March 5, 2020 Episode

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I personally have not home-distilled. I have seen it done but never have I distilled myself. With the advent of these new electric brewing systems where you can but a still top for them, I wanted to talk to someone about what you would need to get started. Then I asked George Duncan of Barley and Hops Brewing on YouTube to join us and talk about what you would need to get started. We also talked about the cool hydrometer he built for the blind using and Arduino. It is super cool.

Links:

Here is George’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCatCieEI4cPNteKXzBomVMQ

Here is a link to his Beginner’s Guide to Distilling videos:

Here is an image of the hydrometer he has built that is accessible for the blind:

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Music:

Intro Music: SUNBIRDS by BOCrew (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/BOCrew/38854 Ft: THEDEEPR / THECORNER / feat : FORENSIC

Not enough Horsefeathers by Fireproof_Babies (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Fireproof_Babies/13115 Ft: duckett, kulimu

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Show Transcript (A.I. driven there will be errors)

Colter Wilson: Personally, I’m just a home brewer. I don’t really distill spirits at all and never really have few guys in the club do, and I’ve been getting a lot of interest in the subject. I also think that with the new advent of these electric homebrewing systems, it’s easier than ever to get there. So I invited George Duncan from the Barly and Hops spring channel to talk to me about it.

Today on Homebrewing DIY.

Welcome back to Homebrewing DIY, the show that takes on the do it yourself aspect of homebrewing gadgets, contraptions and parts. The show covers it all. Today we’re talking to George Duncan barley and hops brewing. He’s going to come over and talk to us all about. Distilling and how to get started. But first, I’d like to thank all of our supporters over a patrion.com you can be a supporter of the show.

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We did get a bunch of reviews last week and it shot us up to number 65 in the food charts, which is kind of amazing. So I want to thank all the listeners for helping us make such a great milestone for the podcast. And then of course the last way you can support the show is by heading over to homebrewing diy.beer and using the sponsor banners.

In doing so, our sponsors then know that we sent you and then they support us. Click on the brew father link and sign up today. Or you can use the adventures and homebrewing link. Both of those are going to help them know that we sent you and have them support the show. I don’t know if you remember on episode number two, our guest, Aaron Bandler, he’s actually my neighbor across the street and he is a really great guy.

He actually got a great piece of brewing equipment this last weekend. He bought a mash and boil system and he was nice enough to let me use that system on Sunday for my brew day. So I went over to his house and grabbed it, brought it over and used it. Bruna bag style, and it worked great. I knocked out a new England IPA.

I would say my one drawback is that unlike propane, it did take me a little bit longer to get it up to a boil, and other than that, it was a pretty uneventful brew day. I will also add that I really liked the convenience of going with an electric system because it snowed that day and I got to stand in my garage with the door shut.

So that was something that was a very different experience for me brewing in the winter here in Denver, Colorado. But if you head over to Instagram, I’ve got a couple of posts about the new England IPA that I made, and hopefully this time it will turn out. I tweaked my recipe just a bit. Like I said, I think I even talked about it in the last episode where I said that I used Pilsner malt instead of a pillow malt, and I added some, a lot more OPES.

I actually went all the way up to over 25% oats for this recipe. So far it looks great. The color looks pretty spot on, and I’m actually starting my dry hop tomorrow in the middle of high Krusen. So I think it’s gonna end up being a pretty great beer. Well, I guess this is now a good time to segue into the show for today, where I talked to George Dunkin and we talked about the beginner’s guide to home distilling

I’d like to welcome George Dunkin to homebrewing DIY. Hi George. How are you doing?

George Duncan: Oh, doing wonderful. Glad to be here. As usual.

Colter Wilson: Awesome. And if anybody hasn’t heard of George Dunkin, he’s got this really great YouTube channel. I think they’re up there now above 50,000 subscribers. He’s

George Duncan: probably crossed. We just crossed 60

Colter Wilson: wow.

That’s a big number.

George Duncan: That’s amazing.

Colter Wilson: Yeah, so he’s corrected. He’s now over 60,000 and he’s got a YouTube channel that covers a wide variety of subjects, specifically around brewing beer distilling. I think he’s now becoming the foremost authority of of distilling on YouTube right now. And, uh, I, I’d like to maybe let’s talk a bit about your community and the YouTube channel you have and, uh, and how, how it’s kind of grown and blossomed into what it is today.

George Duncan: All right, well, look, I appreciate that intro and I think you give me a bit too much credit, um, before going. Uh, w whatever it was you set up was, yeah. Yeah. There you go. His old age just show up on me. Um, yeah. Well, this is such a wonderful community. And again, first of all, I just want to say thanks to everybody out there who made this channel possible because we did it off the backs of us.

Um, we didn’t, no one’s paid for anything. We’ve taken nothing from anybody. This channel just grew on its own based on the interest of the community. And, um, we spend a lot of time just trying to validate what we call, we always say is more like to unlock the mysteries of home distilling. Oh. Because, you know, as well as I do, even with whole brewing, Mmm.

There’s a certain amount of mystique about it. You know, it’s like, well, I know how to do this all. I’ll tell you everything. I want you to know the lot, everything you really need to know, you know. Um, and that happens way too often. And we do our very best to unlock the mysteries, share information from the community as well as share information with the community.

So that’s kind of it.

Colter Wilson: Yeah, I would say that. Well, we talk about YouTube community communities. You have probably one of the most active I’ve seen out there. People, you post a video, there’s tons of feedback, tons of questions. You spend a lot of time answering questions from people. Not even on your personal phone, in your email, but really just in general on the, on the channel.

George Duncan: That is a key to anybody who’s who has a YouTube channel. Make sure you check your comments. I mean, if, if your community feels, you know, the love that they’re going to leave you a comment, the least you could do is look at it, you know?

