Still It

Today I am tasting 2 different versions of the very first safety net whiskey. The one that utilized Munich malt and a few specialty malts to bump up the flavour. The first version was "aged" for 6 weeks. At the time I was pretty happy with it! But I saved a bottle, unopened, to be tasted next to another version that has been sitting for 12 months!

Im distilling Dr pepper along with a specially selected spirit just to see what happens. Will the flavours carry over and make a Dr Pepper bomb . . . . .spoinler alert no! But its interesting anyway.

Lovechild is a mixed bourbon and rum wash distilled and put into a 20L Toasted French oak barrel. It's 1-month-old now so how is it going? Is it being a good boy?

I made this grappa well over a year ago. I have been a little worried about it ever since. Did I take too many heads looking for fruit flavour when making the cuts? Let's find out!

I have used this Air Still quite a lot now, I finally feel comfortable doing a full review on it. So is the Still Spirits Air Still worth buying? let's find out!

Where do I get wood to age whiskey? How do I treat oak for whisky? What char or toast do I use for rum? These are all questions I get all the time! So its high time I made an overview or 101 videos about the process of obtaining, treating and storing wood for distilled spirits. This really is an overview, so if you have a request for more details on any of the specifics let me know.

I cold smoked this whiskey 3 months ago its time to see if the technique worked!

Feints, all the stuff that does not make the cut. Don't throw them out, save them up and redistill them all in one go like me. Or, if your making the same recipe (or similar ones) over and over again add the feints back into the low wines of the next run. Please note that home-distillers have taken to breaking the cuts into 4 sections. Fore shots, heads, hearts tails. They then call heads + tails Feints. Many commercial distillers will talk about only, foreshots, hearts and tails. In some cases, just the tails will be referred to as "feints". But often they still add the "fore shots" and "tails/feints" back into the still along with the low wines for the spirit run. In other words, both ways of describing cuts are doing much the same thing, just with different terminology.

Rye Whiskey has a reputation for being a sticky, slimy mess to work with. Especially on a home distilling scale. I decided to make a 60% rye whiskey to find out for myself just how bad it is.

George hasn't uploaded in 8 months and bearded has been AWOL for a while whats going on?

The love child (rum and bourbon cross over) has been aging in a medium toast french oak barrel for 3 months. Its time to give it another taste and see how it's doing! Is acidity the answer to the strange murky, muddy stock like flavour?

I made this whiskey (link bellow) 3 months ago. I used a few different techniques to crowbar in some extra coffee and vanilla flavours. The hope was to augment the whiskey not take it over. But did I succeed?

All right chasers today we are fermenting and distilling kool-Aid. Why? Because this is meme spirits! The main spirit I am making is based a fermented Cherry Kool-Aid wine that is then distilled sweetened with some more kool-aid added. But I also experiment by just adding kool-aid flavouring to vodka. Both cherry and grape. Which one was worth the effort?

Ok let's make applejack, apple port or fortified apple wine . . .whatever you want to call it! Why? Because I think this may be the best way for a home distiller to utilise supermarket fruit juice. You get the distilled flavour, fermentation flavour, a decent ABV AND some decent volume without having to turn it into a sweet liquor or add a whole lot of sugar to the wash.

These two distillers are super popular and widespread. Now that I have used both the T500 Turbo Reflux Still and the Alembic Dome by Still Spirits a bunch I think it's time to do a full review on them. Long story short These are both solid little stills with a few quirks and a few downfalls. Most of which can be fixed with fairly easy modifications. For some, they will be a perfect purchase. For others, they are just not going to be an option. So regardless if you want to make rum, whiskey, gin, vodka or brandy lets find out if these stills are right for you!

Happy St Patrick's day and welcome back to another episode of meme spirits. This time I mixed Lucky Charms with Irish Whiskey and redistilled it. A Silly idea? Yes! Blame Erin (Wifey), it's all her fault.

Distilling on grain is thought to help improve flavour and its intensity, reduce the amount of labour required and . . . . it's just kinda cool. Unfortunately, most home distilling setups mean you can't do it. Unless.....

Now that I actually have product in a couple of barrels aging away I feel like I am starting to develop a bit of a view on this. I do think there is a difference. There are advantages to both staves and Barrels. But I need to work/study/think on this more. Can you help out?

