Miller - Craft distilling : making liquor legally at home

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 wonderfully intoxicating journey that answers the question of why distill spirits at home with eloquence and clarity that only a passionate practitioner can offer. With Millers help we come to understand just why it is that most of us cant 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 everything 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 knowledgeable distiller. The book also has many great recipes. I would highly recommend this book to any new or experienced distiller.

Mike Haney, Hillbilly Stills

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.

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 moments
notice for emergency taste-testing.

Heres 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.

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 drunkenness 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 between 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 hoping to get ones 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, someone 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. During Prohibition and still true in some social circles, it was okay to drink alcohol for medicinal purposes but not simply to make you feel better. There were and are a whole lot more eye-fluttering euphemisms for getting drunk than for staying sober, as Benjamin Franklin once observed. There are preachers who condemn drunkards out of one side of their mouths and imbibe out of the other side. Monks in search of everlasting life invented fine liqueurs which shows that we are not all crazy all the time. When I was a child, our neighbors condemned my father for drinking beer while they made and drank more potent applejack. Mom thought it was okay for Dad to have a beer or two in the evening, but oh my, not the equivalent amount of alcohol in whiskey. Getting verbally eloquent on Californias most expensive wines is now a mark of advanced civilization; getting mildly high on the cheap stuff from Concord grapes in Ohio is embarrassingly boorish. When I got interested, years ago, in making ethanol to fuel my tractor, the permit gang said that was fine so long as I did not drink one drop of it myself. Tractors have more rights than humans in the gimlet eyes of the Alcohol and Tobacco, Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB (formerly the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). I once suggested to state authorities that they should allow corn farmers to make bourbon and sell it to wholesalers just like dairy farmers produced and sold milk. The reaction was like I had suggested turning haymows into legal brothels.