Starter home distillery

I’ve been brewing beer on occasion for over 20 years, starting when I was in college. Always lurking out beyond the homebrew scene was the idea of making spirits. More complicated than making beer or wine and requiring the use of a still, it seemed out of reach. Being officially illegal didn’t help either. But the idea lingered on in the back of my mind.

Then I stumbled upon a device called an Easystill. Basically, it is a water distillation unit that can also be used to distill alcohol as well. The idea of spirit distillation is simple. Alcohol boils at a temperature less than water, so if you get temperature above 78 °C but below 100 °C, the alcohol becomes vapor, leaving the water behind. A still captures the vapor, cools it enough to turn it back to liquid, allowing you to capture it.

The EasyStill does all that in a 110-volt tabletop device that you can store in the closet or garage when you are finished. The still handles about a gallon of mash at a time, so if you make a small 5 gallon batch of fermented mash, you are running the thing at least 5 times to produce a liter of alcohol. The process is slow to start but does work. I’ve made drinkable moonshine. It’s not for any serious distilling, but for cooking up a batch on occasion.

I’d recommend EasyStill for someone that wants to see if distilling is for them. If they like it, they’ll want to buy a real still with bigger capacity and full features. If it’s not for them, they haven’t spent a lot. Most people getting into ‘firewater’ have already tried homebrewing beer and likely already had all the stuff for the initial fermentation. I did.