How to make spirits!

[Hrusai]

in essence making alcohol and spirits are very easy, it all relys on fermenting something, then distilling it. simple!

so to make some moonshine or whatever you wanna call it, just get yourself some yeast, something with sugar in, potatoes, apples, pretty much anything, get yourself a tub, chuck in the potatoes or apples or whatever, add the yeast, maybe a little bit of sugar, warm it to about 40 degrees, a little lower is better, leave your tub for a few days, and when you return it should've fermented a bit, now you got some alcohol in your solution, simply pour it all out (through a sieve to get rid of the chunky crap) whack it in a still and boil it all off! by the end you should get some 80 proof (40% alcohol) homemade moonshine, to make it stronger run it through the still a few more times, if its cloudy, keep putting it through the sieve to get rid of any residual gunk.

making a still is very easy, think back to chemistry,
all a still is is a pot under a fire to evaporate everything off

(alcohol evaporates at roughly 80 degrees, 20 less than water) so the pot should be heated to about 80-90 degrees, but not to 100, after all we want to concentrate our alcohol, not just evaporate it and condense it without changing the concentration!

with a roof above it to condense your evaporated alcohol on, the roof should be angled so that the alcohol runs down and collects away from the original pot

like this

its a very simple process, once understood its surprisingly easy to make your own spirits, this is a very rough guide and mostly serves to help you guys understand whats involved, and some very basic research using google will help you work out any kinks! there are many different ways to do this process and all sorts of different things to add into your mix to make different alcohols, for instance adding juniper to make gin or various herbs to make absinthe (the main three are grande wormwood, this one has the thujone in, but dont add too much as thujone is a mild convulsive and if ingested in too great a quantity will cause you to spasm for a few minutes then die, anise and fennel, without these 3 it just aint absinthe, although in almost all absinthe there are alot more herbs!)

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THIS IS A VERY ROUGH GUIDE, READ MORE BEFORE TRYING....UNLESS YOU DONT LIKE SEEING THINGS.

methanol will be created and does cause blindness, so be careful.

[Tibbs735]

To avoid the whole methanol nastiness, discard everything that is distilled off below 78 degrees centigrade, to ensure the level of methanol remains negligible.

[Timelord]

I believe from a Nat Geo documentary on moonshiners that the methanol is less dense than the rest of the alcohol and therefore sits at the top of the still. In which ccase, you just have to tap off the top volume. Can't remember what measurement, but you should be able to get this info on-line. Otherwise it will definitely cause you to go blind or dead.. or both - nasty!!

[Tezauzz]

The key to avoid nasty methanol (if not used for E85 fuel that is) is to distill it twice more at higher temperature. This will remove the fusel oils, ethers, aldehydes etc. Moonshine is very basic to make but can be lethal if not watched.
For a good all-round read on everything to do with natural home brewing and distilling I recommend a book called "The Alaskan Bootlegger's bible".
Brilliant book