Disterlery

[ZombieSlayer01]

You and your group is out looking for supplies and while you were searching a house your group locates a moon-shining distillery in the back. You know it can come in handy for medicinal purposes and moral. Do you come back with more men and load it up or do you keep it there and hide it? Or do you just leave it alone?

[CyCo]

Forget about medicinal purposes and morale (well ok, not really), but with a truck with a flex-fuel engine (like 'ex' military 'duce and a half), you can run your truck on that stuff. Or a flex-fuel generator.

;]

[Tirisilex]

I'd grab it myself.. But a Liqueur store would be a better find.. Moonshine is just aweful.. I'd rather grab some Absinthe, Malibu, RUM.. Root beer and canned orange juice.

[CarCrasher]

I would want to bring it back with me. The ability to create alcohol for sanitation purposes is wonderful. Plus when liquor stores no longer have anything to plunder, a still is the supreme morale booster. Sure moonshine is awful but with a few choice ingredients you can change the flavour of it so it's not so "robust". Molasses, brown sugar, ginger, or well just about anything that you like to flavour your food with. I would avoid anything with citrus cause that will make something that can make you blind.

[whassupman03]

Hello...

You and your group is out looking for supplies and while you were searching a house your group locates a moon-shining distillery in the back. You know it can come in handy for medicinal purposes and moral. Do you come back with more men and load it up or do you keep it there and hide it? Or do you just leave it alone?

I say that if it is remote enough to limit the amount of zombie visitors, make the house with the distillery a safe house for your group and other survivors in case you have to hide out somewhere. You can also use the distillery to make alcohol for medicinal purposes, moonshine for a bad night, fuel for internal combustion engines, and possibly even weapons. That is... if you have the know-how, you can use the moonshine for making good ol' Molotovs in case you want to screw with a bunch of zombies or malevolent human type like bandits, raiders, or cultists (Given that you take a long trip far away to do so... ) Oh and don't forget: Making moonshine is a valuable trade, and you can use it for barter purposes as well! Please take care; thanks a bunch, and have a good day.

whassupman03

[Trent]

You and your group is out looking for supplies and while you were searching a house your group locates a moon-shining distillery in the back. You know it can come in handy for medicinal purposes and moral. Do you come back with more men and load it up or do you keep it there and hide it? Or do you just leave it alone?

Yes because that is also fuel for any thing from cars and trucks to generators converted to use it . A still and a steam engine can do alot for a safe haven .

[ronekiln]

Small scale manufacturing of nearly anything is of value in a post apocalyptic world. Alcohol distilling would be of particular value. If I am very confident that the owners are never coming back, it would be relocated to my groups home.

If there's any doubt its owners may come back, I leave it out of respect and leave a note to open up communications. Then come back to check in from time to time till I become certain its owners are never coming back. After all, if I came home from exploring to find some jerks had raided my garden, stolen all my chickens and wiped out my pantry and tool shed, I'd be furious.

[azazel1024]

I would want to bring it back with me. The ability to create alcohol for sanitation purposes is wonderful. Plus when liquor stores no longer have anything to plunder, a still is the supreme morale booster. Sure moonshine is awful but with a few choice ingredients you can change the flavour of it so it's not so "robust". Molasses, brown sugar, ginger, or well just about anything that you like to flavour your food with. I would avoid anything with citrus cause that will make something that can make you blind.

Citrus wouldn't make you blind (unless applied to the eyes). Citrus works quite well with alcohol.

Two disadvantages to a still. First off, unless we are talking a micro-still, the things aren't small. A typical still you'd see a moonshiner using is going to be very LARGE. Like, maybe you might be able to load it in the back of a pick-up truck with 4-5 friends helping you, or maybe dissassemble it and load it up with only 2-3 guys helping you.

Next, making alcohol takes awhile. You have to ferment the mash which typically takes 3-8 days and then you have to run it through the still.

