One of the best ways to save money on alcohol is to make your own. Once you have a vodka distilling kit you can create vodka at home quickly and easily. The most common reason people choose to make their own alcohol is not just because it is cheaper, but because they can control the quality.
If a person does not want a lot of alcohol in their product, then the number of purchase ingredients can be limited. This results in less alcohol per gallon, which cuts down on the cost. Without having to worry about additional costs from taking your bottle back to the store or paying for a deposit on a new bottle, you will be able to save even more money in the long run.
Simple and Easy to Use
Tasting and enjoying homemade vodka is a great way to spend an evening with friends or family. You will need to invest a little bit of money into the initial equipment needed to make your own vodka, but after that, you will be able to make delicious alcoholic beverages at home for much less than you would buy them in a store.
Vodka is an alcoholic beverage made from water and ethanol. Traditionally, it is made by the distillation of fermented foods, although some modern brands are made using grain or alcohol substitutes. This guide will tell you how to make vodka from scratch and give you recipe ideas for tasty cocktails.
You’ll need a gallon of distilled water, about 5 pounds of sugar, 1 cup of starter yeast (bread yeast) and one of honey. Dissolve the sugar in 2 cups of water and then add the remaining water to it. Add the honey and stir until it dissolves. Leave this mixture for 24 hours at room temperature so that the yeast can ferment properly. You’ll know the fermentation has begun when you see foam on top of the mixture.
After 24 hours, strain the mixture through a cheesecloth or fine sieve into a container that can hold up to 3 gallons of liquid (such as a large plastic container). The filtered liquid is now ready to be used to make your homemade vodka.
What Makes Homemade Vodka Better?
Store-bought vodka has a bad reputation for being flavourless and watered down. However, with a home vodka distilling kit, you can create a premium product that has no additives, preservatives or water before bottling it yourself. This means your homemade vodka will have a higher proof than the store-bought variety and will contain the true taste of your ingredients, allowing you to experiment with different combinations. You can also add additional flavours after bottling using flavoured syrups or drops.
Creating Different Flavours
The simplest way to create different flavours is by altering the ingredients used in the distillation process. When making homemade vanilla extract, for instance, place whole vanilla beans into the alcohol during distillation and then remove them once it has finished leaving behind the extracted oils without having to use sugar or artificial flavouring. The same method works well when creating fruit flavoured vodkas as you can drop them in pieces of fresh fruits.
The stills for home distilling vodka are of a couple of types. The most common one is the pot still, which is basically a pot with a perforated false bottom that water and alcohol vapours pass through. This is the least efficient design because of the low boiling point of alcohol. The vapours simply pass up through the pot and out of the condenser, wasting much liquid in the process. Another type is reflux still. The water and alcohol vapours rise from the mash to the reflux chamber, where they are cooled by a constant flow of cold water. This condenses them back into liquid form so that they can fall back into the mash—this is called distilling.
There Are No Known Brands of Vodka That Are Gluten-Free
Vodka is made from corn mash, which means it contains gluten. When making it, the danger of cross-contamination looms large. To minimize your risk of getting sick, follow these rules:
Wash everything that will come in contact with your mash with hot soapy water and rinse well.
Use clean glass, stainless steel, or food-grade plastic containers for your mash and never use anything previously used for any other purpose (such as storing chemicals).
Make sure all surfaces and containers used in your home distilling operation are washed before you begin making vodka.
Do not use rags or towels that have had contact with grains during the fermentation process to wipe down equipment because they can harbour germs from the mash. Wash them separately from your equipment and do not reuse them for wiping down equipment either.
If you have an open cut or sore on your hands, avoid contact with the mash/wash at all costs.
One Gallon of Vodka per Batch
The most popular type of home distilling kit for making vodka is a one gallon per batch system. This is best for those who want to make smaller amounts of vodka at a time. These kits are also easy to move around. They come with everything that you need to make your own vodka. The whole process takes less than a month and once you have distilled your first batch, you can start distilling again right away. Once you have made your first batch, the next one will be ready in about 2 weeks so it is possible to turn that pure alcohol into vodka in about 3 weeks or less. You will be provided with all the necessary equipment including an air pump and a fermenter, as well as other pieces needed for the distilling process such as thermometers and spoons, so there is no need to worry about purchasing extra items that you may not need or cannot afford.
This home distilling kit comes with step by step instructions that anyone can follow so there is no need for previous experience in the field.