Colter Wilson: Yeah, yeah. I completely agree. you know, you, you’ve been doing a lot of, of distilling I think is it’s kind of become the main focus of your channel.

Would you say now.

George Duncan: Yeah. It really has. It’s, it’s kind of morphed itself into sort of like the natural progression, you know, from Oh, wine, Megan, dear Megan. You know, and, and believe it or not, I my history starts, it kind of like reversed. You know, I grew up in , you know, the Backwoods of Virginia. I often say, you know, our stop sign said, Whoa, you know, um.

Uh, yeah, I’ve got my first store buck bald haircut when I was a junior in high school. Um, yeah, we were poor. Um, and so, you know, I grew up around distilling and sort of my whole family, so I didn’t get into beer until years later. And then now I’ve got to come full circle and it, it lends itself and it blends so perfectly with the beer, wine community that it’s really transparent at this point because.

I mean, heck, at the end of the day, what we’re doing is we’re creating the alcohol, which is a long topic. Um, and then we choose what to do with it. At the very end, we carbonated bottle it or bottle it or separated. Mmm. And that’s kind of where we’re at. And I mean, there are some really good tried and true practices and there’s a lot of science behind it.

Um, I always talk about it. I say it’s a 10th grade science project, but unfortunately. Um, you, we know how men are. We’re gonna, we’re gonna out-think it because, you know, I don’t care what the boiling point of water is, I’m going to try some way to trick it and do it a little differently. You know, I always say to them, look, there’s no right way to do the wrong thing.

You know, don’t violate the principles. Um, have your own techniques, but just don’t violate the principles. Made everything okay.

Colter Wilson: Yeah, totally, totally agree. Because yes, even in beer brewing and as well with distilling, I would agree, I would think is that there’s a lot of dogma out there and some of that dogma may not be backed up by science or experiment.

It’s just this is the way we’ve always done it, or it’s steeped in tradition. Right. And so. I think that one of the cool approaches of your channel is that you dive into and do a lot of experiments. You guys will pull out the whiteboard and go through these experiments step-by-step with your community, and you do follow up videos on those experiments and really deep dive into what you’re working on.

And come to really great conclusions. And, and sometimes you throw out something that’s super dogmatic, sometimes it gets validated, right? And so I think that’s a really great approach, even to brewing or distillery, or really just any type of, uh, making or, I mean, you can even apply that to cooking, but the idea is, but the idea is that I think that

I think that that is kind of a, a great approach of your channel that you don’t see when people are giving instruction on homebrewing or to ceiling there. They usually just talk it through of these are the steps you take, and Dempsey.

George Duncan: Yeah. You throw this in, you do that, you turn this way. Yeah. I got, I understand.

You know this, this kind of brings up a good point because. Um, and, and not to detract from the channel. Cause I’m in love with the community and the channel and everything’s going really well. But you know, in that channel itself, you would not believe the number new distillers or new Rewers that just kind of pop in and go, Hey, I’m brand new to this.

I’m glad I found your channel. Um, I need some help.

Colter Wilson: Absolutely. I know, I’ve noticed that you’ve recently done a really great series for the new distiller. That’s a kind of like a step by step guide right.

George Duncan: Yeah. We did a, um, we called the beginner’s guide to hold the stowing and it’s a . I say it’s 11, but it’s actually 12 videos cause the last one is part one, part two.

But well, we try to do is we try to take a step by step and go, okay, look, we either know absolutely nothing or we’re a beer brewer because our, there’s the basic equipment, you know, and first of all, you know. I don’t want to say people want to do it on the cheap, of course you don’t want to break the bank.

Okay, I got that. But remember, you do get what you pay for. Um, and there are some substitutes that are adequate, but then there are some that are just not, they, I always answered the question, uh, don’t ask me if I should have or don’t ask me if I could ask me. Good. Mmm. Which is a totally different question.

Mmm. So, but what we do is we walk through this process, we’re like, okay, look know you need buckets or of some sort, some type of fermenters. And we explain what that equipment is cause it’s really basic equipment. You’re talking about a couple of buckets, some Arawaks I’m a hydrometer and you know, discuss what a hydrometer does.

You know, what’s our measurement tool, you know? And then we just go right into, you know, how does the still actually work? And then we talk about . This is the ones that, these are the ones I think are really, really beneficial. As we do a separate video on yeast to describe all the different yeast strains, then we do little sugars.

Um, and we actually get down to a scientific approach and on a molecular level to a degree, uh, on sugars and then water. Um, and then after that, it’s sort of like bringing it all together, you know? So them were watching these on at the very end. I mean, no, you’re not going to have a degree in distilling, but you’ll walk away from it and go, God, I think I got it.

Colter Wilson: You know? Yeah, you should be able to watch these 12 videos, go through the steps, and as long as you make the investment in getting your equipment, or if you already have some of the equipment laying around, it should be able to at least make it, Hey spirit. Right.

George Duncan: Exactly. Now, now there’s a caveat to that because I want to, I want to be cautious.

I get so many emails. Of course it’s phone calls. It’s, Mmm. You know, first of all, we got the folklore out there about methadone. So I’m, I got a couple of videos on that and we even go through history to, to try to describe a lot of stuff, history of science, um, and a lot of other things. But then there’s the, Oh, well, I just use a pressure cooker and I’ll put up three H copper line.

Now here’s the question. Will it work? Yes. Um, is it efficient? No. Um, my, my point being is that, you know, you can disappoint yourself upfront by getting a pressure cooker. Mmm. And then, you know, you’re, you’re, you go through everything that we try to, you know, explain, and then you make your mash and. Now it’s your equipment that’s going to fault you, not you, but your equipment.

Oh. And then you run the steel and you’re like, I’m getting like 60 proof. I mean, I mean, what? What the heck is this? I mean, you know, and all of a sudden you’re turned off and you’re not failing because you’ve done something wrong. You’re, you’re actually failing because your equipment is failing you. You don’t, you follow me?

