redshirt27se said:
well i'm not about to quit my job and start working at a brewery.
about the distillery, how hard was it really? i looked up the process and it seemed ridiculously hard.
if you want to build it like i did (cost me about a hundred bucks) and overengineer it so that all you had ot do was flick a switch and end up with 12 litres of vodka, it can be a pain in the ass, sure
if you want to drop 500 bucks and buy a ready made unit, its stupidly easy.
if i were you i would get one made out of a stainless steel beer keg, a stainless steel 2 inch nipple welded on top, 2 small hot water heater elements welded into the bottom of the keg, and a 3 or 4 foot long pice of fairly large (minimum 2 inch, preferably 3-4 inch diameter) copper pipe as your distilling column.
pay a boilermaker to do it all for you, or better yet, strike a deal where he makes it, and you give him booze every here and there for free
bigger, overengineered units that do larger batches cut out a LOT of repeat bullshit work, and also, yield a much better product. you could sit there with activated charcoal all day long trying ot clean up a mediocre product from a commercially purchased still, OR you can just distill large batches in a big still in the first plac,e and drink it on the spot at much higher purity
the other nice thing about big stills is that you make SO FUCKING MUCH the first time that you can afford to tinker around for the next half year while you try as hard as you can to drink batch #1, while you work on batches 2 3 and 4
i made so much vodka i was using to to clean my house. ridiculous.