Choosing Whiskey Stills With Their Different Sizes

What size do whiskey stills come in?  

Alcohol yield is a tricky thing, influenced by many factors. To distill alcohol or moonshine, you begin by making a mash out of a grain, sugar or yeast (or both), and water. There’s no standard size containers for making mash - moonshiners use all types of equipment - but most distillers prefer to standardize their measurements somewhat.

Most recipes for whiskey mash measure the ingredients in gallons, and once the alcohol wash has been extracted from the mash, it will probably be measured in gallons too. The best one-piece copper whiskey stills are available in standard 1 gallon, 2.5 gallon, 5 gallon, and 10 gallon sizes. There are, of course, larger whiskey stills for sale, but something that big is really only necessary for commercial distillers. 

Influences on alcohol yield

Alcohol by volume

The biggest factors that influence the alcohol yield after distillation come from the wash’s starting alcohol by volume. The alcohol by volume of the wash is determined by the ingredients and process you use for your mash. Using distiller’s yeast instead of regular bread yeast often produces an alcohol wash with a higher alcohol by volume; so does having the right proportion of ferment able sugar in the mash. Generally, more sugar is better, but too much is just waste.

Choosing a copper whiskey still

Copper is the best material for a moonshine or whiskey still, and will help you produce the best alcohol yield. Because alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, temperature control is key to distilling the best moonshine and whiskey. Copper is known to heat evenly and has been used in kitchenware and stills for centuries. Distillers like copper for the precise control it gives them over their distilling temperature.

    

End of a run

Most moonshiners also don’t get every last drop out of a run. It’s common to get about 85 - 90% out of every run - meaning that getting the last 10 - 15% or so of alcohol out of your whiskey still is difficult, and often not worth it. That “bottom of the barrel” stuff isn't the best from the run. So, you can expect that each run will have some wash left at the end.

Final Answer: how much alcohol will I get out of my whiskey still?

Considering variations, a standard run will yield about:

3 - 6 cups of alcohol from a 1 gallon copper still
.5 - 1 gallon of alcohol from a 2.5 gallon copper still
1 - 2 gallons of alcohol from a 5 gallon copper still
2 - 5 gallons of alcohol from a 10 gallon copper still

Whether you’re looking at producing small quantities or large, making alcohol at home is about convenience and availability. Purchasing multiple sizes of a copper whiskey still design that you like makes it easy to always have access to the size still you need, when you need it.