Colter Wilson: Yeah. To me it seems like this comes from somebody. I’ve never, I’m going to be very clear. I’ve never distilled anything before, right? Won’t be upfront. But from knowing the process a bit and and understanding science, I bet to me, distilling, because the boiling point of alcohol and the evaporation point of alcohol is so much lower than her water, right?

There is a certain level of. Fine tuning the temperature on the hot side and the cold side. To me, that would need to have a certain piece of equipment that you would, whatever that equipment is that needs to be very accurate. And the fact that you have a certain steaming point because once you start bringing the water vapor into the alcohol vapor, you’re going to lose efficiency and you’re going to have a lower proof that is right.

Yeah. I w am I right? Am I going down the right idea there?

George Duncan: Well, you’re, you’re, you mean you are definitely in the ballpark, but we’ve got a couple of misnomers there if you don’t mind. Yeah, go ahead. Well, one of the proof has everything to do with process and equipment. Okay. So, yeah, talk about efficiency.

Three eights hole where you’re trying to push vapor through. Um, is very restrictive. Okay. Um, and then with pressure, every time you increase pressure, what happens? Your boiling point drops. So now you’ve got, now, now you’re chasing temperatures in your kettle. Uh, you, you need to have an opening where you can transfer, uh, vapors out.

Uh, the next thing is you don’t a thermometer. At the head of your column, or at the top of your still, wherever the we call the point of no return, where your vapors apart is the best place to put it, because that’s where you want to know what the temperature is. And you can control the temperature by several different means.

But that’s one way to become really efficient with it and also have some really, really great results. But again, I, I hearken back to the, Mmm. Kind of do some research and, and you know, be cautious because a lot of people play it. Well, if I’ve got a low ABV mash, then I’m just going to get a low proof.

Well there could not be a difference greater than proof coming out of a stool in ABV of mash going into the stool. They are not even, but they don’t even compare. You follow me?

Colter Wilson: Yeah. Just going to have less actual alcohol cause there’s less proof would be the same.

George Duncan: Right? Yeah. The would be the same. If your process is fine tuned and you were right about that, you’ve gotta be able to fine tune it in.

You’ve got this, what they call an a Tropic where water and ethanol. Okay. Water’s two 12 ethanol’s like one 73 but when you put them together, there are negative on there. Their positive ESEA tropes. So that means that the boiling point is lower than the lowest constituent. It’s right below ethanol. It’s like and 71.8.

Okay. That’s what happens. Um, and then, but the majority of your vapor is filled with ethanol and less of it is filled with water. And over a period of time. Those two lines start to intersect and come back together and do you get to the very end where the vapor of ethanol and water are equal? You’re there you’re way, way at the end of the road collected

Colter Wilson: tails.

Okay. That makes total sense. So let, let’s talk about if I, I’ve never distilled before, and I, and I’m sure a lot of people listen to this show, are mainly home brewers and have never been stilled before as well. And . Thinking about it, and we’re now at a time where there’s lots of these electric breweries out there, like the Grainfather and the the Brazilla and the mash and boil, and they’re pretty inexpensive.

Like for example, for about three or $400 I can have a pretty amazing electric brewery. They used to be multiple of thousands of dollars to achieve right. And so with the this, this advent of cheaper electric brewing and the ability to get a top that is already premade, that can turn that into a still, I think that distilling it at least.

it is more accessible than it’s ever been. And

George Duncan: so,

Colter Wilson: yeah. So what I want to do is maybe say, Hey, I’ve never distilled before. I’ve got a small electric brewery or whatever it is. Right. Well, I just want to get into distilling. Mmm. What is it? What would you say. I would do to get started. I have either and brand new and had no equipment or I have maybe a basic set up like a Bruin bag set up or something like that.

What, what would it take for me to get into distilling and, and what would be the approach I should take to do it right. Okay.

George Duncan: Um, yeah, if you, if you are, if you already have equipment, you’ve got all you need with the exception of approving trail hydrometer because we use that to test, approve the spirits and for distillation.

And of course you need needs still. I mean, that’s really it. Oh, so you’re only adding one more or, yeah. Two more items to your repertoire. Um, and I mean, that could be, you know, uh, it could be the turbo 500, which is a no, turn it on, turn it on for Justin. Forget it. Uh, which is really simple. I mean, I think it’ll pop out 180 proof from start to finish.

Um, which cause it’s, it’s designed to be a reflux store and that’s all it does. You know? Um, there, there’s a bunch of Chinese knockoffs being cautious. Oh, again, if you, if you look at, if you go online and you see a five gallon still where the Thumper and, or coiled, uh. Oh, evaporator and it’s $126 man. Run as fast as you general wafer.

You know, come on. I mean, be realistic. I was like, it’s like walking onto a new car lot. And the guy wants $200 for a brand new car. You’re like,

Colter Wilson: yeah, and, and it’s going to be there. Yes, it will be there and it may get the job done, but there’ll be inherently some design flaw. And that’s the thing I found with most of the Chinese stuff that is.

George Duncan: There were some good Asian products out there. I’ve got a couple of reviews on them. I got one that did, it was done. That was excellent. Um, and I mean, that would work out really well. I think it costs me like 280 bucks is a nine gallon. Um, so it’s still, I’m into it for less than 300 bucks, you know? Um, in a lot of times when I do a review like that, buy the equipment.

Um, and then I wanted to give it away or so, um, or I got, I got stills all over the place.

It’s almost, it’s, it’s almost a passion, you know, when these days I have a museum.

Colter Wilson: Yep. And if you’re listening to the show and you’ve never been to George’s channel, you should see a shop. It’s, it’s definitely the, I call it the mad scientist layer layer of distilling.

George Duncan: I’ll tell you, it’s fun out here. I spend all day.

