Slashdot Mirror

"Different types of alcohol" can happen, but alternative alcohol usually methanol,, also known as "wood alcohol". It's toxic, and accidentally fermented and distilled instead of ethanol. A home distillation safety guide at http://homedistiller.org/intro... includes some useful notes to avoid distilling it. It's quite toxic, and I'd not expect to see any significant amount of it in any commercial alcohol drinks.

If there is any notable amount of any alcohol than ethanol, I'd strongly urge you _do not drink it_.

If you have any contacts at the site you linked to, "home distiller", then have them fix their web site and get rid of or at least minimize all the scripting.

There, fixed it for you.

No, I'm not kidding. Remember brewing is the alcohol-creation step before distillation.

The fact that this is freeze-distilled still makes it beer: unlike normal (boiling) distillation, you keep the wash, not the distillate. (How they avoid making it taste like ass is another question.)

the first and last few ccs contain methanol when distilling.

Not the last, those contain water. Methanol has a lower boiling point than ethanol, so it will boil out of the mixture at the start of the process.

Anyhow, it's not difficult to build a fractioning column at home that will give you very pure ethanol. It's so simple a child can use it.

I know it's illegal but lots of people do home distilling: http://www.homedistiller.org/ http://www.home-distilling.com/ http://www.home-distillation.com/ http://www.brewhaus.com/ I've never tried it, I stick to homebrewing, but lots of people do, and for the most part elliot ness doesn't come knocking unless they start selling it, and they don't usually go blind. Actual mileage may vary.

Sorry, I thought I was at http://homedistiller.org/

Easier than this would just be to make a bucket still. (Second item down on the page.)

No idea how many times you'd need to run seawater through it in order to produce something potable, but it's dead simple to set up. It requires two buckets, one which will fit inside the other, a piece of clear plastic sheeting, a bungee cord or duct tape, and two clean rocks or other heavy objects. Basically you put the small bucket inside the large bucket, and put the clean rock in the bottom of the small bucket to keep it from floating. Then put seawater into the large bucket (around the outside of the small bucket). Then put the clear plastic sheeting over the top, and secure it tightly with the bungee cord. Place the small rock in the center, to create a dimple. Place the whole apparatus in the sun. In theory, the sun causes the water in the seawater to boil/evaporate, which then condenses against the top, runs towards the center, and drips down into the small bucket.

You can do similar things if you are in an area that gets warm during the day and cool at night. It's really just developing any sort of temperature differential that's key.

I've never tried making a bucket still, but I've seen the diagram in various survival manuals; I think the idea is that you can adapt it to use basically any moist plant product instead of seawater (e.g., in the desert you could use cactus chunks or something).

Here is a write-up of the benefits of doing a "polishing" step just like the guys in the Slashdot article. It's an interesting read.

actually, I did a little research on this, and I *believe* (which is to say, I read it somewhere) that you can distill for personal use.

Only place in the world it's actually legal to distill alcohol for personal use is in New Zealand. Lucky bastards... maybe that's why they have a reputation with the sheep, though.

Make your own! They've been doing it in the south and apalachia for years. (And it's actually legal in New Zealand )