Mash

How to make alcohol for fuel and medicinal purposes. First you must obtain a holding tank, 6 gallons or so. Now, put it where you are going to put your still. Keep your still somewhere with a good breeze or away from people who will smell it. When you are fermenting the stuff, it will smell like puke or even worse. When you are distilling it, your heater might put off smoke. The alcohol will smell like alcohol, and heated mash smells worse than an outhouse. Now go get a load of fresh or frozen whatever (check the list below). Corn will be easiest to deal with because it is very forgiving with beginners. Besides, it's all part of a great American tradition: Moonshine! All kidding aside, remember, in some locales, there are laws against making your own alcohol.

Ingredient	Product
Rye or Potatoes	Vodka
Molasses or Sugar Cane	Rum
Corn	Moonshine
Wheat or Rye	Whiskey
Barley or Rice	Beer
Grapes	Wine
Apple Juice	Hard Cider
Rice	Sake

Put about 10 bags of corn in each holding tank and no more, because the carbon dioxide being released sometime pushes it up and out and you could get the mash all over the ground. What a waste. Besides, it will start to rot in the ground and smell even worse. Anyway, add just enough lukewarm water to cover the surface and leave the stuff exposed to air for about 2 weeks at room temperature. Fermentation is a living process of the yeast cell which converts sugar, if you can manually add yeast it will help the process along from 1-2 weeks without adding yeast to 3-5 days with, or until the bubbling pretty much stops. Any place that sells beer/wine making supplies is a good source. Room temperature in the dark is best. If you wait too long then you will get vinegar instead of alcohol.

After a few days it will bubble and look and smell like puke, but that's no problem. It should do that. Just be sure you've got adequate ventilation. Installing a small fan in your holding tank is no problem. Drilling holes in the sides of plastic or metal with a sharp drill bit is easy. Drill two holes near the top, where there won't be any corn (fans do tend to heat up and short circuit when exposed to water) and insert two tubes. Make the fan blowing air into your jug, and not out. The mist from the mash will wear it down after awhile.

Offered by Steve.