Okay. Uh, but yeah, but that’s, that’s kind of all you really need. Now there are some products out there in, I mean, in order to give a good shot of brewhouse, brewhouse.com is a good, reputable company as well as mile-high distilling. Um, they use, they both use three Oh four stainless steel. They’ve got excellent products.

As a matter of fact, parts are changeable. Mmm. So, um, you know, you can go on there a three gallon on like mile high, a three gallon mighty mini combination pot reflux. So you can do both, uh, for still less than 300 bucks. And, um, I mean, look in three gallons, if you run that, you’re going to get yup. To Gorge.

Well, 180 proof. Well, you’re going to wind up making four bottles. Uh. If you need to make a whole lot more than four bottles, you may need to just go get you a bigger stool.

Colter Wilson: And to be honest, you have to really think about if, if I, and this is me personally, if I’m going to be distilling something, four bottles of liquor, I don’t go through four bottles of liquor in a year.

Right, exactly. . The, the difference between liquor and beer is yeah. Is so vast. Yeah. Um, and, and I have a friend down the street, he makes, he’ll, he’ll start off with about five gallons on his first runnings. Right. And then by the time he’s done, he’s like, I ended up with like a half gallon when I’m done.

Yeah. And so it’s kind of, and he’s like and it’s plenty of booze. Trust me.

George Duncan: Oh, yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, I mean, but I don’t know, is the thing about it is, you know, for guys in particular, you know, old guys like us, you know, you’d like to sit out in the shade, you know, each friends over in it for some reason, you get a still running and we’ll sit, stare at it dripping.

Well, just stare at it. It’s like mesmerizing. We don’t know why. You just can’t help it, you know? So you’re running because it’s fun. It’s a novelty. You know, there’s the lore. Mmm. You know? And then of course you have all of them. The variations of, well, again, watch our videos. We’ve got a lot of information about what you can do to it.

Nope. Cutting, finishing aging. Um, making gin, making room. I’m making a clean vodka, making lemon cello. Um, gosh. I mean, the list is almost endless and Oh, by the way, you really, you are only held back by your imagination. .

Colter Wilson: Yeah. Hmm. Don’t you talked about cutting in there. Right. And I think that that’s something that is right to me personally, a big mystery.

If I were to start out, I don’t even know what that means, so yeah, you’re good. What, what, what does cutting mean? Like a.

George Duncan: No, George’s way, if you’re doing, if you’re doing it, what I would consider proper, and you’re in, you’re efficient at it, you’re going to draw off of your under-pad still, you’re going to draw, you’ll start at 160 proof. Okay. And it’ll progressively go down too. And I stop it. Well, if you’re going to run a reflux still, you’ll start off 180 or 190 proof.

It’ll stay there, uh, throughout the run on until it gets to the end. Um, no. The commercial standard is like 80 proof. So if you’re drinking a bourbon wild turkeys one Oh one and people run away from wild Turkey cause it’s way too strong. So cutting is a process of taking your finished spirit that you run out of the still, which is really, really concentrated.

And then adding a mixing agent. And normally we would add either Springwater still water, you can use juices. I mean there’s a lot of different things you can do. Oh by the way, boring hops has that will help you work your way through that. I mean, go figure, you know, we’re moving into the . Well, we’ve got some apps that’ll help you figure that out, but, and it does it by volume.

You know what your, how much do you want, what it is now? Would you want it to be okay for this much in that boom, but cutting is the. The process of reducing the strength of the alcohol to a drink Volk consumable, enjoyable level. Does that make sense?

Colter Wilson: Yeah, totally makes sense. It’s kind of like when you have bourbons that are barrel proof, you know that they haven’t really cut them right and they’re, uh, pulling it right out of the barrel, putting it in a bottle, and they usually are well above a hundred proof right there.

Usually 120, 130.

George Duncan: There are some not, not many that are that high, believe it or not. Oh, you’ll find it. You may find some specialties that are. 110 115 says specialties, but anything above that is you won’t find much of a commercial desire for that because it’s just that strong.

Colter Wilson: Yeah, it will. The other thing is, is that you get to a certain strengthen, it just burns, right?

You kind of lose flavor.

Yeah, exactly. And one thing that I’ve heard a lot of, and it’s a question I don’t know the answer to, is I hear things about head tails and hearts and yeah. So what are those.

George Duncan: Oh wait. W w wow, this is a long, of course I got a video on that, but I’m giving you give it to you down and dirty. Okay. You have certain cuts within your, in your process at the very beginning, you have four shots.

Four shots in it. This is sorta like the equivalent in a five gallon mash or shots are really going to be your methadone, if there is any. Okay. There is very, very little in assurance. Uh, there’s still very, very little in George. I’ll go online and say this, you could not produce enough methanol in a still to hurt yourself or anybody else.

So. Dispel that rumor right up front, okay. Okay. Because remember, you’re going to make your alcohol the same way you make beer or wine. The only differences is in the pill. You take the first two answers and throw it away cause you know it’s methadone, but you leave it in the wine and you leave it in the beer.

I mean, what the hell right. Yep. So, uh, yeah, so that’s your first two ounces ever. That on average, about four to six ounces or what we call our heads and our heads are that we’re talking about a five gallon. Okay. Our heads are filled with some of those separate level alcohols and you’ll be able to notice them because there’ll be really, really high proof in the very beginning, like in a potstill, you’ll probably be at 170 proof and that will ever about four to six ounces.

That will drop. Like 160 proof, which is unreal. I mean, you’re like, how could a drop that size or it drop that fast because now you’re in the heart and that’s the stuff you want to heat. Now remember we talked about that? Oh, that curve, that ESEA tropey curve of

Colter Wilson: your

George Duncan: blend of ethanol and water.

Colter Wilson: Yup. Okay.

