Expert: Paul Wagner - 2/20/2007

Question
helow,
    before you axe, i am 32 and uv legal drinkin age.  i aint sure if this is the kinda question you are interested in ansewing but ill give it a shot.
    my daddy, who just passed on, made "moonshine".  he had a still and a bottleing basement and the hole nine yards.  when i was 20 i axed him to show me how to make it.  he did but he dident show me how to distill it.  
    i aint wantin to make a boat load of "korn Likker", just a little for personal consumption.  i dont have the experience nor the funds to make a adaquate still but i heard about freezing the mash in order to separate the alcahol from the other stuff.  if i make a mash and let it ferment, can i strain it thru a sock and freeze the result.  will the product that dont freeze be the same as what u get from a still or will it kill me.
    any tips ya can give me is much apriciated.
                        Josiah Carson Jr.

Answer
HI Josiah

Before we got too far into this subject, I need to tell you a couple of things:

1.  Making distilled products for home consumption is illegal in the USA.  Copmpletely and totally illegal.  No Exceptions.  

2.  If you are really interested in this subject, you need more advice than I can give you in an email.  Distilling is a very complicated subject.

That said, here is the basic chemistry involved.  Once you have made and fermented your corn mash, you have something that is maybe 5% alcohol and 95 per cent water.  Yes, there are a few other trace chemicals as well.  

Water and alcohol both freeze and boil at different temperatures.  Water freezes at 32 degrees F.  Alcohol needs much colder temperatures than that.  So if you take ANY alcoholic beverage, and chill it to about 20 degrees, what will freeze will be mainly water, and what is left is mainly alcohol.  If you then filter out the ice from the mix, it isn't pretty or elegant, but it does remove a bunch of the water from the mix--and concentrate the alcohol.

Water boils at 212 degrees F, and alcohol at about 185.  SO if you heat an alcoholic beverage to 195 degrees, what evaporates is the alcohol, not the water.  Once you run that steam through a condensing coil, what comes out is pretty much pure (about 96% ) alcohol. That's how a still works.  It is much more elegant than the ice method, and the result is purer.

Please note that most distilled products on the market are distilled and then back blended with about 50% water, so that they are more drinkable.  Pure distilled alcohol from a still is twice as powerful, and can inflict twice as much damage.  I am not kidding about this.  

If you want to die from alcohol poisoning, I can't think of a better way to do it than drinking this stuff straight from the still.  That's why whisky, rum, brandy, etc are all aged (some in wood) for years, and then blended with water.

Paul Wagner