Thread: How to make ethanol

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Viking I did that when I was 15 and living in Vermont. Made a homemade still and got the clearest looking moonshine you ever saw. Just like water, but 200 proof. About 6 of us decide to try it and it didn't take more than a couple ounces each to make us pretty drunk. Guess that was the beginning of my drinking days. Kept it up until I was 43 and haven't had more than 2 beer/week since.

If u break down,there would be a easy way to pass the time,just fill up a glass outa the electric pump and off you go!!The car may not be movin ,but you shure will be!!Honest osifficcor I waited till after I broke down to start drinkin me fuel!!

[QUOTE=viking]The basic ingredients:

corn meal
sugar
water
yeast
malt

The basic process: Etc

Seem to recall after that last process you mentioned, that you had to strain off the colouration of the finished product, it was an impurity, and a lot off the old timers that drank it "coloured" Ended up with a condition called "popskull", so if applied the same theory as to a motor spirit you would increase the octane rating.

Several points of interest here. First I just read about ten days ago that there is some new law that allows you to distill "spirits" if you grow the grain on your own land. There was just an article in the Richmond Times Dispatch about a farm in northern Virginia where the owner bottles and sells his own moonshine with ATF approval by using corn grown on his land. I cannot give you the actual law but maybe you can search the archives of the RTD news and find that article. Second, the ATF is mainly interested in the tax dodge of private moonshine but the main problem for the consumer is that private stills often use old auto radiators for condensers and the lead solder in the radiators solwly dissolves in the alcohol and the lead carries over into the liquid and then accumulates in the spinal cord and brain stem of the consumer, ie lead poisoning. One sympton of lead poisoning is the production of dark black feces in which the body tries to eliminate the lead. I know this having worked for National Lead Dutch Boy Paints for only six months and just being around lead fumes without drinking lead containing liquids. The third factoid is that this technology is ancient and worldwide as I found out from a student from Ethiopia in my summer class. I was warning the students about lead in moonshine when he described a native still made out of a ceramic bowl or pot with a narrow neck holding about 5 gallons of any local fermentable grain. then he described a pipe made from hollowed out wood or bamboo for the condenser which doesn't burn because it is wrapped with cloth and the distiller continues to soak the cloth around the wooden pipe with water while stoking firewood under the pot to bring the mash up to a boil. Apparently there is no ATF in Ethiopia!

A note added in edit mode might be to remind folks about the cultural tie between moonshiners and souped up "delivery vehicles", reputed to be the basis for NASCAR talent in the rural South Eastern U.S. I am not endorsing development of illegal activities but apparenty there has been a loosening of the Federal law regarding making "spirits" from grain grown on the owner's land.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by chevydrivin

I guess you didn't see that movie. Big brother is the goverment...just saying the ATF is not going to care if your distilling it to burn it in your go kart or whatever, if they catch you thats your ass.

Chevydriving, I think you read the "what's that post supposed to mean" in the wrong context. I was quoting Mopar360. He asked that originally. Believe me I know all to well about the ATF. But we do have all sorts of legal ethanol plants all over Iowa and they're building many more.

Hmmm, seems there's a few old "Ethanol " brewers here, have downed my share of the lightin', never tried it in a car, hell gas was/is LOTS cheaper than alcohol...

If you are serious about burning home-brew fuel and can find a legal loophole there is another problem I should have mentioned from a chemistry point of view. That is that when you start from a mash with water in it and you distill it you cannot achieve 200 proof pure ethanol by distillation beyond about 190 proof due to the formation of an azeotrope mixture of about 97% ethanol and 3% water. In order to get rid of the water you have to dehydrate it somehow. See this site for some details:

http://www.ethanol.org/documents/drymilling.pdf

Here is another site with a comparison of ethanol and gasoline:

http://www.tribune-chronicle.com/New...articleID=6568

Perhaps in a personal use situation the added water in the fuel could be treated by adding "drygas" (which is really methanol) to make the water more soluble in the ethanol but over some time it is probably not a good idea to keep using water in the fuel, although it might actually improve the octane rating in the same way that water injection does. Still the verdict on water injection is that it may be good for brief use with a turbocharger but not good for steady use due to milkshake oil and added corrosion. Thus I think the idea of home brew fuel will be difficult and ethanol production will have to be left to commercial producers, mostly in the grain/corn rich mid-west.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by Oldf100fordman

Chevydriving, I think you read the "what's that post supposed to mean" in the wrong context. I was quoting Mopar360. He asked that originally. Believe me I know all to well about the ATF. But we do have all sorts of legal ethanol plants all over Iowa and they're building many more.

Guess I did respond incorrectly, sorry. I was interested in making my own still untill I saw an article about how illegal it was and that if you were caught with a still you would be in big trouble. Interesting to see the comments on loopholes to brew your own. Will have to recheck into it.

my dad runs off a batch every now and then, his puts out about 70% t0 80% on the first run, never have tried to put it through again as it had all the kick it needed at that. my uncle likes it when he has a cold.
we use crabapples and sugar to make a mash,let brew fo a couple of weeks and "bobs your uncle"
and my bothers a mountie ha ha

I found this site while looking for alternative fuel info.

http://www.ethanolstill.com/making-your-own-E-85.html

It looks like they have plans/kits for efficient stills made out of large diameter copper tubing. They also talk about the problem of getting the last 3% of the water out using zeolite which has small pores in it to absorb water. The zeolite is a mineral which can be heated to drive out the water and be reused.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Lindsay's got alot of cool reads, not overly priced either, imo
heres one for fuel production.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/still/index.html

When I was young and foolish (as opposed to now being old and foolish), I used to make a little "shine". I found that you could set a mash on Sunday afternoon, let it ferment all week, run off a batch in the still on Saturday morning, cut it 50 percent with water, get raging, puking drunk on Saturday night, then start a new batch on Sunday afternoon, after your head had returned to normal size.----I had built a "regular" still, with a copper boiler, a copper coil and a cold water condenser. I had a friend who made small batches on a "stove-top" still. He had a large pot about 13 or 14" in diameter like you would use to cook corn on the cob. He would put his fermented mash in that, on top of the kitchen stove, on low heat. He would float a round cake tin with sides about 1" high on top of the mash. He had an old Dodge wheel-disc that was kind of "pointy" at the center, and about 15" diameter. He would set it on top of the big pot, pointy side down, and fill the wheel disc with crushed ice. As the alcohol in the mash evaporated, it would rise up untill it contacted the cold wheel-disc, then condense and run down to the center where it would drip off into the floating cake tin. It worked good for small batches of shine, and if the cops showed up at the door it could be quickly dismantled and dumped---all you had to tell the officer was that you were cleaning the wheel disc in the sink, and "what funny smell officer??? Gee, I don't smell anything!!!!"