A common problem for the home distiller is foaming over, where the heated wash foams and bubbles up. In the case of the SmartStill, this leads to the top popping off which disrupts the distillation. Obviously, we need to stop this happening!
When we first started making our own spirits, it was done partly from a desire to save money on alcohol but also for the fun of finding out how it worked, experimenting with different methods, etc. Something that didn’t cross my mind until a little too late was the fact that as we were no longer buying alcohol all the time, we wouldn’t have a source of usable glass bottles. As I’m sure many of you will be aware, the urge to give a bottle to visiting friends is all too great, and before you know it you can’t find one when you need it yourself.
How do other people cope with this? I’ve considered using wine bottles and a corker, sticking with plastic ‘PET’ bottles, buying old bottles from flea markets, charity shops, etc – I’m just curious to see how others have handled this issue. Leave a comment, it’d be great to hear your views!
Here is a simple recipe for a lime flavoured vodka, which I originally intended to use as the basis for a limoncello (or should that be lime-oncello?) – as it happened, we decided to drink it ‘as is’ and it turned out to be excellent. It has a fairly strong, sharp lime taste due to the use of the lime rind, which I would imagine you can round out slightly by adding some of the lime juice as well, or using less rind. Superb mixed with Coke, I will definitely be trying this one again and probably doing several variations to find the best balance.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Grate the limes carefully, trying to ensure you get the green rind and as little of the white pith underneath as possible – this does flavour the drink, but makes it taste bitter. Simply add the grated lime peel to the vodka, and seal in a clean plastic bottle. Shake vigorously, and leave for at least two weeks, shaking again every few days. The peel will lose its colouration, and the vodka will turn a pleasant light green colour. All you need to do now is filter out the peel, which in this case can be done using a single filtration through a coffee filter and funnel. Bottle and enjoy!
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Another update on the progress we’re making. We’ve been working hard on a very detailed guide to fermentation, taking lots of great pictures of every step of the process. This batch is almost ready to go, which means that I should have time to finish the write-up while I’m slaving over a hot still! We’ve got a really good clean wash, so hopefully the advice we can give will be of great help to somebody out there. Never mind that though, we’re running out of drinkable product so I’d better get distilling soon!
The next guide after fermentation will be a step-by-step walkthrough of the distillation process, using the EasyStill/SmartStill home distiller. It can be quite daunting when you first have to put all these concepts into practical use, so again this guide should be very useful to many people. Does anyone have any requests for further guides after that? Feel free to leave them in the comments, all suggestions and feedback are welcome!
Hi, welcome to Still Smart. We’re still working on the site at the moment, but soon it will be your number one resource online for users of the EasyStill home distillation device. Keep checking back often, or subscribe to our RSS feed, and if you have anything you’d like to contribute then please get in touch!
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