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Craft distilling: making liquor legally at home PDF

226 Pages·2016·7.849 MB·English
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Praise for CRAFT DISTILLING Craft Distilling accomplishes the extraordinary task of making the arcane art form accessible and practical for anyone who can cook from a recipe. The joy of creating spirits at home is a great incentive for learning a little chemistry and Victoria makes the chemistry fun! —Bryan Welch, Mother Earth News , and CEO, B the Change Media In Craft Distilling, author Victoria Redhed Miller leads us on a won- derfully intoxicating journey that answers the question of why dis- till spirits at home with eloquence and clarity that only a passionate practitioner can offer. With Miller’s help we come to understand just why it is that most of us can’t legally make spirits for ourselves, and she makes a wonderful case for why we should be able to do just that! Set the history aside for a spell and Craft Distilling delves deeply into the science of alcohol distillation and sets you up with every- thing from detailed recipes for your favorite liquors and insight on constructing your own still. Craft Distilling is as important for dreamers and practitioners as it is for policy makers, and it belongs on the shelf of everyone who has anything to do with the production and consumption of distilled spirits. —Oscar H. Will III, Editorial Director, Mother Earth News This is one of the most comprehensive books I have seen to date. This book tells you everything you need to know to become a knowl- edgeable distiller. The book also has many great recipe’s. I would highly recommend this book to any new or experienced distiller. —Mike Haney, Hillbilly Stills CRAFT DISTILLING Making Liquor Legally at Home Victoria Redhed Miller Copyright © 2016 by Victoria Redhed Miller. All rights reserved. Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Cover main image © iStock: Zakharova_Natalia Printed in Canada. First printing January 2016. This book is intended to be educational and informative. It is not intended to serve as a guide. The author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk that may be associated with the application of any of the contents of this book. Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Craft Distilling should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to: New Society Publishers P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada (250) 247-9737 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Miller, Victoria Redhed, author Craft distilling : making liquor legally at home / Victoria Redhed Miller. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-0-86571-804-3 (paperback). — isbn 978-1-55092-604-0 (ebook) 1. Liquors — Amateurs’ manuals. 2. Distillation — Amateurs’ manuals. I. Title. TP597.M54 2016 663'.16 C2015-906495-3 C2015-906496-1 New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council®- registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine-free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC®-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com For David, my wonderful husband and partner in homesteading. Thank you for being so supportive of all my projects, for encouraging me to pursue my passions and for always being available at a moment’s notice for emergency taste-testing. Here’s to all who refined their craft and perfected their skills as home distillers; may your spirit live on in those of us aiming for a world of good spirits and sensible rules. Contents Foreword,by Gene Logsdon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction: The Accidental Activist . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii 1. Why Make Your Own Liquor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. A Revenooer Walked into a Nanaimo Bar... . . . . . . . . . 7 3. Making Liquor Legally at Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4. The Basic Principles of Distillation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 5. Building a Small Column Still . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 6. Your “Home” Distillery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 7. The Economics of Distilling Your Own Liquor . . . . . . . 41 8. Mashing Grains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 9. Fermentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 10. Overview of the Distilling Process and Techniques . . . . 73 11. Rum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 12. Gin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 13. Vodka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 14. Malt Whiskey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 15. Irish Whiskey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 16. Other Kinds of Whiskey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 17. Tequila and Sunchoke Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 18. Don’t Be So Immature: Aging Small-batch Spirits . . . . . 131 vii viii Craft Distilling 19. Brandy, Liqueurs and Other Excuses to Spend More Time in the Stillhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 20. Handmade Bitters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 21. Making Your Own Mixers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 22. Putting It All Together: Classic Cocktail Recipes Featuring Your Homemade Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 23. Other Uses for Your Distillation Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 24. The Farm Distillery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 25. The Case for Making Non-commercial Distilling Legal . . 183 26. Let’s Raise the Bar: The Future of True Craft Distilling . . 191 Appendix A: Useful Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Appendix B: Resources for Information on Distilling in Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Appendix C: Sample Record-keeping Form . . . . . . . . . 201 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 FOREWORD Sanity Finally Comes To Moonshine Phobia by Gene Logsdon Should you be so optimistic as to think you can figure out why human beings are mostly crazy, study the history of intoxicating beverages. I do not mean just the miseries that result from drunk- enness which kills or maims more people and wrecks more families than war, but the kind of feckless righteousness that really believes laws and preachments can make liquor disappear. Add to that the millions of little acts of irrational contradiction that flourish be- tween the two extremes and you will surely become as convinced as I am that we are all nuts. More than one kind of intoxication is involved in the conflict, from hoping to get plastered in a bar to hop- ing to get one’s name plastered on the pillars of righteous sobriety. All to no avail. No matter how hard the pious opposition to distilling alcohol has labored down through the centuries, humans have just kept right on making the stuff. If brickbats contained sugar, some- one would have made whiskey out of them by now. The absurdities in the battle to suppress drinking are endless. Even after all these centuries of unsuccessful war on distilled spirits, the word “liquor”, still makes some people cringe, just as the word, “sex”, does. It is proper enough to say that you have been to the village tavern, but not the corner bar. Hypocrisy is the name of the game. ix

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