anyway, right?

Time to talk about the new Rolling Cuts technique that I am using. I have been an advocate for collecting all cuts into jars for a long time. But I don't often do that anymore. I still think it's a great way to get into the hobby and really learn about what's coming off your still. But once you have done that for a while you may want to try this instead.

I've tried a handful of vodkas that are just plain better than what I have made so far. So I wanted to start a mission to change that. Enter the Barley and Wheat vodka! MOSTLY all-grain (there is a little sugar in there too) and distilled on 8 plates.

Pink Gin doesn't need to be liquid candy. Let's make a Pink gin with real botanicals and berries!

Its been 7 months since I made this distilled mead or honey wine. It was a popular video. But if you missed it you can catch it here: I have two versions of the exact spirit I distilled that day. One white, the other has been ageing on oak. What can I learn from this and what should I do with them?

The possible flavours in gin are almost infinite. This video is going to show a way to dial in your perfect gin without needing to buy or make a vast amount of gin styles. Your perfect gin will probably be different to mine, that's the beauty of this hobby we can make what tastes best to us!

The Irish Safety Net Whiskey is now 4 months old. It's time for another progress tasting!

It's time to make an Islay Scotch with a SAFETY NET! This is the third recipe in the Safety Net series. This time il be showing you how to make an Islay style scotch with 1 part all-grain mash and 2 parts sugar. The grain brings the flavour and the sugar gives you a safety net. If you are new to all-grain brewing for distilled spirits this recipe is the perfect way to jump in. Even if you COMPLETELY screw up the mash you will still get a solid result . . . . and honestly you won't. It's pretty easy so get stuck in. If you are comfortable with the brewing side of things feel free to triple the mash and ditch the sugar altogether.

Nothing distilling related for this one. Just wanted to say a huge thank you for an awesome year. Have a kick-ass Holiday and I will see you mid January.

I set myself the challenge of home brewing and distilling a bourbon whiskey with ingredients from the supermarket. It turned out a whole lot better than expected!

Corona . . .. . the beer, comes to meme spirits. What happens when you distil corona? Can it make a tasty whiskey? What about adding the distilled corona back into a fresh beer? Fortified corona!