In the modern world they don’t have to be. I’m not sure a bubbling still in every home is a great idea but they won’t be wood fired so that’s a start. You could also test alcohol cheaply these days for the poisonous alcohols.

Having said that, fake booze in Thailand has killed and blinded people so it’s not risk free

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mattmaroon 2 days ago | parent [-]

That’s because they adulterate it with methanol. Methanol can be derived from natural gas cheaply. I wrote a long comment above about why this isn’t a risk with home distilling.

The much bigger danger for home distilling is fire, as you have open flames and combustible vapor. The fire codes for a distillery are very strict.

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2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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bsder 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The much bigger danger for home distilling is fire, as you have open flames and combustible vapor.

This would suggest that using induction heating would be significantly safer and have the possibility of precise temperature control. Is there any reason why home distilling does/does not do this?

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mattmaroon 2 days ago | parent [-]

Electric heating does reduce the risk of fire, yes, and some of us do it. (It’s also just a lot easier than a turkey fryer.) I rigged a water heater element up for this purpose.

(Technically there actually isn’t temperature control in distilling, the temperature is just the boiling point of the mixture, which changes over time as the mixture changes from distillation, but you do control the heat input which effects the speed at which you distill. Tangential, but counterintuitive.)

The reason most don’t is just cost/practicality. You really need to have a fair bit of liquid to get good results. Like tenish gallons (~40L). You probably can’t fit a still that big on your stovetop (and you really want to do this outside anyway) and you’d need a 240v connection to provide enough heat. Your standard American wall outlet doesn’t provide enough juice.

But the standard 240v 50a you charge an EV with or, in my case, plug in your RV does. People run drier cords out a window too.

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bsder 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Like tenish gallons (~40L).

Ah, that would do it. I was thinking this was like beer homebrewing and would be around a gallon.

Thanks for the info.

	▲	mattmaroon 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, the thing is as you distill you’re saving it bit by bit as you go along. You toss out the very first stuff (called foreshots) because it contains a number of chemicals with lower boiling points you don’t want (methanol, acetone, etc.) in higher concentration. Then you get the heads, hearts, and tails and blend them together according to taste. You just wouldn’t get much separation if you distilled a small amount unless you were collecting in really tiny quantities. So it just becomes harder to do a good job with a small amount.