What’s the highest concentration of alcohol that you think this group could make?
What’s the highest concentration of alcohol that you think this group could make?
95.63 % or 191 Proof is about as high as you can get without going beyond traditional distillation purposes because at that point ethanol and water become azeotropes. In other words, when such a proportion of ethanol to remaining water is boiled, the vapors have the same concentration as the liquid form so you aren’t concentrating anything further.
If for some reason you need that extra sub 5 % pickup, I would look up how to produce reagent grade ethanol sold to labs.
[Hic]
JAG “Nobody Knows How Geek I Am” MAN
P.S. Maybe we should start a DMS Bar & Brewery (elsewhere, of course) where scientists, nerds, engineers and very intelligent lab rats could get together and throw back a few - it would be quite the theme tavern.
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I ask, because I can foresee using fuel alcohol to power some projects, and it might be nice if we could produce our own.
Everclear (190) is plenty good to run an engine, and home distillation is still heavily regulated afaik.
Reverse engineering some Jagermeister could be lucrative though…
In order to make it cost effective you need a cheap source of grain.
Why grain? Why not weeds?
No reason not to I guess. Just not sure how to create the wart from say grass clippings. Either way you’ll need A LOT to make any useful quantity. Plus a cheap energy source-- say saw dust compressed into logs. That way you could use the woodshop waste.
I recall that whatever feedstock I use, it needs to have a lot of sugar, because it’s the sugar (usually) that gets converted into alcohol. It would be nice if the cellulose could be converted.
Basically any plant matter contains carbohydrates, which break down into sugars. The main reason grains are used (beyond flavor), is that they are dense in carbs. I think the problem with weeds is that you will need a really large amount to produce reasonable quantities.
It might be worth experimenting with fermenting saw dust…
Keep in mind that, as far as I know, distilling alcohol, even if it’s not for commercial use or consumption, is illegal without a federal permit. The pricing of that permit is largely impractical for individuals. http://www.ttb.gov/industrial/distillation_of_ethanol.shtml
Well, now that I’m reading more information online, I’m not so sure. Some say the permit for fuel alcohol distilling is free. Anyone have more info about it?
Let not waste the Jager and sit back and make some moonshine and sip some
jager while we stop at the cng or lng station to fuel up that engine.
It would seem to cost more to make your own fuel.
Ya can’t ferment wood directly. First ya gotta bust up the heavy duty cellular bonds which, well isn’t easy, hence wood being so naturally durable. A few weenie yeasts can’t do it like they can on boiled grains.
Having said, it’s been done.
Here’s a link to an article dated 2008 with a “breakthrough”: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14360-chemical-breakthrough-turns-sawdust-into-biofuel.html#.VTcn2Rko6BY
Another semi-dated one which contends it is laboratory only:Ethanol resources on the Web: Journey to Forever
And a bright spot claiming its going on now and has been since ww ii:Description of Operating Process
The last time I looked into it, the taxation in Texas was on the amount of alcohol the still COULD produce, not the actual amount produced, was what was taxed… Crazy, right?
Also, if you produced alcohol for fuel, it had to be rendered unusable for consumption by adding rubbing alcohol or gasoline in some number of ounces per gallon.
Hopefully some of that ridiculousness has been fixed by now.
My uncle used to run a solar still for fuel alcohol, the state of Oklahoma would make him add kerosene to make it undrinkable.
When all else fails there’s always producer gas!