• pineapple@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com
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    2 years ago

    One of these days I would very much like to learn how to distill vodka.

    Last year I took another step on the fermented foods path and learned how to brew kombucha. I’m progressing slowly, but I’ll get to vodka eventually.

    • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      It’s easy. At the end of the day it boils down to “ferment it, boil it, condense the vapour”. I have some indirect experience with this due to my grandparents’ graspa (wine pomace spirit) production and an incomplete Chemistry grad.

      The main skills and knowledge that you need are only 1) precise heating control and 2) how to correctly identify distillation fractions by the temperature. In special you need to distinguish the head from the body of the distillation, since the head will have some nasty stuff like methanol and is better discarded.

      For the fermentation part, I recommend that you try brewing kwas/kvass at least once, as you’ll get experience with brewing yeast. (It’s the same species as bakery yeast, but usually selected towards higher alcoholic tolerance, you’re going to need it.) But past that it shouldn’t be too different from what you already know from kombucha.