Starting out

[essex redneck]

Hi, I have been homebrewing for 20 years and have made some good country wines. We also produce about 60-70 gallons of cider a year. I would now like to take some of my brews a stage further. Is the stillsmart set up able to distill these wines or is it more suited to the sugar/water wash? Can anyone recommend a good starter set up? I am quite handy with tools.
Thanks
ER

[trelliS]

http://www.stillsmart.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=239 try this thread also with the smartstill you could do a second run which would increase the alcohol strength and purity
Welcome to the forum

[Phantom]

Hi, I have been homebrewing for 20 years and have made some good country wines. We also produce about 60-70 gallons of cider a year. I would now like to take some of my brews a stage further. Is the stillsmart set up able to distill these wines or is it more suited to the sugar/water wash? Can anyone recommend a good starter set up? I am quite handy with tools.
Thanks
ER

It will work fine, but you have to make sure that the wine or cider is as clear as possible. Also use some "rashig rings", or even some small pieces of broken glass in the bottom of the still. Plus it\'s worth the effort of getting a bottle of distillers conditioner (it\'s a capful per fill of the still - so it goes a long way, only a couple of quid anyway) to use.
Oh and if you have somewhere away from "traffic" while the still is running. Because if it did decide to over boil, it tends to lift the lid and splash a bit - which you don\'t want if you\'ve got family and pets walking past while it\'s running.
I always make sure that I bin the first 25 to 50 mls of distillate - as that\'s likely to contain the majority of any impurities or lighter alcohols (hangover heaven)...... Plus I then just take the distillate at the recommended amount for "sugar wash" to add to my "collection", but I leave the still running until the distillate is below 10% ABV and that goes into the next batch.
I have a couple of large carboys that I put the spirit into, they\'ve got about 5 or 6 bags of toasted french oak chips to simulate barrel contact/flavouring. It\'s a half arsed effort as a home made "mixed fruit brandy". a full 34 litre carboy so far, but I\'ll have to transfer over to a 54 litre one as I\'ve got more spirit to put into it. It\'ll just end up in the shed for a couple of years.
Oh and I only run wines and meads that I don\'t like the taste of, or aren\'t progressing how I\'d hoped they would. Plus a few cheap wine kits from the local wilko\'s as they were going "out of date".....
And yes, it seems to be producing a drinkable spirit like that, so far anyway.......

[hoppinmad]

I have been homebrewing for 20 years and have made some good country wines. We also produce about 60-70 gallons of cider a year. I would now like to take some of my brews a stage further. Is the stillsmart set up able to distill these wines or is it more suited to the sugar/water wash? Can anyone recommend a good starter set up?

you dont say whether you intend to produce filtered alcohol to flavour afterwards or whether you are going to try to produce a brandy/calvados from your wine and cider? the boiling process of the still will affect the flavour of the finished product, there are posts elsewhere on this forum of these kinds of experiments.
hoppin

[essex redneck]

Thanks everyone especially Phantom. It\'s more my wines that dont taste too good that I was thinking of. I also have a large batch of good apple wine which I think would be rather special. I lived in germany for a long while and a friend used to still some incredible cherry plum brandy. Will save up some pennys for some gear!
ER