If you want to run a vehicle on it, you are probably going to have to distill it at LEAST twice if not more times. Then you'll probably have to run it real loose. Regular distilling IIRC can't get much better than about 99% ethanol, which leaves 1% water, which is a fair amount of water when you are talking about something you are injecting in to an engine. That is also going to take a LOT of work to distill down to that level.

Based on inputs, it is going to take something on the order of 25 pounds of corn (wheat, rice or barley) to produce approximately 1 gallon of nearly pure ethanol. So if you need to fill up a duece and a half's tank full, you are talking having to mash and ferment out something on the order of 750lbs of corn/wheat/rice/barley to get the roughly 30 gallons of ethanol you'd need. Considering the drop in efficiency from alcohol instead of diesel/gas, you are probably looking at around 6-8 miles per gallon. That means you'll be twiddling your thumbs for probably a couple of weeks to make enough ethanol to fill the tank on a duece and a half enough to drive maybe 200 miles or so, before you'd need to do it all again. All the while consuming around a third of a ton of grain...that...some how appeared?

Now micro-distilling for a couple of pints of ethanol for things like sanitation and getting drunk, sure, very viable. Still takes a fair amount of time and effort to do.

In general, if you need fuel, unless you are setup as a large community, your best bet is to scavenge or possibly convert a vehicle to woodgas.

Sorry for the dash of cold water.

Ethanol and distilling for fuel is really only a viable option for a safe haven community (and probably a fair sized one). It is NOT going to be a legit option for even a large group. It takes too long and takes too many inputs

[CarCrasher]

I say to avoid citrus fruits cuz they are high in pectin. That's what makes methanol which is an optic nerve poison. It does however leave the still first, so a safe bet would be to remove the first bit of your batch before the good stuff flows. Methanol de-natures ethanol which Would be bad for getting drunk.

[azazel1024]

Okay, true the pectin can be an issue in distilling. From everything I have read, basically because of the density difference, you just skim off some percentage of the top product before you "bottle". For fuel, it should matter little.

If you are using a citrus product AFTER distilling, no effect. First off, the yeast is killed and/or wouldn't be transported to the distillate, so no distilling would occur. Pectin doesn't transform ethanol to methanol, its the fermentation that breaks the pectin in to methanol. So it is perfectly safe to add high pectin fruits to moonshine after the fact. You just do NOT want to be using them in the mash to ferment the base before distillation.

General lethal dose is in the 100ml range, which means that even if you somehow got a bit of methanol in a batch, you are probably safe with a little skimming off the top of a moonshine barrel. Almost ALL fermentation will yield at least a tiny bit of methanol, but generally you are talking on parts per million. Its once you get ABVs above ~12% that it can possibly start to be an issue (and just with high pectin inputs, like berries and grapes) and in part because once you get to really high ABVs, you can start getting seperation between ethanol/methanol and the "base" to some degree, so at bottling time, you could accidently bottle closer to pure methanol and/or later it might seperate out so you are swigging closer to pure methanol out of a bottle.

Hence, skim maybe the top 5-10% off a barrel of moonshine (I am guessing, I don't actually know the standard practice) to be safe and then methanol content of the final product is likely to be vanishingly low.

Me personally, I'd rather just make beer or wine if I want alcohol after everything goes to pot. A bit less chance of getting drunk (unless I intended to) and better for sanitation. You CAN sanatize water with some spirits in it, but you need a relatively high ABV to do that.

Beer on the other hand is clean. You have to boil the wort (water/sugar/hops mix) to start with and then the alcohol and hops both have general antibacteria properties. If the beer were to be infected down the road, the bottle/keg/cask would burst (from excess CO2 production)...so in general beer is pretty darned safe to drink. Also if you are brewing lighter beer, like 3-4% range, in general you could drink that entirely instead of water if the local water supply was in question at all. Spread over a day, if you need 1/2-1 gallon of water to stay well hydrated, that works out to around 5-10 beers and based on BAC, we are talking around a 4-8 "drinks" (which, IIRC is measured based on something like 12oz of 4.5 or 5% ABV beer)...spread over a day and only 3-4% ABV, perfectly fine. You probably wouldn't even get drunk (unless you were hammering several back at once because you were really thirsty). Now...I might question liver health given a few decades of such behavior...

