distilling alcohol
 

anyone have any tips on this? I got a case of terrible wine from a friend that works at a winery and want to turn it into something more drinkable.

against the law in some states... have a fast car so that you can do moonshine runs :)

I recommend http://www.thickos.co.uk
Very informative!

It's legal to make beer and wine for personal consumption in every state, but running a still is controlled as pointed out by cynthetiq. If distilling spirits is legal in your area, then your main issue is tempurature control. Alcohol boils at a very distinct temp. Some bad things boil at a slightly lower temp, which may not be present in your wine, so it might not be an issue. Typically, when distilling from mash, you need to heat the mash to about a half a degree below the boiling point of alcohol, collect and dispose of the evaporation, then heat to just over the boiling point of alcohol to go to production.

I can't be more specific about the boiling point of alcohol, since it greatly depends on your local elevation.

wine is not distilled. it is fermented, then seperated, aged, bottled. you could however distill it and make brandy. you would need a pot still. a 10 hr distallation will get you approximately 60 proof, 12 hours to 140 proof. alcohol begins evaporating about 173 f. distallation occurs between 173-211f. you want to collect the evaporations, cool it and returns back to a liquid, alcohol. if it gets to hot the water begins to evaporate and thins out the alcohol. i dont have the website but you can make a cheap still for a few bucks and reuse it. pm me if you want to go into a little more detail.

You also have to control what time of alcohol gets into your drink of choice. If you get to much methanol in there it burns on the way down. The best way to get get as little methanol as possable is to distill as much as possable.

thanks for all the info, guys. I found a really informative website:
http://homedistiller.org/

I finished building a pot still out of a pressure pot, and am going to work on making the condensor out of a bucket and a length of coiled copper pipe.

remember that your siphoning out needs to run through a good sized chamber with water being replenished through the bottom. I had a tank of static cold water that i boiled homebrew with and the water ended up heating up to the point that the alchy vapor wouldn't cool down to liquid by the time it reached the open valve at the bottom. and breathing in a room full of gaseous alcohol isn't fun *at all*.

Wearing a protective face mask is also reccomended when dealing with boiling liquids under pressure and than may be flamable.

Yea Journeymen--not to mention when your stove is on heating the liquid! Scary stuff, I think a bucket full of ice water will work ok, though, especially with a long enough length of copper pipe.

I read over my post and it's ambiguous as to what's what. I had the bootleg booze in a pressure cooker sealed off save for a couple copper pipes connected to a hose that spiraled, which I ran through a... I dunno, 6-8 gallon tank of water with lots of ice in it. So no, ice water failed me in the end. Just pop a hose from the faucet to the bottom of the cooling tank with a hose from the top to the lawn or something.

I recommend you use a good filter... and watch for lead or other bad things in your process.

Hey man, sounds like a good idea, but be sure you know what you are doing before you try this... There have been a lot of recent stories about people being poisoned by self distilled beverages, I believe it had something to with lead poisioning because of the construction of their still, but I don't really recall. Anyway, good luck, but be safe.

If you are just interested in distilling small quantities, then a stovetop distiller might be your best bet. You can find them online for distilling 'water' and they will usually handle about a half gallon or so at a time.

Oh, the the poisioning of self-distilled beverages is a moonshiners problem related to wood-alcohols contaminating the stuff they are distilling. If you are just distilling wine, it should be perfectly safe, as long as you use good equipment. Although it is probably illegal.