After my initial foray into beer making a month or so ago (my super-sickly-sweet Pale Ale will be ready to drink in three weeks, yay!) - I’ve decided to try my hand at spirits.

With a minimum turnaround of <1 week (unlike beer), it looks like it’s going to be a better hobby than beer with instant gratification, always a plus. Not to mention that I drink considerably more spirits than beer, I think this is a winner.

My first wash used a turbo yeast. This was not initially my plan, however some miscommunication, or as I’m sure my local brew store would have called it, enthusiastic marketing - ended up in me going down this path. Anyway, 7kg of sugar and 3 days of fermentation later - I’ve got something to distill.

And distill it I shall, as I type I’m using a 4 litre StillSpirits AirStill to distil my wash which is coming out at about 56% ABV.

From the exepected 4-5 Litres of 56% alcohol I’ll get out of this, I’ll be making 2.5 Litres of Tennesse Bourbon using Oak chips from recycled bourbon barrels, and 3.5 Litres of ‘Furbon’, my little joke as it’s bourbon from off-the-shelf additive packs (Fake Bourbon).

I’ll probably have the 25L of wash distilled down by Saturday morning, as pesky work commitments mean I lose valuable distilling time - at which time I’ll re-sterilise my still and put on another wash for making some off-the-shelf liqueor.

Already I can see this becoming a pretty solid hobby in the background, which means next month I’ll be moving up from sugar washes to preparing my wash from grain (a similar process from preparing wort for beer).

More to come, but in the meantime - someone please take some of these spirits off my hands, there’s already more than I could reasonably drink here.