"My interest in this is largely due to my strong feeling that ""making your own"" shouldn't cost you more than buying it at the store.

Consider.... 20 lbs sugar ... (I get HyVee store brand sugar for $4.18 per 10 lbs + 6% sales tax which is $4.43 for ten pounds). So this is $0.443 per pound * 18 lbs is $7.98 for your sugar.

Now, if you buy Turbo Yeast from Brewhouse, add another $4.50 or so for a pouch of turbo yeast. We're up to $12.48 or let's round off to $12.50. Now if you buy activated charcoal at $10.00 a bag (how many batches can you run through one bag of activated charcoal? I don't know but a competing website says not to re-use it.... why? I don't know). So, let's add another $10.00 per batch (if you do re-use your activated charcoal, amortise over the number of batches you use it on).

We're up to $22.50 per batch now.

It takes me 4 hours to get my Pro II extractor up to temp (the azeotropic mixture boils at 76 Celsius where I live (ele. 1500). Then it takes another 4 hours to complete the stripping run. A total of 8 hours running the hot plate I got from Brewhaus. It is a 1.1 kilowatt hotplate. So, 1.1 kilowatts x 8 hours is 8.8 kwatt-hours. I live in the country and get electricity from an electric co-op. They soak us for electicity. I pay 16 cents per kw-hr. This is $1.41 to make a stripping run.

The price is now $23.91.

Here is what I do now: Still gotta buy the sugar. But you can make your own ""Turbo"" yeast. Start with Red Star Quick Rise yeast. I normally use 3 envelopes, but I also let mine bloom for a while before I add it. My ""Yeast Nutrient"" (don't buy it from a home-distilling website) is Vi-tal ($2.49 for 6 ounces) a water vitamin, electrolyte and mineral supplement for livestock - your local ag feed store has it. It has the riboflavin and thiamine that the yeast needs as well as other vitamins and minerals. I am presently using a teaspoon for every batch, so that $2.49 will make many, many batches.

The ""Yeast Energizer"" is diammonium phosphate, DAP (or ammonium hydrogen phosphate, (NH4)2 HPO3). This is a common agricultural fertilizer. Go down to your local grain elevator and they will probably GIVE you 5 or so pounds (bring your own bag). My elevator gave me 6 lbs free (it will cost you about $10 a pound from distilling websites). I am using 1 teaspoon per gallon. So that 6 lbs that the elevator gave me will last quite a while.

Let it ferment until it's done. The stripping run will not stink like it does with the Turbo Yeast. There will be ""other volitiles"". I make 5 or 6 stripping runs, then combine them and distill again. This second distillation (and third if you like) will produce the alcohol much faster than the original stripping runs.

Lyle"

"Thank you for your reply, Steven.

Regarding the blooming of the yeast, I use warm tap water, which is softened (to my consternation), a pinch of ""yeast nutrient"" (a nickel-sized spot in your palm) - i use the Vi-tal that I mentioned - and a teaspoon of DAP (diammonium phosphate, which contains some monoammonium phosphate, which is far less soluble than the diammonium phosphate) in about a liter of warm tap water. Also add a handful of sugar.

I let it sit for several hours open to the air. When there is oxygen available, the yeast are multiplying. If you have a microscope, you can actually see the density of yeast bodies increasing. It should make a nice, thick foam on top of the liquid. I like to stir that into the liquid every so often because the yeast needs the oxygen to multiply and the foam blocks the O2 from dissolving.

You can add the nutrients to the ""wash"" whenever you want before the addition of the yeast. You will be able to tell when the yeast bloom has made a dense solution of yeast bodies. For very active yeast, about four hours should be enough.

Lyle"

"50 pound bag of C&H sugar at Cosco is $17.99 plus tax. What percentage of ETOH do you end up with at 18 pounds of sugar? Thanks, Alan

PS: I use a propane burner called a ""Jet"" burner. Sound just like a jet at full burn. It takes 30 minutes to get 25 liters to boiling. I spend 2 hours doing the first fast distillation to get the ETOH out of the sugar yeast solution, and I do not care about the percentage as I am going to dilute it to 50% for the carbon filtration anyway. I don't worry about not catching the starting and ending water in the carbon filtration. The little black book says to continually taste the drips until the alcohol starts, and then to do the same at the end until you taste water. This only makes sense if you are planning to use the filtrate ""as-is"" at 50%. All that tasting is time consuming and pointless if you are planning to distill again. It took me an absurdly long time to figure this out! So my second fast distillation is starting at around 35-40% and ending at ~70% in about 2 hours. The last distillation is easy and takes about 1-2 hours getting me to 90%. I always do three batches at a time so that I need only three initial distillations, 1 or 2 second distillations, and 1 final distillation, to get 3+ gallons of 85% ETOH...which I call ""Tsunami!"" I finally decided on 85% because it is much easier to obtain then higher percentages, and it is a lot less hygroscopic (i.e. harsh) then 95%."