As

George Duncan: we start to move her way across the Gail, and now I pick 204 degrees and 100 proof, that’s where I stopped. And I do that because I know that they, scientifically, they’ll look at this jail. There is a drastic change in the volume of ethanol, which is dropping because it’s on the back end of the run and the water, which is increasing, and Oh, by the way, since the volumes changing, it takes a little more energy to make that separation.

So it’s a little hotter. And guess what. That’s the perfect environment for your tails to start spitting out. So I stopped so that I never get to my tails cause I. George just doesn’t like collect the tail. I have no use for him. Mmm. And again, I’m not going to run a stove for an extra hour. What? A court of tails.

Okay. You follow me?

Colter Wilson: Yeah. It’s kind of like a, if you’re trying to get every last drop possible out of the batch, you could go that road.

George Duncan: But if,

Colter Wilson: but if you’ve got a still, what’s the point? Right? It’s technically

George Duncan: you’re not going to drink it mixed with cause. Hey, the, and Oh, by the way, when you’re cutting.

If people need to know this, if you’re cutting your shine and you pour water in it, you’re getting it down. You started at 140 proof and you pour water in and you’re cutting it down to 80 and it starts to turn cloudy. Guess what? That’s the first indication that you got tails and

Colter Wilson: okay.

George Duncan: Yeah you collected too long and you collected tails and you didn’t know it.

Oh you can tell tales cause normally they will smell like what car or you can feel them. They feel like there’s an oily sheen. You can actually see it dripping in the jar. If you look really, really close. Um, uh, but when you start to cut them, what happens is, is they are oil. They’re oil based, they’re called fusel oils.

And because there are transparent in a high alcohol environment, when you reduce that alcohol environment, some social water molecules and become long chains, and all, by the way, boom, boom, bingo. Yup. There’s nothing to do but rerun it. Sorry.

Colter Wilson: wow. That’s, that’s, that’s crazy.

George Duncan: That’s, I mean, that’s it in a nutshell.

Yeah. I hope that was helpful.

Colter Wilson: Super helpful. So still kind of talking about, you know, if I, I’ve never distilled before, why don’t you just explain to me what the distilling process is. I know we kind of bounced all over the place so far, but I think that that’s something good to talk about. Like, you know, obviously.

There’s a mash involved, and then let’s say we, we’ve mashed and we’ve got some alcohol. What is actually happening in a still all the way to where it’s dripping out the other side. Well, what’s going on there?

George Duncan: Oh, very good. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, that’s a great word. Now remember, if you’re a beer brewer, you’ll, you’ll understand this whole lot more because it’s exactly.

Or a winemaker. It’s exactly the same process, but you need a fermentor, which is normally like a seven gallon bucket, eight gallon bucket, whatever, however size you need, um, for whatever size mass you’re going to make. Now you make a mash. It all depends. You only, of course, a beer, we call it work. Oh, in a wine, we call it Lee’s right.

I mean, or must, I mean, w we give it all different names for the different communities, but it’s all the same thing. Uh, you go through your fermentation process and you follow your hydrometer and I look for a starting gravity of about 1.09 yeah. That w that would leave me with if fully fermented about Oh 12 and a half, 13% alcohol by volume.

Colter Wilson: Okay. And just a quick question to interject here. So the Kenya kinds of yeast generally you’re using are going to be a little more alcohol tolerance than like an elitist, right?

George Duncan: Right, exactly. I’ll use distillers active dry yeast. Sometimes you may have to all, it depends on what you’re doing. I mean, there’s a long discussion about that.

If you wanted some challenges, but if you’re, if you’re taking care of, and Oh, by the way, a pound of the Steelers, active dry yeast, which will last you about 50 batches. It was like 20 bucks. So it’s dirt cheap

Colter Wilson: now. Very different than yeast.

George Duncan: Very different. Yeah. You’re spending four to seven bucks for a package.

A yeast. It’s 11 Gramps. We’re getting old.

Colter Wilson: No,

George Duncan: the, the fermentation process. Then you check in with your high drama of course, and then. Of course you D gas, it just like you would whine and then you clarify it. Now you can clarify on a couple different ways you can use that night sparkle, Lloyd. Sound familiar?

Colter Wilson: Yup,

George Duncan: absolutely. You can use Instagram whenever you want to use ’em.

I liked to turbo queer because it comes, it’s tea assault juice. Annette clears it out in like 24 to 48 hours. Uh, and now you’ve got your mash wash, whatever you want to call it, ready. And then you sit still up and you transfer that into the stool without sucking up any of the sediment on the bottom. And then you find the means to heat that.

Now you can argue, use propane. Um, you can use wood. They used to do that a long time ago, and that’s, Oh, by the way, where the Thumper case from? So the Thumper was used initially to control heat. Okay. Cause if I looked over and said, Hey, go for manners, things got, Hey, drop 10 degrees. You’re like, how many logs do I take?

Oh no, just start jerking them out. Yeah. There’s like put a bumper in the middle of it to control temperature. People think there’s a, again, the more your knees, please stay away from it. That’s just my advice. Okay. Um, so you get this thing heated up and it starts to heat up. You bring it up to about one 45, one 45 is where your methadone George too.

Vaporize. Now remember we’ve got that ethanol water mixture. So we know that right at about one 72 ish or so, one 70 somewhere over in that neighborhood, your ethanol is going to come out. Well, I usually wrote school, it’s like one 65 and stop. I do probably heat or adjust the heat. I use PID controllers because they’re just Oh, predictable.

And they’re precise, but

Colter Wilson: precise to a 10th of a degree. They do not match. Absolutely.

George Duncan: Yeah. Just hold it there for like 10 minutes, you know, everything. Anything that comes out. It’s done. I mean, it’s, it’s either four shots, right? I don’t, and then I’ll bring it up for one second, three and from then on, you know, so, and you do that in what you’re looking for.

