Making the "wash"

The fermentable solution is called the WASH.

It will be transformed by yeast into alcohol and carbon dioxide. A wide variety of materials can be turned into fermentable components, as long as they contain starch and/or sugar. For the our purpose, home distilling, we will limit ourselves to three main sources of fermentable sugars which are readily available, being sugar, grain or fruit.

What do you want to make:

Tasty alcohol or clean odorless alchohol like in Vodka..

• Grain based for full flavored
  


• Sugar based for odorless & clean

Important note:

It is a federal felony to actually use this information to build your own still and produce alcohol. The information presented here is simply for informative, educational and game-use only. In no way is this document meant to persuade people to actually produce illegal alcohol. It is ill advised to do so, but if you must there are legal ways to do so. It is possible, in special cases, to get a permit to build an experimental still, work on solar power, or power an alcohol gassed automobile. If you decide you want more information, look in the library under fuel alcohol, distillery, or wine making.

Base materials for fermentation

The base materials for preparing a wash are:

• Sugar; a cheap material which produces clean and odorless alcohol
• Fruit; gives the fruity flavor to alcohol like in "eau de vie", suitably for schnapps, (fruit) brandy and grappa
• Grain; gives more flavor to alcohol, suitable for wiskey, gin, and bourbon

These materials will all have a different impact on the flavor of the alcohol. Therefore we need to decide what kind of drink we want to produce. Also the availability and price of the materials are a factor which need to be taken into consideration.