Thursday 23 March 2017

What to do with wine nobody wants to drink No. 1. Distillation

Try this experiment at home!


All you need is a pressure cooker with a condenser and some wine you're trying to get rid of.


After attaching a couple of hoses to the pressure cooker pour in the wine. You'll need about a dozen bottles to make around 1.5 litres of alcohol at the first distillation.

Put the top on



clamp it firmly
turn on water coolant to condenser and apply flame from cooker

monitor temperature carefully (not too hot, not too cold)
your first distillate will start to trickle out.

and there's your first distillate with alcohol guage showing around 50%

Repeat another 2 times to get that XXX quality. Dilute with water to achieve 40%. Add some oak chips to add flavour and colour and taste very tentatively. Before the third distillation, the alcohol may be used for cleaning or other domestic purposes. Maybe the best idea but meanwhile, this is an amusing exercise allowing you to experience the pocess of turning wine into spirit. It is not adviseable to drink the resulting hooch. This is for experimantal purposes only.

Coming soon. What to do with wine nobody wants to drink No.2. Vinegar.

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