But in general still safe.

Its part of the reason why beer and wine were generated so early in civilization and part of the reason why some historians think we became civilized. You kind of HAVE to settle down for agriculture to make beer and wine. Its safe to drink, unlike water sometimes and it has the bonus of making you "happy" if you drink enough of it. Also lots of nutrition, especially beer. All that yeast has lots of B vitamins in it and lots of calories (even if the alcohol is called "empty" calories...if you are living a hard working life where other forms of calorie intake might be in question, beer is a damned good thing as it is well preserved calories sitting on a shelf for a rainy day).

I don't know that I'd really want to, but if you brewed up a nice 5 gallon batch of beer, you could pretty much live on just that for a week without any other food or water. You'd eventually suffer from malnurishment...but you'd be getting sufficient calories and hydration. Mix in some real food in there and you are good to go.

Downside...beer not so portable. Still and all, if it looks like the world is coming to an end, if I was thinking of staying put, I'd brew up as much beer and/or buy as much beer as I possibly could (with an emphasis on lighter beer). Only downside is lighter beers start funking after 8-12 months and heavier beers generally only have 18-36 months in them. Still, should be drinkable even after that...just funky.

[whassupman03]

Hello...

I have a thought about the production of ethanol fuel in distilleries such as those discussed here (Sure, it's a little off-topic right now, but I think it may be a useful set of facts... ). While corn is a productive source of ethanol production, one could always look toward the Brazilian way of producing ethanol - by using sugarcane. Sugarcane-based ethanol is at least twice as productive as its corn-based counterpart by the acre, and if I remember correctly (Relying on memories involving previous viewings of Modern Marvels on the History Channel) it is so productive that one of the primary sources of automobile fuel in Brazil is sugarcane ethanol![sup]1[/sup] One interesting fact is that sugarcane ethanol is exported to the USA by the gallon - several hundred million of them right now, and one could conceive that they could also export the crops and machinery to produce it here. Just a thought of course. Anyway, please take care; thanks a bunch, and have a good day.

whassupman03

[1]: Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2013/0921/Is-Brazilian-sugarcane-the-answer-to-U.S.-biofuel-needs

[azazel1024]

Per acre yes, but not per pound of input. Refined sugar yields .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. Corn yields around .035 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. With the right yeast yeach tenth of a point of gravity yields around a 1% alcohol mixture in the end. So .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water means when it has fermented out, you'd be left with around 1 gallon of 4.4% ABV mixture. In the case of the corn, around 3.5% ABV for a single pound in 1 gallon.

That said, you also lose a bit of the weight of the input getting to refined sugar (of course you also lose the corn stalk, leaves, germ, cob, etc).

Actually if you have very little equipment, the BESTEST thing you can do is use wheat. It has one of the highest productions of grain versus stalk, great production per area, it has all of the right enzymes like barley does to convert its starches to sugars (corn doesn't, you have to add enzymes either derived ones, or by mixing with wheat/barley) and it requires little processing compared to sugar (sugar requires a fair amount of processing to get the sugar from the cane, though you can do simple processing if you don't mind raw, non-refined sugar).

You also have to use VERY specialzed yeasts as well as yeast nutrients to ferment straight sugar in any large volume. Wheat and barley (and corn to some degree) have nutrients that yeast need. Sugar is only straight energy for the yeast (at least refined sugar, raw sugar has some nutrients in it...but it is also less productive than refined sugar. Molasses has TONS of nutrients...which is why you can straight ferment it and then distill it in to rum).

Sugar is awesome because it is highly productive per acre in comparison to corn (or even wheat or barley), but it also takes more processing and more steps to turn it from sugar to alcohol

Sugar also doesn't grow well over most of the US. Sugar Beets do grow well over a lot of the US, but require even more steps to extract the sugars from them and refine them (basically have to soak and extract the sugars, then lime it and boil it down).