It's time to make a 100% corn bourbon. No wheat or rye and no barley. Just a spirit made from corn and only corn. I have mashed corn a bunch of times now and I have always been a little disappointed with the conversion. So this time I decided to go overboard with the cooking/mashing process.

Can oak staves soaked in sherry or port give the same flavours as we expect from a cask finished single malt? I thought I would give it a nudge to find out!

Ohhhh boy this is a test I have been excited to do for a LONG time and guess what? I snuck it into the last big video. Lets touch on the theory and then see if I can really taste a difference.

I scoured the internet and asked the international home distilling community for the BEST apple pie moonshine recipes. Turns out I found 3 trends. So I reduced 36 recipes down to 3. Making sure to represent different trends, ingredients and techniques I found.

In this episode of meme spirits Im going for a world first. Surely no one has ever used timtam liquor to make a Irish coffee for a timtam slam? If not they should! It may well be the most intensely delicious thing I have ever put in my mouth. What's a Timtam? It's the world's greatest BISCUIT. What's a Tim tam slam? If you don't know you in for a treat!

This whiskey has been maturating for about 4 months now. It's nice, but I think I can improve it a little bit. It's almost like there is a really tasty whiskey hiding behind a little too much specialty sweetness. Let's fix it up by . . . .. distilling some more!

We already made Apple Brandy from supermarket juice. Naturally, I wanted to try it again with "real" apples. Is it better? I hope so! Is it worth the extra effort though?

I guess I have been a little naive about the breadth of the audience that are watching these videos. I really shouldn't just assume that people are in a position to understand where I am coming from. So, its time to re-visit my position on cuts. Do you REALLY need to do them based only on flavour and smell? Spoiler, no! But . . . also yes!

Pouring 10L of 9% stout down the drain would be a giant waste right? Let's see if we can save It with distillation instead!

I am almost certainly going to be in Texas in September(ish). So I thought we should work out who would be keen to meet up for an event.

The 100% Corn whiskey is now almost 2 months old. Time to check in on all the different variations to see how its coming along . . . . and to see what I can learn from it all.

Have you ever heard of botanical rum? Its really just a spiced rum using a distinctly different technique to impart the spice and/or herb flavours. I would suggest you likely want to target a different flavour profile . . . but that's up to you!

Last week I made "Botanical Rum", I asked for comments and advice on different flavour directions. Boy did I get them! So this week I had another crack.

The viewers voted, these are the best spirit essences!

The Safety Net recipes are a compromise between a host of different factors and quality. At the end of the day if you want a really good whiskey you make it with grain, not white/table sugar. But there are a bunch of other reasons that using sugar makes sense. So in this video, I take a look at a question that comes up a lot. Should/can you use more grain instead of sugar in a Safety Net recipe?

Today the Cap'n is going up against some weird creepy little apple when I distil Apple Jacks and Capn'n Crunch! Which is going to win, you may actually need to weigh in on that yourself!

This is a step-by-step guide to make your own bourbon. I think this is my best recipe yet. So if you want to learn how to make your own whiskey this is the place to start! Of course, the "best" way to make bourbon is with 100% grain and corn. Unfortunately, that's no small feat, especially when you are new and don't have lots of equipment. There is nothing particularly tricky or complicated about it. But there is a HUGE learning curve for a new distiller! This recipe is built to make that first step into all-grain distilling welcoming and foolproof. You CAN make this and you DO NOT need all sorts of fancy stuff to do it.

Black Liquorice, black jelly beans and sambuca/ouzo. Now there are a set of flavours that are going to polarize people! Today I am making a Star Anise liquor . This is so insanely simple and the results really are stunning!

Im really happy with the Angel Red Label Yeast. Looking forward to playing with it some more. Kale wash! I have been intrigued by this for some time now. The Tomato paste wash worked out well so I decided its probably a good idea to try this as well. . . . . . it didn't go quite to plan!

Ginny cointreau . . . . or cointreauy gin. I'm not sure what to call it but it's halfway between the two and its tasty!

I have been using bad motivator barrels for a while now, while none of mine have been filled for that long I have very high hopes for them. Today I got to talk to the man behind the barrel!

