Beer Forum

So, I live in a warm climate and have some sugar cane growing in my backyard - I know this is not strictly legal where I live, but I have been reading about how rhum agricole is distilled from fermented cane juice, and was wondering if anyone has used an air still to make something like applejack or rhum agricole. I figured I could use some of my excess carboy capacity to ferment out some fresh squeezed apple or cane juice and then run it through a still to make applejack or rhum agricole. I overheard a guy at the farmer's market saying that he had distilled some fermented fruit juice into brandy - it was either plums or apricots. He claimed that it was quite easy. This is the air still:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/150031602/s ... h_type=all

Anybody heard of anyone doing this?

Beer_Baron wrote:So, I live in a warm climate and have some sugar cane growing in my backyard - I know this is not strictly legal where I live, but I have been reading about how rhum agricole is distilled from fermented cane juice, and was wondering if anyone has used an air still to make something like applejack or rhum agricole. I figured I could use some of my excess carboy capacity to ferment out some fresh squeezed apple or cane juice and then run it through a still to make applejack or rhum agricole. I overheard a guy at the farmer's market saying that he had distilled some fermented fruit juice into brandy - it was either plums or apricots. He claimed that it was quite easy. This is the air still:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/150031602/s ... h_type=all

Anybody heard of anyone doing this?

No, but I have a curious desire to see how this turns out. Go for it!

Dirk McLargeHuge wrote: No, but I have a curious desire to see how this turns out. Go for it!

I am probably not going to pull the trigger for a while yet... I was hoping that some Kiwi or Aussie would chime in with some first hand knowledge about how well air stills work! Don't want to drop $$$ on something that is going to have the potential to blow up my house!

I would check out the distilling forums instead of the brewing forums A quick google search found this: http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7428

If you did a little searching on the other product that they're talking about, you might dig up some more technical specs/useful info.

Beer_Baron wrote:

Dirk McLargeHuge wrote: No, but I have a curious desire to see how this turns out. Go for it!

I am probably not going to pull the trigger for a while yet... I was hoping that some Kiwi or Aussie would chime in with some first hand knowledge about how well air stills work! Don't want to drop $$$ on something that is going to have the potential to blow up my house!

Not an Aussie or Kiwi but I own/use one of those stills for making small batches. Nor have I made applejack or rhum agricole using it. But this the same basic design as a standard pot still. Some pot stills run the condensor coil under water for conversion of the steam to liquid, but this is a pot still that uses a fan to cool instead of water.

I used mine to make some everclear as well as some Absinthe (you can get all the herbs to make it leagally). Both came out amazingly well. The everclear I put a half of a peach and tablespoon of suger in each mason jar. Good stuff!!!

Pot stills are the still of choice for making flovored liquor types as it does not strip away all the flavors like a reflux still does. Reflux stills are best for producing 180 to 190 proof runs. Pot stills are designed for performing several runs to produce the liquor. Now for the bad news, it is not as easy as it looks to make good booze. You have to understand flavor profiles and how to make your cuts in order to produce the beverage that you want. However, with the cost effective nature of these stills it is well worth the cost of it and something you can learn to do by reading some forums and a little practice. There is also some guidelines to making your cuts that you can use until you learn.