How to Make a Homemade Distillery

Hello everyone, my name is Brian Lemak, here in North Texas. I've been watching a lot of great videos on YouTube about how to

make

moonshine, how to distill flavors like you know, strawberry ice cubes for your lemonade, how to

make

ethanol to power your jet. I shut down whatever, but I don't see anything other than professional manufacturers on how to build a still, so I wanted to build a still in my garage. I watched a couple of videos. I watched punch pilot videos on how to do it. making moonshine mate, did a great job and I just modeled my still after what I saw people doing, then ran a couple of water and vinegar to clean it.

It works great so I thought I'll show you how to do it so I started with this wooden frame. I built it around the dimensions of a standard American propane bottle, so the base here measures about 21 inches and it's about 26 inches long that way it doesn't look back. Here is the actual end of the frame. This lid is recessed forward a little bit because there is a hidden hinge here so I can open the lid and I can literally put a propane tank inside. I also have a little platform down here. It's also 21 inches wide, made of five, two-by-fours, so it's about 18 inches long and holds a five-gallon bucket.

You'll see the need for that in a second and down here at the bottom we have a big drawer. Here we will use it to capture what is being distilled, so those of you who want to see it better, I can hold it up for you, it's not that heavy, everything can be two by four and for my pores, you can see. the four by four here on the bottom right, I use four by four because it gets a little stronger, you know, if I have gallons here plus a propane tank plus a fry burner, I'm talking, you know, 50 60 pounds or more . 70 pounds I wanted to be strong enough to hold it.

I also wanted to put caster wheels on it and I've never been very good at putting caster wheels on a 2x4 because I split the wood. I'm not very good with nails so a 4x4 gives me a nice flat space to put my wheels on and then here's the jar, like I said it's going to slide out and catch what I'm distilling so I'm going to put it back on and You will see that my propane bottle fits perfectly inside. I have a bungee cord here that I hold it up with so that when I move it around the garage you won't know.

Won't lose my propane tank. It won't fall even once. I closed the lids now as to where I bought everything. I bought everything at my local garden store. I bought some stuff at my local superstore that has, you know, BBQ stuff and groceries in the whole nine yards and the rest. I bought it offline on that big shopping force out there so this thing was one of the most expensive components it was $29.99 and I basically put it right on top and plugged it right into the propane tank and I'm ready to go now. I'm not still and I can still use the thing to cook a turkey, fry some fish and some others or whatever.

I also have a six gallon stainless steel pot, not everything I saw told me that what I needed was copper and stainless steel. I think most people, especially those, are very boastful with their moonshine and ethanol and their distilled flavors want everything to be copper, frankly I can't afford to use copper in everything so I bought stainless steel. This thing was, you know, 25 or so dollars, it has a nice little lid and when I boil in this I can get up to six gallons in a six gallon pot and this is just a little meat thermometer, it has a wire covered in metal that, you know, goes to the end? in the oven, in the turkey or lying there like that and I can see the temperature of what I'm cooking.

Well, now it's important not to submerge the connection between the cable and the top of the metal sensor in water, but that's what the caps cap prevents from sliding back and forth. I can set this to 150 degrees, 175 degrees and whatever I'm cooking gets there, it'll set off a little alarm for me, let me know. Are you there and use it? This thing is close enough to my counter here that I can stick it to something metal and it will stay there with the magnets on the back again. Nothing was like ten dollars at the store, so I'm cooking here when I'm done.

I'm going to want to distill it well, so I have to put it in this jar. This type holds six gallons. It's like a Culligan bottle or an Ozark. A bottle or whatever, but it's made of glass, this right here is called a firm gauge, it's like a thermometer, but it actually measures the temperament of what you're fermenting. I have a plastic bag on it, it was one of my daughter's little hair scrunchies, so no residue builds up when I put it away and don't use it, so the way I get it when I boil it here is very simple.

I have a five gallon bucket. I take that stainless steel pot. and I pour it through a nice little mesh here. I want to go through one of these because they tend to fall apart. I guess unless you spend a ton of money on them, I pour it in there so the leftovers I boiled don't get there. In that water I mix the ingredients for my recipe. I watch it so that it reaches the correct temperature. I'm stirring it up. I need something to start. This is a stainless steel camping spoon. I'll start with this now.