I think in most parts of the US if you are going to be producing Ethanol or Methanol for fuel your best bet is probably using the food crop that grows best in your area (corn/wheat/barley/sorghum). Or...better yet, go with an oil based crop like peanuts, canola or palm and go with vegetable oils to run diesel engines on.

[say652]

Yup. Molotav cocktails.

[Trent]

Per acre yes, but not per pound of input. Refined sugar yields .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. Corn yields around .035 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. With the right yeast yeach tenth of a point of gravity yields around a 1% alcohol mixture in the end. So .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water means when it has fermented out, you'd be left with around 1 gallon of 4.4% ABV mixture. In the case of the corn, around 3.5% ABV for a single pound in 1 gallon.

That said, you also lose a bit of the weight of the input getting to refined sugar (of course you also lose the corn stalk, leaves, germ, cob, etc).

Actually if you have very little equipment, the BESTEST thing you can do is use wheat. It has one of the highest productions of grain versus stalk, great production per area, it has all of the right enzymes like barley does to convert its starches to sugars (corn doesn't, you have to add enzymes either derived ones, or by mixing with wheat/barley) and it requires little processing compared to sugar (sugar requires a fair amount of processing to get the sugar from the cane, though you can do simple processing if you don't mind raw, non-refined sugar).

You also have to use VERY specialzed yeasts as well as yeast nutrients to ferment straight sugar in any large volume. Wheat and barley (and corn to some degree) have nutrients that yeast need. Sugar is only straight energy for the yeast (at least refined sugar, raw sugar has some nutrients in it...but it is also less productive than refined sugar. Molasses has TONS of nutrients...which is why you can straight ferment it and then distill it in to rum).

Sugar is awesome because it is highly productive per acre in comparison to corn (or even wheat or barley), but it also takes more processing and more steps to turn it from sugar to alcohol

Sugar also doesn't grow well over most of the US. Sugar Beets do grow well over a lot of the US, but require even more steps to extract the sugars from them and refine them (basically have to soak and extract the sugars, then lime it and boil it down).

I think in most parts of the US if you are going to be producing Ethanol or Methanol for fuel your best bet is probably using the food crop that grows best in your area (corn/wheat/barley/sorghum). Or...better yet, go with an oil based crop like peanuts, canola or palm and go with vegetable oils to run diesel engines on.

How about rice ?

[CarCrasher]

Vegetable oil clogs up the engine faster then then the proper fuel. However a quick engine exchange and your golden. After the engine is out some maintenance will have it clean again in no time.

[whassupman03]

Hello...

Per acre yes, but not per pound of input. Refined sugar yields .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. Corn yields around .035 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. With the right yeast yeach tenth of a point of gravity yields around a 1% alcohol mixture in the end. So .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water means when it has fermented out, you'd be left with around 1 gallon of 4.4% ABV mixture. In the case of the corn, around 3.5% ABV for a single pound in 1 gallon.

That said, you also lose a bit of the weight of the input getting to refined sugar (of course you also lose the corn stalk, leaves, germ, cob, etc).

Actually if you have very little equipment, the BESTEST thing you can do is use wheat. It has one of the highest productions of grain versus stalk, great production per area, it has all of the right enzymes like barley does to convert its starches to sugars (corn doesn't, you have to add enzymes either derived ones, or by mixing with wheat/barley) and it requires little processing compared to sugar (sugar requires a fair amount of processing to get the sugar from the cane, though you can do simple processing if you don't mind raw, non-refined sugar).

You also have to use VERY specialzed yeasts as well as yeast nutrients to ferment straight sugar in any large volume. Wheat and barley (and corn to some degree) have nutrients that yeast need. Sugar is only straight energy for the yeast (at least refined sugar, raw sugar has some nutrients in it...but it is also less productive than refined sugar. Molasses has TONS of nutrients...which is why you can straight ferment it and then distill it in to rum).

Sugar is awesome because it is highly productive per acre in comparison to corn (or even wheat or barley), but it also takes more processing and more steps to turn it from sugar to alcohol

Sugar also doesn't grow well over most of the US. Sugar Beets do grow well over a lot of the US, but require even more steps to extract the sugars from them and refine them (basically have to soak and extract the sugars, then lime it and boil it down).

