Country alcohol factory

I want to share some of my experience. I have been keeping bees for five years and every year I take my small apiary to a dacha 40 km from the city. I leave at the end of April and return in October, so I spend almost half of the year outdoors with my pets. The dacha is located on the outskirts of a small village, there is no electricity or water, but this does not cause any particular inconvenience; on the contrary, I enjoy the beauty of nature far from civilization, and besides, there are wonderful meadow honey plants there. But there is one problem that all beekeepers face. Throughout the season, especially in the spring, frames of honey appear that cannot be downloaded or saved for the bees for the future. These are frames infested with wax moth larvae, taken from dead families, and simply substandard; there is always a problem with their sale. So I decided to use this honey from such frames to make homemade alcohol, I do it like this. I cut the honeycombs from the frames, along with honey, pollen and even brood, into a large enamel pan or aluminum can, fill it with hot water and squeeze the softened honeycombs well with my hands.Then I also crush the resulting lumps of wax with my hands and leave them in the bowl. You can take them out right away, but then they will be sweet from honey and it will be difficult to store them if you don’t melt them. Making mash from honey in honeycombs is more difficult than from pure honey or sugar, since it is difficult to maintain the proportion by weight, and I cannot taste the sweetness. I do this, weigh the honeycombs with honey, subtract the weight of the wax and add for each kilogram of relatively pure honey 5 liters of water, which I take from the spring. When all the honey has dissolved in the water, make the starter. I use different types of yeast, dry for drinks or pressed for baking, I prefer the latter, but they need to be stored in the refrigerator, so I use dry more often. For 20 liters of water I take 4 kg of honey, a pack of dry yeast 70 grams or 400 pressed. I cool the sweet water that I got to 40 degrees, since hotter water can kill the yeast, I pour it into them in a separate bowl. There is no need to stir the dry ones, otherwise you will get lumps, but the pressed ones should be kneaded with your hands. Now the starter needs to sit for about 30 minutes, when foam appears, I pour it into the mash and put the dishes in a warm place, you just need to protect it from insects and dust. The mash usually matures in a warm place for no more than 10 days; I check its readiness by taste, it should lose its sweetness, or with a burning match lowered to the liquid level. If the flame goes out, it means carbon dioxide is being released and the product is not yet ready; when it burns, it can be distilled. It is at this stage that difficulty arises, since there is no running water. I tried distilling with a conventional apparatus, placing a bowl of water above the container with the mash and letting it flow by gravity, but it turned out to be cumbersome and very inconvenient.There were thoughts of adapting an electric pump from a car battery or a manual one and other ideas, but I settled on a design that had long been used in villages, improving it with modern materials.



To make this device, I bought a galvanized bucket with a capacity of 15 liters, smaller is possible, but then you will have to change the water more often. I bought 2 meters of 8 mm copper tube at a car gas equipment supply store. On a suitable cylinder, I rolled the tube into rings, leaving straight ends for the vapor to enter and the condensate to exit, to form a coil.



In the wall of the bucket, near the bottom, I drilled a hole for the tube and inserted the lower end of the coil into it, and secured the upper end with a clamp and two bolts. To ensure that the outlet of the lower end is sealed, it can be soldered, but I did it simpler, coated it with cold welding, I thought it was temporary, but I’ve been using it for the second year now.



The apparatus itself is ready, now we need a distillation cube and its connection to the apparatus. It’s best to take an aluminum can for the cube, but I have all of them under honey and don’t have any free ones. I had to be smart. I took a large enameled saucepan with a lid. I inserted a fitting with a 1/2-inch thread into the lid and, using two nuts and a gasket, secured it. The gasket is silicone, since rubber cannot be installed; when heated, it will transfer its smell to the steam, which will transfer its smell to the final product.



Now we need to seal the lid; rubber is not suitable here either. You can try to make a gasket from silicone, but I again did it simpler, filling the inner recess on the lid with a stiff dough of flour and water. Now you need to press the lid, any rod that fits into the eye of the lid will do, its ends and the handles of the pan are connected with twisted wire, this will create pressure.Here you can use screw or rubber ties, in general, complete freedom for imagination. Now it’s time to connect the apparatus and the pan. It is better to do this with a gas bellows; it does not have a rubber hose inside. I connected it to the distillation cube through a silicone gasket, and to the apparatus through a fitting, the latter fits tightly onto the tube.

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That's the whole design, minimal costs, easy to assemble and easy to work with. The mash is poured into the distillation cube, placed on the fire of a gas stove, the gas comes from a propane cylinder. You just need to take into account that the mash with honey foams a lot and can get into the coil, so it is poured into an incomplete cube, you can add a little butter or milk, this prevents the formation of foam. The device is installed lower in level than the cube, and preferably with a slight slope towards the condensate drainage tube, this is so that a liquid plug does not form in the coil. At the beginning of the process, the gas should be kept minimal, water is poured into the bucket, preferably cold, and you just have to wait for the mash to heat up and its vapors to begin to condense in the coil. The first release of moonshine contains many not very good impurities that have a distinct solvent smell; they are called heads. This part must be poured out or used for household needs, its quantity is determined experimentally, I cut off about a tenth. After this, the gas pressure can be increased, the process will go faster. Gradually, the steam in the coil heats the water in the bucket, it collects in the upper layers, it is drained with a ladle and cold is added. As the temperature increases, heavy fractions begin to evaporate from the mash, including fusel oils, which give the moonshine an unpleasant odor, so the process must be completed in time.I determine this moment by the burning of moonshine; if it stops flashing with a blue flame on the paper, then it’s enough. In the end, from ten liters of mash, I get about two liters of moonshine, with a strength of about 50%. I also want to say that it is better to distill in cool weather, and if it is hot during the day, then do it early in the morning, then you will have to change the water in the bucket less often. The resulting product is, in principle, ready for use, but it can be made better; of course, it can be well distilled again, but you can also get by by passing it through a household filter, or through a plastic bottle filled with charcoal for barbecues. You can also give it a pleasant taste and color with various additives; the easiest way is to melt sugar in a spoon over a fire and add it to the drink while hot; it will acquire a noble cognac color. Tinctures made with herbs and berries are good and fragrant. I use a collection of thyme, St. John's wort and oregano. My favorite berries are chokeberry and chokeberry. Here everyone can find their favorite composition, there are a lot of options. I hope that my advice will be useful not only to beekeepers, but also to ordinary summer residents. If you replace honey with sugar, then everyone can use them. I wish you all a successful and enjoyable next summer season.