The problem with this is that stainless steel scratches plastic, so the first time I fermented something I had little strips of plastic inside this bucket, some might even recommend a rubber one or one of those hard and silicone ones or something, or just keep it. on the side of the inside of your bucket, but then I have my juice here and I have to get it in there and if you're trying to pour a five gallon bucket into a two inch wide opening, I know you're going to make a mess, so I have the siphon, the siphon goes in here and the opening goes in here, unfortunately they have to be the other way around, you have to divert downhill, so boom, now I'm cycling downhill, so unfortunately this. it is actually sold in two different orders I didn't know that the first time I bought just the siphon I had to buy the plastic hose separately why I have no idea it doesn't make any sense to me but I give it a good tug and it will fill this jar very okay, so several days go by and this is fermenting, how do I know when it's good?

This is an airlock, okay, these airlocks got a little clogged and I don't know why. It's called Bung, I think it's a bit of a funny name, but anyway, you stick this in there, it has a hole in it that will receive this little nipple, so you fill it with water. It has a line inside you how far to fill it. that lid you put it you put it here now my experience with fermentation is that while it was fermenting it is releasing carbon dioxide as the yeast attacks the sugar, forgive me if my chemistry is wrong, leave it in the comments, I'm fine with that, but just like allowing this to release carbon dioxide now, if this is a cat, it's creating pressure because it's releasing carbon dioxide.

I'm going to get my hands dirty, so this airlock actually lets the carbon dioxide out without letting in any bugs or debris or anything, and it keeps it at a neutral pressure, so the good thing is that this little thing is going to sit here and go boop. -boop-boop about once a second for the first day or two, when you finish releasing that air. I know I'm fermented and ready to go. These things are also sold separately on notice, you can buy bin, come on, you know, when you're shopping online for a long time, say oh, you bought this, what other people bought this and then you can buy them together, that's exactly what I did.

I rented these they are a little fragile so I bought a couple of them. I haven't broken any yet but I'm sure my time is coming so now I'm ready to distill this right so I get my stainless steel strap back and I take my chemical and I pour it in there like this or I guess you could take it out with a siphon, sometimes there will be a little bit of residue at the bottom of that jug. I don't want that waste going into my stop container so I'll make sure it doesn't either by removing it when I'm done siphoning it or whatever, to me it doesn't really matter but this is where the still comes in.

I have to distill it so while I'm cooking the chemical I want is coming out and the semen boils before or at a lower temperature than water and I'm capturing that vapor so I built a pretty simple still, in fact I needed a special drill bit to cut it. that stainless steel the first time. I tried to cut that stainless steel. I used a drill bit from the shelf. I looked behind the garden store and actually burned a mark and a hole in my sawhorse because a drill bit doesn't go through stainless steel, so I got this.

Boy, this guy will cut through stainless steel like nobody's business, so I drilled a hole in the top and put another little hole right here. This is a digital thermometer, the only thing it does is measure the temperature inside its head, not the fluid but the steam. so I just turn this on, it'll do degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit, whatever you want. What I used is a wine cork. I made a very small hole through the wine cork and then I stuck the thermometer or yes, the thermometer through the wine cork, the hole that I drilled here was the size of the wine cork, not the thermometer, that way the wine fits in there because I thought the wine cork would hold this silicone better than a very thin stainless steel rod and I was right that that white cork holds it perfectly. and this maroon color that you see here is actually a 600 degree to 600 degree cooking silicone, so I'm not worried about chemicals getting into my preparation because it's safe because it's meant for cooking.

Now I also put a drop of this around this bottom lid and What this is is a stainless steel mixing pot so what I did was I took my tape measure and measured the outside diameter of my pot and then I looked online for a stainless steel mixing bowl that had the same outside diameter. I have now realized that this is a fairly smooth surface. I guess it comes off quite often. The cooking silicone comes in a large tube so I have enough for everyone, so every other time I use this I put a new bead on it. silicone up there.

I have a male coupling for this copper hose. Now it is important that the inside diameter of your male coupling is the same as the outside diameter of your copper pot. No big deal, it's easy to do with the Oklahoma tool. garden store below. I have a female receiver, a female coupling, that screws into each side of the mixing bowl so it's a nice tight fit. I had never soldered before so I had to learn how it's really easy. I put some appropriate ones. silences a lot of different types of solder, this is, I think, silver solder, but I had to learn how to do it.

