Asked by
Malvika
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Food & Drink
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12:37 AM on January 27, 2009
Nidhi Singh's Answer
Moonshine starts with a mixture (mash), which can be made of any fermentable substance. The most common is a mixture yeast ,sugar, and water. Sugars for the mash can be derived from a variety of sources, such as corn, grapes and other fruits, potatoes, malt sugars, corn sugars, or any other fermentable sugar or fruit.
An alcohol-tolerant yeast strain is then added to the mash, which is then fermented, ideally between 70-85 degrees. Fermentation times vary depending on the yeast strain, ranging from one week to a month. Using a bubbler airlock will give you an indication of when fermentation has ceased or has slowed down to less than one bubble in 5 minutes.
There are two ways you can distill the mash. The first one is to take the entire mash, solids and liquids, and introduce it to the boiling pot. The second is to first decant the liquid from the solids, and introduce that to the pot. Not decanting may add flavors to the distillate that would be different if not decanted.
The physical process of removing alcohol from the mash is simple. Raise the temperature of the mash from between 173 and 190 degrees. The boiling point of alcohol is much less than water, which boils at 212 degrees, so the alcohol vaporizes first.
The pot is connected to a column or just a condenser, which can be a copper coil, or worm, or a cold-water-jacketed tube.
A column still progressively "refluxes" the distillate at different temperature levels in the column, resulting in a purer shine exiting the top while the heavier alcohols and other stuff drips back into the pot.
A pot still with just a copper "worm" will produce a less pure and less potent, but more distinctive shine.
In old days, triple distillation through a pot still would achieve purer alcohol, indicated by XXX on the bottle.
Today, alcohol will sometimes go through a pot still first, making a "wine", then redistilled through a reflux-column still, although with modern reflux-column stills this process is not necessary because a reflux-column still can produced virtually pure alcohol on the first pass.
The alcohol vapors pass through the condenser, which acts the same way as a cold bottle does when it condenses water on the outside. The condensate, alcohol in this instance, drips out the bottom and into a collection bottle.
The shine can be drunk immediately, cut with water to make a less-potent version, filtered through activated carbon, introduced with oak chips for flavor or color, burned in your flex-fuel car, or anything else you can think of.
Answered at
12:38 AM on January 27, 2009
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