I think in most parts of the US if you are going to be producing Ethanol or Methanol for fuel your best bet is probably using the food crop that grows best in your area (corn/wheat/barley/sorghum). Or...better yet, go with an oil based crop like peanuts, canola or palm and go with vegetable oils to run diesel engines on.

I see. Thank you for bringing that useful info to my attention. Personally, I'm not much of a chemist anyway.

Vegetable oil clogs up the engine faster then then the proper fuel. However a quick engine exchange and your golden. After the engine is out some maintenance will have it clean again in no time.

Vegetable oil can be burned more safely in diesel engines with the right procedures. Mixing it with conventional fuels or modifying the engine as you put it will do the trick.[sup]1[/sup] Anyhoo... please take care; thanks a bunch, and have a good day.

whassupman03

[1]: Source: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-consumption/vegetable-oil-fuel1.htm

[azazel1024]

Per acre yes, but not per pound of input. Refined sugar yields .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. Corn yields around .035 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water. With the right yeast yeach tenth of a point of gravity yields around a 1% alcohol mixture in the end. So .044 gravity per pound in 1 gallon of water means when it has fermented out, you'd be left with around 1 gallon of 4.4% ABV mixture. In the case of the corn, around 3.5% ABV for a single pound in 1 gallon.

That said, you also lose a bit of the weight of the input getting to refined sugar (of course you also lose the corn stalk, leaves, germ, cob, etc).

Actually if you have very little equipment, the BESTEST thing you can do is use wheat. It has one of the highest productions of grain versus stalk, great production per area, it has all of the right enzymes like barley does to convert its starches to sugars (corn doesn't, you have to add enzymes either derived ones, or by mixing with wheat/barley) and it requires little processing compared to sugar (sugar requires a fair amount of processing to get the sugar from the cane, though you can do simple processing if you don't mind raw, non-refined sugar).

You also have to use VERY specialzed yeasts as well as yeast nutrients to ferment straight sugar in any large volume. Wheat and barley (and corn to some degree) have nutrients that yeast need. Sugar is only straight energy for the yeast (at least refined sugar, raw sugar has some nutrients in it...but it is also less productive than refined sugar. Molasses has TONS of nutrients...which is why you can straight ferment it and then distill it in to rum).

Sugar is awesome because it is highly productive per acre in comparison to corn (or even wheat or barley), but it also takes more processing and more steps to turn it from sugar to alcohol

Sugar also doesn't grow well over most of the US. Sugar Beets do grow well over a lot of the US, but require even more steps to extract the sugars from them and refine them (basically have to soak and extract the sugars, then lime it and boil it down).

I think in most parts of the US if you are going to be producing Ethanol or Methanol for fuel your best bet is probably using the food crop that grows best in your area (corn/wheat/barley/sorghum). Or...better yet, go with an oil based crop like peanuts, canola or palm and go with vegetable oils to run diesel engines on.

How about rice ?

Rice will work just fine too, but it requires more work to cultivate in much of the US than corn, wheat or barley do.

[Tirisilex]

After reading this I would say that a Distillery is too complicated to grab unless you have a large safe haven with mucho people.

[azazel1024]

Pretty much. I mean, a backyard micro distillary that you might use to make a couple of pints of moonshine/liquor, sure. They aren't that big, you could break it down and throw in the back of your car, truck, what have you. It wouldn't be that difficult to do mashes to get enough raw input to distill a few pints, but it takes a LOT of equipment and feedstock once you get above the level of a few pints.

Actually in some ways you might be better off with vodka. Potatoes are awesome for startch content. You have to add the enzymes for fermentation like with corn, but I can tell you from experience I can grow more starch content per square foot from potatoes than I can from corn.

Cut off the cob I probably end up with something like 2-4lbs per 20sq-ft of corn and I end up with probably 15-20lbs of potatoes for the same bit of ground (I have a very large garden on my property). Now if you could get the stalks, husks and cobs fermented/converted corn would probably go back to being better.

