"Sounds like you are gonna try the Birdwatcher recipe.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/...opic.php?f=14&t=5018

It's tried and true and will not require all thje brewshop extras.

Make tight cuts and let your collection vessels air over night.

Evaluate the next day and I'm sure you'll see a world of difference.

Do this first, then worry about charcoal later."

yep that the recipe.

"Likker has been traditionally rendered from what local folks could source. Vodka can be any thing . Old school vodka does have flavor. This notion of nuetral is a relatively modern concept that evolved into a style that the competition soon replicated. Till there was a sea of vodka that taste like nothing,,,,,,or what ever one added to it. So how does the competition distinguish itself when all the vodkas in the feild taste like ,,,,,,,,,,nuetral??? By adding back fruit notes or reducing times distilled or some such thing........by comming full circle and leaving some flavor in the final product ahla Titos or Chase.
Potatoes dont have but just a lil bit of yeild for a bunch a work.
I would hone your stilling skills and just go 3-4 times through your still with brutal cuts. The birdwatcher recipe or the wposw will git you some pretty nuetral product."

"Have not tried for myself as I stick to rum production. But have tried member's samples within the community.

Its a great recipe."

"Found this rum recipe on a copper still site I've used a couple of times with good results. Note this is not my recipe don't know who to give credit to.
BLACK BEARDS RUM*

Two pounds of brown sugar per one gallon of water and one cup of honey for every ten gallon batch. Starting hydrometer reading of about 90. Do not exceed 100. Add 1 to 3 ozs of yeast per 10 gallons of mash.*

Heat one fourth of your water to 120 or 130 degrees only hot enough to melt the sugar, then stir in your sugar and then the honey last. Pour it into your fermenter and finish filling with cool water to cool it down to 80 degrees. Take a hydrometer reading and adjust as needed. The add your yeast. 6 to 14 days to ferment.*"

All ive ever ran is a pot still, so double distill is what I have done using this recipe. Distill once add water and run 2nd time making the cuts then. This recipe has produced some drinkable mixable hooch. The 2nd time the stuff gets hot and you have to cut it to get the proof down.

"

The feed store I went to only had one kind and it was for livestock. It says on the bucket that it is not for human consumption but since it is being converted to alcohol I used it . No ill affects. If I was going to use molasses for flavoring finished rum then I'd use the kind you get at the supermarket. Doesn't really seem much different than using chicken feed for a corn substitute. If you use the small jars of molasses you get in the supermarket for your primary fermentation you'll break the bank."