Homemade liquor question

[thuneau]

What's the point? You can get a gallon of it for under $20.00 in a store. It's a lot of work and you are not likely to do any better than the cheap stuff anyway. Plus, it's illegal to distill at home. I rather buy it and filter it to make it really neutral.

BTW, I saw ads on b2b/commercial forums that advertized food grade ethanol for $3.00-$4.00 per gallon. That works out to about $1.00 per bottle of 80 proof vodka. With a proper licence you could buy it that cheap, which makes home distilling pretty much a non starter.

If you were to make a specialty alcohol from scratch it's a different story, but for my flavored vodka, I'm just fine with the cheap stuff.

 

[skilletlicker]

What's the point? You can get a gallon of it for under $20.00 in a store. It's a lot of work and you are not likely to do any better than the cheap stuff anyway. Plus, it's illegal to distill at home. I rather buy it and filter it to make it really neutral.

BTW, I saw ads on b2b/commercial forums that advertized food grade ethanol for $3.00-$4.00 per gallon. That works out to about $1.00 per bottle of 80 proof vodka. With a proper licence you could buy it that cheap, which makes home distilling pretty much a non starter.

If you were to make a specialty alcohol from scratch it's a different story, but for my flavored vodka, I'm just fine with the cheap stuff.

What's the point was the crux of my question. You answered it well. It is an area in which I have no experience or knowledge and while the thought has occurred to me I've never so much as run one google search. I did think you were discussing a specialty alcohol but even that term may have technical meanings I'm unaware of. Also I didn't know it was illegal and plan to tell that to the judge if the revenuers show up.

If one was to buy the dried grass, any suggestions on how to adapt your recipe?

 

[thuneau]

This guy sells braids made out of dried Sweet Grass
http://www.ecoseeds.com/sweetgrass.html
look toward the bottom of the page.
I never tried the braids, just bought my live plants, but if they are not old and stale, they should do OK for the scent. Sweet Grass smells sweet for remarkably long time. Still, ask him for this season's braids, not last year's leftovers.
Edit:
I guess you will have to un-weave the braids to separate the individual blades, count off 50 and go from there.
/Edit
If you decide to try homemade Zubrowka follow the recipe to the letter. Don't try to improve on it by using more grass or more concentate per bottle.


I spent quite a bit of time getting it to this point.
Good luck!

 

[Andrewtoo]

Homemade Zubrowka.

It was easier than expected.

I steeped a fistfull of fresh Bison grass cut into 3" length in the Mason qrt jar using 80 proof Arrow vodka (charcoal filtered by Arrow) at room temperature.

After two days the green of grass changed to a staw color.
It was much too strong compared to original Polish Zubrowka.

-Diluting the steeped essence with 3 parts of Arrow vodka brought the taste to the original Polish stuff level so much so it is nearly impossible to tell the difference, as tried by several people.

Happy steeping. Andrewtoo