Corn is just used in the US sooooo much because potatoes have never been a huge crop compared to some parts of the world (*cough* Russia), is a bit more difficult to mash (it gets sticky) and corn farmers get massive subsidies to turn their food in to ethanol (driving up the price of corn/food).

With moonshining, the moonshiners don't really need to worry about growning a few acres of corn just to make a couple of barrels of moonshine. They can just go to a feed supply store or wherever and buy several thousand pounds of feed stock corn or what not and work with that.

Still and all, I think, at least if you were going to last awhile, most any safe haven above the size of a few dozen people would look to brewing, vinting or distilling if they were doing ANY kind of agriculture. There are just so many upsides to beer/wine/spirits. Between long storage of calories/clean drinking, "relaxing", medicinal uses of high proof alcohol, possibly supplementing or using as the sole source of fuel, etc.

[Trent]

Just I geuss it depends on where-when your campaign starts, (Laid-off work, BROKE!Cant buy Book right now but,.. Palladium-True BLUE!), I don't have the DR books, but wouldn't that still make a nice target? I mean ppl. will panic for food, water, feul and ANYTHING YOU GOT!, and want it for themselves and Family. How many ppl. would waste or at least shoot someone over a few cans of baby formula for their infant child? Then, theres the still. it's a big-thingy, not easily hidden (ask any moonshiner!),....and draws a lot of attention. Plus side, Morale would be AWESOME!!! around a small-town on a Trade/Barter route and Cash is King! Would make a killer-Barter! " Want this new AK-47 with picatinny-rails, folding-stock, red-dot sight and 500-lumen-tac-light? I want 30 bottles of that Shine there and I'l throw in some batteries!" lol Sorry to bug Yall, sure ppl. have thought of this before, just sayin',...A still has it Ads'/Disses'.

Laid off and broke . Been there a few times . Keep the faith that things will get better . I wish you the best . if it's any consolation its the people who have gotten by with less that have the best chances in a world crisis . Such as Dead Reign lol . Good view on the still and barter system .

[whassupman03]

Hello...

Just I geuss it depends on where-when your campaign starts, (Laid-off work, BROKE!Cant buy Book right now but,.. Palladium-True BLUE!), I don't have the DR books, but wouldn't that still make a nice target? I mean ppl. will panic for food, water, feul and ANYTHING YOU GOT!, and want it for themselves and Family. How many ppl. would waste or at least shoot someone over a few cans of baby formula for their infant child? Then, theres the still. it's a big-thingy, not easily hidden (ask any moonshiner!),....and draws a lot of attention. Plus side, Morale would be AWESOME!!! around a small-town on a Trade/Barter route and Cash is King! Would make a killer-Barter! " Want this new AK-47 with picatinny-rails, folding-stock, red-dot sight and 500-lumen-tac-light? I want 30 bottles of that Shine there and I'l throw in some batteries!" lol Sorry to bug Yall, sure ppl. have thought of this before, just sayin',...A still has it Ads'/Disses'.

I would like to refer to a philosophy of bartering for your "ANYTHING YOU GOT" idea. For example, if someone is starving or sick (Or has a child who is in such condition in your case...), they will attack you rather than pay too much for food or medicine. But if that someone is just desperate for, say, a cigarette or a book to read, then that customer will probably go back for more money. Marauders aside, it depends on what the customer needs and/or wants. Necessities such as food, water, and medicine for sick individuals are more vital than, say, a Nintendo 3DS and a set of games. Also, they have to recognize the barter good with its value as the real deal. Let's say that you offer a container of medicine to trade (e.g. Pills) with a customer who is sick. So if you show them a bottle of what you say is Tylenol, would they pay for it? These scenarios make up good role-playing in the case of barter skills. YMMV, but if you have a sustained source of barter income (Literally, alcohol has many more uses than for burning in internal combustion engines and burning brain cells... ), you would have a rather solid income. Well I have to go, so I'll talk with you later. Please take care; thank you for listening, and have a good day.

whassupman03