Regarding the production of alcoholic beverages

shofukan

Not quite sure whether to put this in Beer & Wine & Spirits or in here but I'll give it a go in here anyway. I'm not intending to break any rules, just looking for information.
Could anyone direct me towards any and all government legislation regarding brewing & distilling? It'd be much appreciated

Mashtun

Home brewing: Fire away, make as much as ya like as long as you don't intend to sell it.

Home distilling: Illegal in Ireland and I'm pretty sure that has never stopped anybody who was interested in doing it!

BeerNut

seanor3 wrote: »

Could anyone direct me towards any and all government legislation regarding brewing & distilling? It'd be much appreciated

That's some very expensive legal research right there: it's scattered through about 180 years worth of legislation. There'll be a lot of relevant caselaw too.

You need a licence to do both commercially, but you don't need one for making fermented beverages (beer, wine, cider) at home for personal use. Distilling always requires a licence, however.

rubadub

Unfortunately loads of myths still persist (as well as tax issues) so distillation is illegal here without a licence, in some less backward countries it is legal, but can have limits (though there are limits on brewing beer here too). e.g. in Italy distillation is legal but I think there is a restriction so your still cannot hold more than say 5Litres, this is the case in many countries. It is like some countries now allow you grow 2-3 cannabis plants, you should not need more for personal use so its a wise restriction.

I think New Zealand is the most liberal in its laws for distilling, I don't think there is any rule on still volume. It is very popular in Sweden though illegal there.

shofukan

That's actually really useful so far, thanks everyone!

Probably should have said that I'm interested in any current applicable legislation.. I've been looking into everything but info seems to be hard to find.

rubadub

What are you actually planning on doing? I think you might be able to get grants or discounted duty payments or something. I remember a vineyard in the UK were selling wine at reduced duty or paid no duty, it was a tourist attraction which the gov wanted to encourage -until they got raided and found heaps of wine kit tins out the back!

I know many liquer companies, even skyy vodka, will buy ready distilled alcohol to make their product (skyy redistil it)

shofukan

rubadub wrote: »

What are you actually planning on doing? I think you might be able to get grants or discounted duty payments or something. I remember a vineyard in the UK were selling wine at reduced duty or paid no duty, it was a tourist attraction which the gov wanted to encourage -until they got raided and found heaps of wine kit tins out the back!

I know many liquer companies, even skyy vodka, will buy ready distilled alcohol to make their product (skyy redistil it)

Myself and a friend are homebrewing (very small amount, 5-10 litres to be clear)
But we're also looking into the possibility in the future of brewing as a business.. Obviously due to the nature of an alcoholic beverage there's a lot more to it than to make and sell, so I'm trying to find out as much as I can..

Not saying it'll ever happen but I think it's worth looking into at least!

oblivious

seanor3 wrote: »

Myself and a friend are homebrewing (very small amount, 5-10 litres to be clear)
But we're also looking into the possibility in the future of brewing as a business.. Obviously due to the nature of an alcoholic beverage there's a lot more to it than to make and sell, so I'm trying to find out as much as I can..

Not saying it'll ever happen but I think it's worth looking into at least!

Dungarvan Brewing Company http://www.dungarvanbrewingcompany.com/

Trouble brewing http://www.troublebrewing.ie/

metalman brewing http://www.metalmanbrewing.com/

Eight Degrees Brewing http://www.facebook.com/eightdegreesbrewing

Have all been set up by Homebrewers, isure they would give you some adavice.

Degsy

Be bloody carefull about even attempting home distilling..if the temperature isnt right it'll produce Methyl Alcohol and that can blind you.

rubadub

Degsy wrote: »

Be bloody carefull about even attempting home distilling..if the temperature isnt right it'll produce Methyl Alcohol and that can blind you.

This is one of the myths, when you distil you are simply separating your alcohols, nothing new is produced during the process.

Most homedistillers use sugar to brew with, this produces only bare traces of methanol. An unfermented glass of apple juice will contain far more methanol than 100's of litres of spirits distilled with sugar water, even if distilled poorly.

When you distil you have 3 main phases, heads, middle cut and tails. You toss out the heads, keep the middle and toss out the end. Since meths boils at a lower temp than ethanol (the stuff you want) it boils off at the start so you toss it out.

It is also a myth that you heat up the brew to a certain temp and all the alcohol or meths comes off, you just boil it up to whatever temp it boils at, a mixture of alcohols & water always comes off it.

