OnTap Magazine

ontapmag.co.za | Winter 2020 | 31 W It is legal to distil at home as long as you don’t sell the product. However, legally you are required to register your still with SARS. For more on this, check out distillique.co.za. hile not as old as b r e w i n g , the ideas of distillation – separating parts of a liquid through boiling and condensing the vapour – have been around for thousands of years. In South Africa, craft distilling also arrived a little later than its brewing counterpart, but has caught on very quickly. e number of home and craft distillers is starting to rival the number of homebrewers and microbreweries and it is easy to see why. Distilled alcoholic products have a very long shelf life, sell at a premium and are generally fairly easy to make, particularly compared to brewing beer. And for those with plenty of extra time at home during the lockdown, it’s a nice new hobby that allows you to enjoy the fruits of your labour much more quickly than with brewing. It is important to note here for any enterprising entrepreneurs that while South African law allows anyone to distil at home, it is absolutely illegal to sell it without a licence. Also, distilling alcohol can be much more dangerous than brewing or winemaking, particularly if you try to make your own equipment, or drink parts of the spirit which are essentially poison. But for those homebrewers looking for a new challenge, home distilling is an ideal extension of your hobby. THE GEAR Distillation is fairly simple process, but what sets distillation apart from brewing is the equipment. To make beer, for example, with a cooler box, a pot and something to ferment in, we’re pretty much ready to go. However, the equipment required to distil – even at a beginner level – is much more complex. ere are basically two types of still: pot and re ux (also known as a co ey or column still). A pot still is easier to make and simpler to run. At its most basic form, it consists of a thin copper pipe attached to the lid of a pot – anything from a kitchen saucepan to a repurposed keg or a custom-made copper still. e alcohol vapour rises and reaches the condenser, which cools down the vapour quickly, causing it to return to a liquid state. e liquid – known as distillate – is then collected, ready for the next stage in the process. Re ux stills work on the same general principle, but the column between the pot and the condenser has several plates through which some of the vapour condenses, resulting in a nal product with a far higher alcohol content. A re ux still can produce up to 95% ABV on a rst pass, while a pot still is more likely to achieve only 50-60% ABV. e bene t of a pot still is that the distillate contains a lot of avour from the wash; re ux stills produce a strong, neutral spirit. e vast majority of home and small distillers use pot stills, as re ux stills are very complicated to make and expensive to purchase. THE PROCESS e basic idea behind the distillation of alcohol is quite simple: the boiling point of alcohol is lower than that of water, so as you boil an alcoholic liquid, the alcohol vapours rise, leaving the water behind. e liquid that you plan to boil is called the wash and can be anything with alcohol, including beer (ideally unhopped), wine or just a solution of water and sugar which has been fermented. ere is a mistaken idea that it doesn’t matter if the beer you’re planning to distil was a failed batch and contains o - avours. is is truer for re ux stills, where the only thing left is THE LEGALITIES