I remember when...
I knew nothing.
Less than nothing.
Because almost everything I knew about distilling was wrong.
Almost everything I read was wrong. And everything my brother-in-law ever said, about anything, was 110% wrong.
And I absorbed all that misinformation like a sponge.
Then, sometime about 1992 or 93, I stumbled on to something new. A website (internet was new even then) of some guy that made a still from an old milk can.
This site had all the answers that I had been looking for!
And it, too, was mostly misinformation.
But it was a start.
I followed the directions... but for the life of me I couldn't lay hands on a milk can and at the time I had never thought to use a beer keg.
So I used the only thing available - a used 5 gallon steel paint can.
(And I'm still alive today to tell the tale.)
The column cooling, if you could call it that, was less than adequate. I'd say it was a complete failure.
The marbles (yes, marbles) were specified for column packing so the great hunt to get enough marbles was on!
In the meantime, a burner was needed to provide the power for this marvel of engineering and a "turkey cooker" and two propane tanks were added to the ever-growing arsenal of explosives. And STOP! Hold the phone!!, what is that!!?? The answer to the meaning of life and everything.... TURBO YEAST!
Now all the pieces are fitting into place.
A still that will, according to the website, produce pure delicious alcohol. Just need more marbles.
And this turbo yeast that is GUARANTEED to ferment sugar in 3 or 4 days into 24% alcohol.
Yes! Visions of making real booze with this marble holder balanced on a paint can while cooking turbo yeast was almost more than I could stand!
This is going to be absolutely epic. A guaranteed success.
What could possibly go wrong? Absolutely nothing, of course.
I am ready for success.
This is my destiny.
And then I run the still for the first time.
The punchline is that I spent the following week patching holes and stopping vapor leaks.
Two pounds of solder later...
The first few clear drops of golden goodness began flowing from the still. Yes, heaven does exist. This is loving proof!
I convinced myself that the trickle from the still, now fully blessed with every available marble in a 5 mile radius, was the finest booze ever made in human history.
And that lasted for about 10 minutes.
No amount of water could be added to the Obviously Pure Gold to make it not taste and smell like gasoline.
And then, for no good reason, the still did something strange.
Somewhere between me turning all the controls for reflux and boiler power numerous times in every direction, I sampled a shot of booze that didn't make me vomit.
In fact, it was almost not bad!
And that was how I learned to distill.
Years later I learned much more from online distilling sites. HomeDistiller taught me the most (probably 90+% of what I learned as a noobie) but shamefully, for me, I moved to China and was kicked out by the sinophobes.
A few years later... Artisan Distiller came along because Pint got kicked out - along with punkin and other flunkies.
By then Artisan was condemned to always sucking hind tit.
The Russian's only claim to fame was what they could steal. And steal they did. Masterful theft. Very impressive.
Modern distiller and Aussie distiller both died because they never really had anything, unless they could steal it.
And they were not good at stealing, copying yes but not stealing. It takes a Russian to steal well.
So HomeDistiller reigns supreme while they condone wholesale theft and give the Russians a free pass.
I guess it kind of makes sense because Aussie distiller is relegated to the "I could have stolen that too if someone would have told me".
The brother-in-law?, he has long since passed. Rest in Peace.
His recipe, as best as I can remember, was "a trash can, clean if possible, with 10 pounds of corn meal, 20 pounds of sugar, a pound of yeast and fill with water. After a week of hot weather run it through the quill".
Never knew the "quill" bit but I suppose it meant the still.
He quit drinking a few years before he died because he woke up in a ditch.