Your output on a standard, still a two inch column, three inch column, or you’ve got a big bowl on the top and you’ve got a warm coming off. Should be a dribble, dribble spur, dribble, dribble spur, you know, um. Not like you see on moonshiners where you know, it’s just coming out like, so my journal hose on.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. Yeah.

George Duncan: You should be able to collect on a two inch column. You should be able to run a five gallon mesh in about four hours on a three inch column. I can run that in about two hours. So yeah, it was a column gets large. You remember we talked about

Colter Wilson: efficiency. Well, the

George Duncan: column gets a little bit larger.

Your efficiency goes skyrocketing, and the time it takes to make that separation and transfer drops dramatically.

Colter Wilson: Okay.

George Duncan: Okay. Does that make sense?

Colter Wilson: Yeah, totally makes sense. And then basically what spits out the other out the other side is a neutral spirit. And once you have that neutral spirit, you. Can pretty much do whatever you want.

You can make whiskey out of it. You can make vodka out of it. You mentioned lemon cello. You, you just can go Brandy. You can go nuts with it, right?

George Duncan: You can go. You can go back crazy with it yet. I’ll be, I’ll be careful because I know this is the pocket. Yeah, I call it. But crazy.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. So I think that was a really great walkthrough, just kind of explaining, um, the, the temperatures and what happens.

I mean, distilling and really,

George Duncan: if I spent one evening with you, okay. Save you all the challenge. I mean, it would be fun. Yeah. Let’s start here. Let’s go from you. You haven’t got the them. So by the time we got done all the collection jars and we love each other and do the self harm, and then, you know, double high five or more, you got any questions?

You’d be like, dude, I got this.

Colter Wilson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. From

George Duncan: then on, from then on, you’re just fine tuning. I mean, you know, now, now you’re looking for those efficiencies that, you know, we talked well and you’re getting the OSI, cause I’m a believer in if I know everything that I could possibly know, I’m the, you never got to know everything.

But if I know like sugar. If I know that, you know you’ve got glucose, sucrose or fruit crops, you know, and I know that yeast eat glucose first and I know that I can invert the sugar. So I got high fruit toast because sucrose, they don’t like to eat cause they got to work really hard to break it down. I mean, so if I can break, see if I know everything about a topic of should something go wrong in my distilling process or my brewing process.

I can generally sit back and look at and go, Oh, that’s a problem. Let me go fix that. Six that, and everything’s back to normal, you know?

Colter Wilson: Exactly. Aye. You know, one of the things that we talk about on the show all the time is some of the DIY projects that we do. Um, actually that’s how we found you on the show.

Uh, you made that amazing, uh, cooler out of your, out of your, uh, AC unit, and then you sit for it and it was part of your distilling process. You were using it to, to cool down, uh, to get, so you had your vapor, you’re using the cooler to get it to convert to back to the liquid. Right. And, uh, and using the AC unit meant you didn’t have to like fill it with ice and waste a bunch of ice.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

George Duncan: I’ll tell you what, man, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a little bit big, but it’s 94 so it’s more than that really. It’s more than I really need. Hi, I’m go big or go home.

Colter Wilson: Hey, it’s efficient, right? It’s, it’s, it gets it down and boom. And I was at a buddy’s house. Uh, he was actually distilling and I live in Denver, Colorado.

It just snowed and he just had a cooler filled with snow.

George Duncan: Yeah,

Colter Wilson: yeah, exactly.

George Duncan: The guy I worked with really closely, Mark. From down in Houston area. Um, he’s come up with a radiator style, um, cooling system that is similar to what I’ve done, but it’s on a much smaller scale with two small radiators that are why, but the 15 inches tall, you know, and refrains on him and he’s run his still several times and he’s able to maintain a cooling temperature that rivals, but just about anything that comes out and falses.

Um, so we were w, you know, that’s what another one that my ideas were the future, you know, not marketable, but is it, is it effective and efficient enough to share? Yeah. You don’t want to share something that’s junk, you know? Yeah. But I mean, my instruction, imagination would work. Does not joke. Oh, but you know, we’re trying to find tune.

It’s

Colter Wilson: likability. Yeah. Well, and you do a ton of. Amazing DIY projects on your show and your, your con, like you said, once you’ve kinda got them dialed, you then share them with the community and kind of go through how to be, how you, what you went through to build it. You shared something with me today and I want to talk about it because this thing is super cool.

You shared to me. With me today and I’m pulling it up here. Oh my. I’m a computer and it’s an image. And just for those who are listening, I’m actually going to post a photo of this on the show notes. If you head over to hope during DIY DAPI or look under this show and on their show notes on the website, I’ll have a photo of this, uh, project that George’s built.

And this thing is cool. It’s a prototype, but. It is. I’m going to say, tell me if I got this right. It’s an audible proof and trail hydrometer that you’ve made for, uh, some of your blind lists, some of the people that are blind that actually are, or

George Duncan: partners

Colter Wilson: are part of your community. Absolutely. Blind distillers.

And this thing is super cool. It’s a hydrometer that basically, if I tell me if I got it right, actually calls out the numbers audibly. To someone who can’t see so that they know what they’re, you know, their proven trail hydrometer readings are, right.

George Duncan: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that’s it in a nutshell.

That’s exactly what it does and it doesn’t, it doesn’t overwhelm it. And of course we don’t. We put a button on it. If you get tired of listening to the voice, you just push it. It shuts up. Um, you know, and then you’re like, ah, I really want to know what, so there’s no,

Colter Wilson: yeah. So I’m curious what, what is in this thing, like how did, how did you get it to do it audibly?

How did you get it to get the readings? Like, I know this was a project, and what was that process like and how did you kind of

George Duncan: get there? I’d look talking about this and I’ll try to make this as short as possible because what I want to do is I want to be able to share this or YouTube videos. And I, I promise to everybody I will.