They myth continues on since counterfeiters use/steal industrial alcohols very high in meths or pure meths, then label this as vodka and people drink it and die or go blind -then the ignorant media reports it as being "moonshine" as though it was made by somebody. I have not heard of any case of people getting methanol poisoning from homedistilled alcohol -quite the opposite in fact. On distillation forums many people really know there stuff, chemical engineers etc, one guy sent off a poorly distilled product with a commercial vodka for testing and the poor homemade vodka had far less by-products than the commercial one.

The commercial distillers do not want to waste a drop so they include a lot more of the heads & tails than a hobby distiller would (just like budweiser might brew in a matter of hours for economies sake). They then have the cheek to brag about their charcoal filtering, which is unnecessary with a properly distilled product, the fact they filter it just shows how much crap was in it that they have to strip out to make it palatable.

So if you distlled a brew of 8pints of beer and collected every drop, there would be no more meths in it than if you drank the 8 pints undistilled.

The only way you could manage to poison yourself would be to distil a massive wash of 100's of litres which was high in meths (such as cider), separate off the start in a fractionating column and just drink that select cut. If you know how to do this should also have the intelligence not to drink it! I can think of far easier ways to kill or blind yourself if you want to.

BTW this is why I recommend rum as it is sugar based so has very little by products so less likely to cause a congener induced hangover. A well recognised test for distillers to check if their still is functioning OK is the lack of hangover.

BeerNut

seanor3 wrote: »

Probably should have said that I'm interested in any current applicable legislation.

That's what I meant. To the best of my knowledge, most of the 1830 Spirits Act is still in force.

seanor3 wrote: »

I've been looking into everything but info seems to be hard to find.

There's not going to be much interest in this from an academic or theoretical point of view. For practical guidance on commercial production, talk to your local Revenue office.

seanor3 wrote: »

I'm trying to find out as much as I can.

There's no substitute for talking to other brewers. Get in touch with your local micro and talk to them about it.

You might also find some useful information in this thread.

shofukan

Beernut, you're a gent! (or a lady, I don't know..)
So distilling's out, that's fair enough wasn't that keen on it myself but the mate wanted the info there. The brewing though, looking forward to getting the first batch! (for ourselves)

BeerNut

seanor3 wrote: »

Beernut, you're a gent! (or a lady, I don't know..)

Depends which has the shortest queue.

Happy brewing!

Useful starter info.

shofukan

Glad I chose that particular thread title!

Few n00bish questions..
Any particular yeast to use for sweetness?
Is there a known rate at which yeast produces alcohol from sugar, ie 'w amount of yeast eats x amount of sugar in y amount time and produces z amount of alcohol'?

Mashtun

seanor3 wrote: »

Glad I chose that particular thread title!

Few n00bish questions..
Any particular yeast to use for sweetness?
Is there a known rate at which yeast produces alcohol from sugar, ie 'w amount of yeast eats x amount of sugar in y amount time and produces z amount of alcohol'?

Not that simple. Rate of fermentation is temperature dependent, different strains of yeast work over different temperature ranges also so bumping up the heat is not really the answer to speeding the process up. All that really matters from a home brew point of few is the original gravity and final gravity readings

BeerNut

seanor3 wrote: »

Any particular yeast to use for sweetness?

The way to make beer sweeter is to add non-fermentable sugars. Crystal malt and chocolate malt will both leave some lovely sweet flavours behind.

seanor3 wrote: »

w amount of yeast

The yeast in the wort is a breeding colony so the amount will depend on how much sugar and oxygen there is to feed it.

seanor3 wrote: »

eats x amount of sugar

This is your all-important original gravity reading -- it's how the amount of sugar is measured, by the comparative density of the liquid against water.

seanor3 wrote: »

in y amount time

This will vary hugely with yeast strains and temperature. You also need to ensure the yeast has finished the fermentation before you go bottling: if the yeast is still active it can cause enough pressure to make the bottles explode. It is possible to kill the yeast when a desired final gravity is reached, but it's only really done with wine and cider. With beer you still need the living yeast to do your carbonation after the main fermentation has finished, unless you have a fancy gas set-up to force-carbonate.

seanor3 wrote: »

and produces z amount of alcohol

It's easy enough to guess how much of the sugar in the wort will be eaten and converted to alcohol by the yeast, so you can estimate the strength of the finished beer from the OG. You can expect an OG of 1.040 to give you something in the 4% region, or 1.070 around 7%, etc.