How To Make A Still

by Version 2

What was in the original file was a description of a pot still, a very basic still where the concept was to boil a mash in a pot, and condense it's vapors through a tube. In a mash boiling the most common two vapors are water and alcohol. But there are also some impurities that come with those vapors. So the true art in a pot still is monoriting the tempuratures of the vapor and only collecting output at certain degrees.

Unfortunatly you can't really do that with the Unabombers still, without a little modification of the instructions. Basically you would need a thermometer in the tubing between the "Olive Oil Bottle" (Called a Pot) and the condensor. To do this you could try getting tubing bigger than the mercury thermometors found in most old style house theremometors, cut a hole in the tubing close to the cendensor and seal the therm in there. Just try to have enough room so the vapors can flow around the therm and through the hose. That modification would be needed before the rest of this will make sense.

Alright now you know how water doesn't start water doesn't start boiling till it's 100 degrees? Well let's say you've got some alcohol in there that boils under a hundred degrees. The idea would be to keep the mix boiled hot enough to boil the alcohol and not to boil the water. The vapors that would raise to the tube would be alcohol vapors, with the water still liquid in the pot. Well the different forms of alcohol also have different boiling points. Ethanol (the good one) has a boiling point right in the middle of the other ones, which makes this slightly tricky.

A real quick breakdown of the alchols and their boiling points from coolest to hottest (Celsius):

• Methanol - 64.7
• Ethanol (the good one) - 78.4
• 2-Propanol - 82.4
• 1-Propanol - 97.2
• 3Methyl-1-Butanol - 99.5
• Water - 100

Now a quick break down of "Heads and Tails": Basically with a pot still, since it's difficult to keep a constant start, operate, and shutdown tempureter, you start cold, heat up to operating, and past to shutdown. When you start keep one container labeled "throw-away" under the collection tube. as the tempuratures heats up, you keep those in this container until the temp reaches 78.4*. Then you switch the "Throw away" container for a "Keep" container. Set the throw away container aside to be disposed of (SAFELY) later. In the keep container keep collecting in there till 81-82 degrees (be on the safe side before 82.4) and then switch keep container for new throw away container. throw away those containers away. After the still cools down put the keep container back in the pot and do it until you feel it's distilled enough (usually 2-3 times).

Now by taking these extra steps what happens is you take out the impure alcohols, which in turn makes your hangovers less severe after drinking. The more different toxins in the body the more the immune system has to fight, causing the hangover. Doing this will not make the hangovers go away completely... they'll just be more bareable.

For better control over the still I would recommend an adjustable flame bunsen burner over candles. Also to make a higher quality mash there's more information on the web than I could ever type here, just google about alcohol mash and spirit makings.

For those of you who would like to see a design for a better still design that's easier to use but more expensive and difficult to make, the checkout a document called Building a Home Distillation Appuratus. It's available in a number of different forms, most common is the Free .pdf on the web (It's not pirated, it's just freely distrubeted by the people that wrote it). What the document will explain is a reflux still, that controls the tempuraters of the still output at all times.

This document was not written as an insult or was meant to be offensive to the Unabomber in anyway. In fact it's a real nice simple way for people to start in a sweet hobby like alcohol making. This was just written as kind of an attachment of my own notes to his document. - Version 2