Oh, you just got to give me time to get there because it is no, for me, it’s complicated. Okay. For you. It won’t be when I get there. Mmm. Of course. It was born out of the or a hydrometer. That speaks so that our blind community can hear it. And, Oh, you just , you know, or seeing impaired or, Nope, we got lazy guys.

It just, they want to hear it. You know, it works for anybody and everybody. Plus there’s a windows, you just want to see it anyway, but, well, what we did was we worked with our Camino. Now, you know. If you’re familiar with Arduino R and Oh, by the way, this is a work prototype that is right now in the state of Florida, I think the only one in the world, and it’s being utilized.

I put through its paces here and couldn’t fail it, and it’s down there being abused and I’m loving it. Now. We use an Arduino that interfaces with or regular world, you know? And so what we can do is we can use sensors. Um, and I thought about a lot of different things, RFID tag, and I thought about sound, um, and when it came up with us, I need something that is accurate but is simple and simple enough that I can control with a small microprocessor.

So I use an Arduino UNO, or because the nano. Um, it works over or the mega, but it will work on all of them. Um, and I use a time of flight sensor, and this is for anybody out there who’s interested. Oh, you can touch this. This is a VL 50 L one X. Okay. V L 53, L one X, uh, in there, that’d be then like three bucks.

Uh, and what you do is you Mount this in the over call of the. Of the tube that goes on top and the measurements are like 200 tall. It’s really cool. Mmm. What this thing does is it shoots a laser. Now, I was going to use sound, but I knew this well is effected by humidity. Um, so I, I didn’t want any variations in it.

So, but light is not, so this ships out a radar light that a being that goes down. And it hits the top of the hydrometer and it comes back and it measures the time. It took that light being to go down to reflect back.

Colter Wilson: Wow.

George Duncan: And then it goes through the Arduino. Arduino goes, well, I’ll be dog gone. It is like, what?

Okay, that’s 100. Well, fruits 100 well, I mean, it’ll keep going until that changes.

Colter Wilson: That is so awesome. And so are you planning on, you know, putting out all the plans for this and keeping an open source? Is that, is that the plan? Absolutely. Yeah.

George Duncan: This is the reason. Yeah. That’s why I say, give me, give me time.

Because of the complicated portion of that is not really the building. It is sharing with the community all like, go get her. Well, the libraries that you can go to, because I just want somebody to be able to go click this very loaded. It’s starting at work, you know, instead of you trying to go through the like 35 days at Mark and I said, painlessly, um, and I’ll tell you what, Mark is a godsend.

I mean, you know, that approved from trail hydraulic. The difference between zero proof about three millimeters. Well, the difference between 160 proof and 170 proof is about, Oh, about 35 millimeters. You follow me? So the scale is skewed. So he had to develop algorithms that took the upper middle lower, and based on what the, yeah, he’s a lot smarter than I am.

Yeah, yeah. And so he talked me through it and we did the back and forth. Oh man, it was a great thing. And then I just recorded voice and I put that on an SD card reader that attached to the order who you know, and you just tell it from an or do we know? No, I’ll usually know this. You go from pin number 10.

And you tell it you want it to speak, and it just reaches in there and it grabs it and goes, okay, speak this. And it does. So it’s, it’s an amazing, and I know I’m making, I’m simplifying it to a degree. Oh, but the, the w what we had to overcome to get to them, alright, is what now makes it simple.

Colter Wilson: Yes. Yeah, but, but I think, you know, we’re doing an audio podcast and to really talk about, you know, code or something like that on audio podcasts is tough.

Actually talking about it at a high level is really good because it helps people visualize what this is what this, what this. Piece of equipment does and kind of the detail that really went into it, right. I mean, the idea that you’re taking a light sensor and having it check the level in there and based on that level, it’s be able to read back to you is really a great approach.

Uh,

George Duncan: it’s phenomenal.

Colter Wilson: Yeah. Super cool.

George Duncan: I like everybody to know as well. Hopeless. I don’t want you to be afraid of it. Okay. Um, if you’ve never touched it or green, even if you follow the videos, you go, screw it. Yeah. You would have a wired wrong place. You ain’t gonna and you’re going to, there’s going to work when you’re done.

Oh, and I’ll explain it. As much detail is necessary, but you’ll feel comfortable and go, wow, I wonder what else I can do now. And programming. I understand. We know and I understand how to interface with . Okay. My goodness, man. I could put lights on them. Okay. Yeah. I put a sensor out front. Tell me one more truck pulls.

I mean, it’s unlimited to what you could potentially do.

Colter Wilson: Absolutely. And I’m actually, I’ll be a Testament to that. Know my first project was I, I made a, uh, brew pie for my, my fermentation chamber back in 2014. It was my first start. We know project, right. Found some really good instructions that needed little to no

Soldering right. It was a, it was something I could do with some wire nuts. I did end up doing some soldering in the end on the first project, but you could, it was approachable at that level and going through that project to actually help me get a passion for it. And if you saw my, my tubs and tubs of parts of processors now laying around my house, you would understand that like, wow, it’s turned into a thing.

It is kind of a hobby in itself, the electronics and stuff. But the cool thing is, is in 2020. It really for the last 10 years, ever since they came out with things like the Arduino and the raspberry pie, we’re, we’re now able to build the kinds of electronics that you, you know, in internet of things, types, devices that you could have only got spit out of a factory 20 years ago.

And, you know, these types of things are so approachable. And you’re seeing the benefits of that specifically. You see a lot in distilling and brewing in general. Um, you see things like the ice spindle. You see things like the craft beer pie. You see themes like the brew pie. Um, you know, a project like you’ve made here, which is this, uh, you know, your audible proof of trail.