I soldered them together, works great, lo and behold, so I have my connection to my copper tubing. I have a full seal I have a digital thermometer my copper tube I bought a flat box that was on a big spool and on the shelf it was like $35 I think it was the most expensive thing I bought period and what does it run to this tube? I folded all of this by hand. I have delusions of grandeur. I made a really nice one one day and used the right tools, but it works fine. I have it wrapped around an aluminum vent or ten. it goes through the roof for chimney stuff or air vent or whatever and then at the bottom it has a little tail that comes out okay so I'm going to try this.

I have two different cameras recording here, there's one, there's the other, so you can see it just rolled up there, there's a two by four on the bottom and that's just to keep it away from the bottom of the bucket because I was afraid the bucket might cut it. with that loop with that 1015. tube, so when this is all done, I have my broom here, the way I seal it is with a bunch of these little 299 jaws that are clamped all the way around the thing and the good thing It's from time to time. I'll see steam coming out of this and I just move the jaws around to catch the steam properly because I have low spots on high spots on my silicone and then I pack this full of ice now if you think about it.

You're, you're taking the steam that's coming down this pipe. Now, keep in mind that you're going to burn snot on this pipe if you touch it when you're distilling, but here I pack it full of ice. I usually start. with just two ten gallon bags or a twenty gallon bag or a one pound bag from the local gas station full of ice, I pack it full of ice, okay, so when the vapor hits the spot where I sit, it condenses back into a liquid when it condenses back into a liquid, it's I'm going to take it out of that little copper tail at the bottom and I'm going to pick it up right here with a mason jar like this, now I have silicone, you know, holding this hole by the one where the pipes come out. here and it doesn't hold up well, so when the steam hits the ice, it will melt it and it will turn into water and that's it.I have a puddle coming out of my garage due to water leaking so I just save another one.

Ice bag on hand so you can fill it as needed and again if the water is already at the temperature you need the steam to get to or if it condenses back into water, so I've even seen a video guide, just fill the bucket. filled with water and let that do the talking for him. I've also noticed that as I play with my temperatures I can adjust the speed at which I actually make or distill the liquid correctly, so that if I turn up the heat, it doesn't increase the temperature because you know if water stops, for example, boils at 212 degrees, you can't do it at 500 degrees, it will turn into steam, it will vaporize, so by increasing the amount of fire coming out of this, you increase the rate at which the water or fluid is distilled.

It's turning into steam, so I can actually adjust the amount of flow that comes out of this thing based on how much heat I put on it back here, but long story short, another thing you're going to need is one of these guys, he tells me. milliliters here because a lot of times the first 50 milliliters of what you're distilling won't be safe to drink or use, actually you'll probably use it as a glass cleaner, so I'll take the first one. here throw that out and then I'll pick up the rest here now let's say you're making a distilled spirit how do you know what proof it is?

Well again, it's a simple online purchase, you can pour it right into this glass. beaker our plastic beaker and it's very cheap, bought separately, but inside it looks like a very long, funny looking thermometer, it has some lead or something here at the bottom, it's filled with glass, it has a role to climb here. and it tells you what proof it is, so I take that first pint or whatever pint and I pour it into my little glass and then I drop this in there and wherever it floats, the top level of that liquid wherever it floats in this meter is the proof. so I kept all the little pieces together because I think this is probably a little fragile and again, everything I keep I keep with a little plastic baggie on top to prevent us from coming into my garage with a bunch of fiberglass sawdust. that keeps it protected from debris, so that's it, from bow to stern.

You have again this base made of wood. It's heavy. It has wheels. I can roll it around my garage. Five six-gallon pots. I have a couple of these glass canisters. cans or jugs or whatever you want to call them they scream to purify everything you see the siphon a couple of five gallon buckets a couple of you know 25 foot lengths of copper tubing something that is some way to wrap it in there it has to have a tail that comes out and It just needs to be in a place where you don't want to make a little mess every time I do it.

Did you know that the steam drips out on this. the wood doesn't matter. I have water dripping from my five gallon bucket coming right out of the garage door. None of this is a big deal because I'm not in my kitchen making a mess. I'm in my garage having fun. This is how you build a still in your garage. I hope you enjoyed. Feel free to ask me questions in the comments section. I will do my best to answer as much as I can. That's cool, I guess.