What happens when you mash a Betty Crocker's strawberry cake into a bourbon? Turns out it's not a complete gimmick. I have high hopes for this!

What happens if you take a waste stream from yeast cultivation and distil it? Can you make a quality whiskey? I think it may just work! Today I'm teaming up with the team from Froth Technologies in an attempt to take a waste stream and give it a higher purpose!

I have noticed a few commercial distillers talk about crushing (or not) juniper berries. I thought I would up my gin game by doing a side-by-side test to see if it makes a big difference!

I think this is one of the better whiskies I have made. Its four months old. . .. time for a progress report!

Ouzo has been on the list for a while now. Time to finally make it! It turned out better than expected. But there is a little room for improvement here. I wonder if I used some sub-par aniseed. Or perhaps I will just use a tiny bit more next time. Either way, it's still really tasty and 100% worth giving this a go at home!

Time to clear out all the grain bins, it's mongrel whiskey time! What is that? It's not really a thing (I don't think) I just made it up. But basically, I'm just going through all the grain that needs to be used up for one reason or another and throwing it into mash tuns. Fermented with Angel AM-1 yeast

This has been a long time coming. I'm very glad to say that we finally have a professional cooper on the show. Mitch does an amazing job of answering all the questions I throw at him.

The bourbon safety net is one of my more popular and successful safety net recipes and it's now 1-month-old. So, time to give it a taste! Have you tried this one yet? If so make sure to drop a comment and let me know how it went!

Cointreau or Tripple sec has been on the list for a long time now. I'm pretty excited to finally give it a go! The first attempt didn't go quite according to plan. But I think I got it almost dilled in for the second.

After moving from Canada to New Zealand Tom found a passion for home distilling. Eventually vowing to go pro or leave the hobby behind. He now operates a small distillery named after a legend that ties New Zealand and Canada together.

I screwed up! I got all excited and busy getting ready to go to the USA I totally forgot about some equipment that needed cleaning. It sat for about a month . . .. . its nasty! Time to clean it up.

I recently returned from a work trip to the USA. The amount of insanely cool, kind and talented people I got to meet was staggering. Hanging out with people like that you cant help but learn a few awesome things. So here are 13 tips I learnt from professional distillers in the USA.

Mashing a bourbon wash can be a total pain in the but . . . . unless you have the cheat code! This recipe lets you skip the tough parts and just get stuck into fermenting corn to make bourbon.

This turned out really well. Smooth, easy to drink with an interesting herbaceous sweet potato flavor that actually reminds me of Tequila.

Badmotivator Barrels are an innovative new way to age "smaller" amounts of spirits at home for long periods of time. I was lucky enough to go hang out with Ben at the Badmo workshop. Ben was kind enough to share all of his knowledge and experience with us. It's pretty cool to meet "internet friends" and realize they are even cooler in person. If you end up making your own barrel make sure to share it on bens barrel thread on the HD forum (link below) or share it on Instagram (@chasethecraft and #badmo).

Alan Bishop is a distiller, podcaster, YouTuber, and historian. In this podcast, we get into the nitty gritty of whiskey and absinth history and production.

Let's remake my first safety net recipe and make it better!

I'm excited to make Absinthe. But not just any old absinthe. This recipe is 250 years old! Today I'm making historic absinthe from the 1700s.

Time to make the gin from peaky blinders. We know it has potato, sugar, water, and junipers. But is it too sweet, or not sweet enough?

An in-depth, step-by-step guide to double pot distilling a bourbon wash.

Time to make an Irish-style Pot Still Whiskey. Triple distilled of course.

Jonathan from Ironroot Republic helps me make a tiny 1-gallon batch of whiskey. Let's see what we can learn from a world-class bourbon distillery.

Uncle Rodger may feint if he sees this one. What if we distill fried rice? Will the distillate taste like fried rice . . . . . if it does can we use it to make fried rice even better?

My recommendations for gifts to give for distillers . . . . or for distillers to buy themselves.

4 samples, what's the difference? Kyle and Emmet from @ClawhammerSupply and CH from @HOMEBREW4LIFE did an awesome job. Make sure to check their channels out.