Hydrometer um, but, but the idea is that, you know, you, you can come up with a problem. And chances are somebody has solved that problem maybe for another application, and you will find it on get hub and then turn it into something that’s your own. Really a cool, like if you’re, if you’re a tinker like me, and I know you’re a tinker, um, you’re, you’re now in a place where, uh, these electronics have really overcome some problems that, you know, you can do mechanically, right?

And so it’s, it’s just really a cool time to be.

George Duncan: Oh, it really is. I mean, look, I’m one year old country boy. If I can do it, yeah. Can do it. You know? And you mentioned iceberg, just cause I’m in the midst of building the ice spindle, you know, and you get, if you go to

Colter Wilson: me too in the,

George Duncan: yeah,

Colter Wilson: yep, yep. In the middle of building one too.

And I’m using his same instructions on open source distilling. I, maybe I need to get him on the show

George Duncan: and yeah. And let him know how much I appreciate goes. I’m going to do a video one. Multi the credit because he deserves it. But I mean, I’ve got it right here in my hand. Man. Batteries showed up today. I mean, I’ve got everything in there.

All I gotta do is see, I already know this. All I got to do is flesh the, uh, Arduino in here, the microprocessor, I mean, and then calibrate it and it should work. So,

Colter Wilson: yeah, he’s out. But I did build mine. Mine, actually, I’ve had some problems with my, my art, it’s not an Arduino, it’s an 80 ESP, 82, 66. My, my microcontroller would not take the flash and then I, cause you know, with those, there are $2.

Sometimes you get a bad one. It’s just kind of part of it. And I got a bad one and then I had to unsold or Oh, the solder, the, uh, the DSP off of the board again. And then I damaged the board. And now I’ve got to start over. That’s part of the deal and I’m out about a total of about $7 so it’s not a big, the exhaust there I am out of the little bit of time and just getting it back together, but it’s still, I had a great time doing it.

It was a fun project and I know what’s wrong with it and I know what I need to do to fix it, but I am in the middle of an ice spindle as well, so I

George Duncan: think that’s great. I’m glad to hear somebody else had ordered a bunch of stuff. Right. Rust or water, and I was like. Yeah. Give me six of those and give me six of them and six of them.

And the reason I did that is because from my experience, I do like what you just said, that I’m like, oops, I don’t have to reorder. I said, okay, I’ll just go get it.

Colter Wilson: Exactly. And

George Duncan: I’ll eventually get one. Right. And I’m like, Oh, Jake, we on, like you said, it’s worth the seven bucks, eight for the thing.

Colter Wilson: Yeah, well, and I think the, I think the total amount of parts for nice Mendel’s like 25 bucks.

It’s not that it’s expensive. It does have a little bit of no help, but it’s even gotten easier. I’ve been following that project since I found it on a German website back in 2014 but I, I never pulled the trigger on one. I actually, I have a tilt hydrometer that is actually what I use on my day to day.

Oh, I love it. It’s great. Could recommend it enough. Uh, and I actually yeah, I was going to say, I would actually recommend the tilt over the ice spindle for a couple of reasons. Eight, the , the tilt hydrometer actually uses Bluetooth low energy, and because of that, it’s very efficient. Uh, power wise. And my battery just died on mine and I bought mine in 2017.

So, yeah. And the batteries, $3 on Amazon to replace I, I’m actually, it’s in the middle of a brew and it died, so I have to replace it now.

George Duncan: But

Colter Wilson: yeah, not a big deal, but it’s, you know, I, I, I now have to bust out my hydrometer. Oh, well, and then, uh, but then. The other piece that I like about it as well is that a, you know, it’s out of the box ready to go, and there’s a lot of software that works for it out of the box, like your brew father can interface with, uh, ice spindle, not ice cream.

It doesn’t interface with as well, but can interface with the. So the tilt hydrometer right out of the box. And it also will interface with things like prevent track. It will also interface with a lot of the other brewers, Fran. I know it does. So the idea is that it’s just, it’s really an open platform for that type of thing, even though it’s a commercial product.

So just throwing it out there, that’s still a hydrometer. I highly recommend that being said. Um, I also can’t beat a nice spindle for about $20 for the parts. So

George Duncan: maybe next time, maybe the next time. Yeah, we’ll give you some feedback how well it worked or not. Um, because I’m excited about getting it on and try ran, run it through its faces cause I, I try to make, once it get something, may like try to make it fail, you know, that’s the whole idea about testing and.

Hey,

Colter Wilson: maybe. Maybe it will do. Well, here’s what we’re going to do, George, for the next show. Next time I have you on the show, we’re going to compare what our processes were of getting our ice middles to work.

We’re going to have you back when you get yours up, and then we’ll have, we’ll. When I get mine up and then we’re going to just talk through what we went through to get through it, and that could actually be an episode.

George Duncan: That’s great. Okay,

Colter Wilson: well we’re, we’re running out of time here for the show, so I want to, we’ll, we’ll wrap it up. But, uh, George, I want to once again, thank you so much for coming on the show again. I gotta be honest. I love having you on the podcast. You, you, you’re such a wealth of knowledge and as well, you’re just, you know, uh, uh, I w I love your approach to distilling and brewing in general.

It’s just, you’re such a great person to talk to. So I love having show show, and I thank you so much for taking your time out of your busy day to come over and talk to me. And my listeners, uh, w we really appreciate it.

George Duncan: Well, the problem, my friend, anytime if you ever need it, always here.

Colter Wilson: Okay. Absolutely.

Thanks George. Thank you.

George Duncan: I

Colter Wilson: want to thank George for coming on this week’s show. It’s always great to have him, and I really love having him on the podcast. I will put a link to his. YouTube channel in our show notes, so head over to homebrewing diy.beer and check it out. I’ll also put a link to his distilling series for beginners.

Other than that, check us out on our social media. Look for at home brewing, DIY on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, and we’ll see you next week on homebrewing. DIY.

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