moonshine quick and easy...

Soak 10 pounds of corn until it just begins to sprou

t, then crush it. Add just enough water so you can stir it. heat to 150 degrees
fahrenheit for about one hour while stirring. Add 20 pounds of sugar and enough
water to make 20 gallons. when cooled to below 90 degrees and yeast. Cover with
a cloth or screen wire to keep out bugs, don't us a glove it will burst. When it
quits foaming and tastes sour the yeast has consumed all the fermitable sugars
and its ready to distill. Don't forget to throw away the first few ounces of dis
tillate as it has any methanol that was produced. also stop collecting distillat
e when you see any oil at the end as this has fusel oils in it. Don't drink whil
e distilling. don't leave the still unattended. Google "home distillation" for m
ore information, its GREAT
Hello, I have been brewing for 4+ years and the biggest factor for me in making
my beers better is proper fermentation temp control. The headaches people were c
omplaining about were most likely from fermenting beer at temps that were too hi
gh. I did the same thing on my first batch; i fermented a nut-brown ale at 78-81
instead of 68-72. If i drank more than one in a sitting I got a headache right
away. Buy a thermostat controller for your fridge or freezer, they are about $50
for an analog and $100 for a digital.
As far as water goes, if you live in an area that has chlorinated water; at the
very least run all your water through a charcoal filter... slowly. If you go mu
ch faster than one gallon a minute that the charcoal wont strip out the chlorine
and the beer will have off flavors after all is said and done. If your water is
just really, really crappy the reverse osmosis route will work, however the yea
st need some trace elements in the water to be healthy. So if you do that, brew
shops do sell water salts (burton water salts, etc) that you can use to copy the
water profile certain geographic areas. But, in all honesty, my brew day is lon
g enough without messing with my water beyond running it through the charcoal fi
lter and i have not had any problems.
One more way to really improve your beer is by using enough yeast by making a y
east starter. I didn't do this for the first 2 years and now i wished i had. I u
sed to just dump in a white labs yeast vial and call it done. I made good beer b
ut i had problems with it fermenting down to where i wanted it. When i started m
aking a yeast starter a couple days before my brew day, I would get less lag tim
e, faster fermentation, and more alcohol in the beer because with more yeast it
can chew through the sugar faster without getting stressed and tired out. For ex
ample, i brewed 10 gallons of an IPA recently that fermented down to 16.55% abv,
i used two types of yeast and made one gallon starters for each type of yeast.
If i hadn't made a starter it would have taken 4-5 yeast vials to get the proper
yeast cell count.
I used to make wine, but started with grape juice not with the grapes and added
yeast. As long as it is cold enough it took care of itself and just had to wait.
My father is a home-brewer of moon shine aka corn liquor
well now - and I was just thinking about starting such a thread.. here's the dea
l..
I just bought a KingKeg, with a floater and a gas injection system on the top f
or REAL cheap...
My missus discovered that we already own a "fermenting barrel" which I must hav
e also bought real cheap for some unknown reason a few years back.
I bought a can of the "premix draft beer kit" stuff, and followed the direction
s, using the fermenting barrel...
then, at a car boot, I found a brewers heater, thermostatically controlled (but
not adjustable) but apparently designed just for this very task... so I clagged
it into the mixture and shut the lid again.
After a full week of not even looking into the stuff, I popped the lid and noti
ced that there were no bubbles coming up (apparently that's a clue) so assumed t
hat it was ready for the next step....
I cut a piece of garden hose, cleaned and sterilised it, and siphoned almost al
l of the mixture into the keg (also clean and sterile).
I was pleased to see a "cake" of sediment at the bottom - apparently that's exa
ctly what one is supposed to see.. and, after adding a little water to the remai
ns of the beer and breaking up the "cake" i poured it into my slug traps... the
same ones that my missus used to fill with my real bought and paid for beer...
Then I added a bit of sugar, like it said on the instructions and tightened the
keg lid.
and I have a hydrometer and a cute tall glass jar.. and I'm waiting....
I think in about another four days, I shall draw some off into the glass jar an
d try to figure out how to read a hydrometer and what it all means when I read i
t... this process, presumably, will also tell me whether or not the airseal on t
he keg is good.. if it isn't then nothing will come out of the tap, since there
won't be any pressure to drive it up the float tube, right? I didn't put any kin
da vaseline or anything onto the seal... figgered I'd try it the easy way first.
.. after all, the slugs can really knock it back if it all goes titsup.
So here's my questions...
1 If there IS no pressure, can I just reseal with vaseline/plumber's tape and s
lap a compressed air capsule into the top and get some bubbles thataway?
2. Don't like the sound of the "poisoning" part... is that like the gutrot you
get from dirty lines in a pub?
All I'm trying to do here is save money with some drinkable beer - I have no in
terest in blue ribbons...
how'm I doin' so far?