34C3 - Schnaps Hacking

34C3 preroll music

Herald (H): Let me introduce: It's Sir
Wombat and Nero Lapislucis. So, give them

a warm welcome and everybody is interested
in how to get the stuff done.

Nero (N):
unaudible

We are going to present our juice press,
which is this gorgeous instrument you can

see over there. And then we will talk
about the fermentation vessel

you will need if you want to build one
yourself. And we will explain shortly

again how you can create alcohol out of
the yeast and the fruit juice. Afterwards

we will present the model of a still which
you can see over there on the desk.

Sir Wombat (W): By model we mean it doesn't
actually work, it only looks like it.

N: It's a kind of a hypothetical operation
of a miniature still. Afterwards you will

get to know an alternative method of
getting high percent alcohol, which is the

ice rifing. This is that. So, who are we?
I'm Nero, I am kind of a professional

viking. Why am I presenting this talk? I
was studying abroad in Norway and I was

too broke to buy the beer, so I had to
find some solutions and I started making

the wine. And Sir Wombat over there is an
electrical engineer and he's just trying

to build stuff since forever. Let's start
with the juice press. I don't know - Do we

have the camera? Or are we doing it
without?

Laughter
W: I can just hold it up and maybe you see it.

N: So basically what we have is a wooden frame

and then there is a car jack attached to it.

With that we press this kind of
wooden block down. And then we have on the

right hand side it's like this wood part
which has a special shape so the juice can

run off. This is on the lower side. And
there is the fruit between it. And with

the car jack you get lots of pressure.
Actually if you boil the mash you can just

use the kitchen towel. But it's a lot of
work. So this is actually kind of nice.

Inaudible question from the audience
N: Yeah, you can do it with whole apples.

You can cut them beforehand: You can put
them in the oven for a little while and it

makes it a lot easier. I don't know, I
think it's easier if you kind of boil them

or put them in the oven beforehand and cut
them. Then you get a little bit more juice.

Because what you see when you try
this is that you have a lot of work.

And a lot of fruit for actually very little
juice. Yeah, it's a lot of work

W: Inaudible
N: The thing is that the fruit juice, what

is useful for the alcohol, it's basically
just the sugar water. You can cheat which

is actually not allowed, but in theory you
might cheat and add sugar to your fruit

juice, then the yeast has more kind of
fruit and more basics to produce the

alcohol from. So you can add molasses to
the fruit juice and that will increase the

alcohol outcome of your molasses. This is
in basics the process you just heard

about. You have the sugar water and yeast.
And the yeast is working in the sugar

water and by that creating alcohol and
CO2. That's why you need the fermentation

vessel, which we will talk about in the
next part. You can basically just use

normal yeast from the supermarket. You
could also use some yeast cultures which

are on the fruits. There are also some
kind of hippie wine producers which just

use the apples like they are and use the
cultures which already are on them. But

it's better to use this specialized yeast,
because you have optimal alcohol outcome

and lower risk that there are other
bacteria evolving. What you don't want is

that there is oxygen coming into your
fermentation process, because then what

you get isn't alcohol but vinegar. It just
kind of tastes disgusting and it's not

what you make it for. That's why we are
building the fermentation vessel. It's

basically just a mechanism to keep the air
away. These are the ingredients you will

need to do. On the left hand side is my
first experiment, on the right side is Sir

Wombat's. He has this special thing that
he puts a pen in a kind of peanut butter

jar beforehand so the whole thing sticks
better. You don't really need to do that

if your hose is kind of thick enough. I
had this guzzling hose and it worked just

fine. You have to fix the hose in your
fermentation vessel and in this kind of

jar which is filled with water. You can
just use glue for that but it needs to be

airproof. What's happening is the CO2
which comes from the fermentation process

can leave the vessel through the hose. So
it just goes into the glass of water. The

effect is that no oxigen can come in and
go the other way around. So it's really

simple. It's useful to have a fermentation
starter. For that you start with

activating the dried yeast. The thing with
that is, that you give the yeast, which

you want to have a good life in there, a
head start ahead of all other bacterias or

kind of microbes which would want to
evolve in there. It's not that important

that you keep the air out because you
don't keep it for that long. What you do

is: You take the yeast you want, you put
sugar in there and you put the molasses in

there. You just give it a head start with
a lot of sugar and you keep it in there

for kind of about 12 hours. Then you put
it in the fermentation vessel and add the

rest of the molasses. So it's not really
in there for that long. Because of that

it's not that important to keep the air
out. It doesn't have that much contact.

Here you can see the fermentation process.
This is kind of a peanut butter jar and

there is the air and CO2 coming out. It
looks like that when the fermentation is

running on high it can get a lot faster.
But most of the time - It's also this nice

blubbing sound. If you keep it in your
room - you will have a good night. How

will you know when your fermentation ends?
Some of the yeast will die. You will

notice this at the bottom of the
fermentation vessel. It will just float

down. You will also notice that the
fermentation process is getting a lot

slower. Why does this happen? Either you
have already too much alcohol for the

yeast to survive. This depends a bit on
the kind of yeast you are using, but

mostly it's about 15% you can get. Or
maybe there's just no sugar left. You

don't really want that to happen because
then it doesn't really taste that good.

But basically it's also a possibility if
you just want the alcohol. Just remember

that you shouldn't bottle it before it's
totally finished because there's... As

long as there is still some fermentation
going on, there is also CO2 coming out and

your bottle might explode. You don't want
that. But if you continue with distilling

the whole thing it doesn't really matter
because you work with it and you don't

bottle it. So what do we do now? We have
the finished wine in the fermentation

vessel and you have the dead yeast on the
ground. You should be careful when you

fill it in bottels or another vessel,
because that yeast tastes kind of nasty.

So you should siphon it off. You can also
pour it but then you should take a lot of

time and be very careful with it. Yes, to
measure the alcohol content which will be

as said, explained before about 15% in the
mash there's different tools. For the mash

we have the vinometer. If you want to
measure it in the steel output you have

the hydrometer.This is when I give over to
my friend. Yeah, sugar is a problem in

measuring actually because it confuses the
instrument - both of them. So you should

consider this. And actually it's not
really that fancy so you can get both of

them for like 10€. It's useful to have. We
had that already. The results you get with

the fruit wine is normally between 6% and
13%. 13 is already kind of high. If you

just use the process like I explained it,
it's probably a bit less. So that's

actually why you would want to destill it
afterwards. W: So we're talking about what

would happen if you'd want to build a
still. We're not talking about an actual

still. We're talking about a model that
looks like it could work, but doesn't.

Because as we said - we wouldn't break any
rules, and Stefan said it's not allowed.

It's not legal to do so. The thing to
build such a model - such a home sized

model, not an semi-professional one, you
don't need all the... like 5000€ was the

cheaptest professional one we talked
about. For such a tiny model you could get

away with 75€ if you're really resourceful
like using an old pressure cooker from the

GDR. Those are finally the cheapest ones
you find on eBay This size is like 10€ -

it's a nice thing. Some copper pipes you
can get in your hardware store. The type

of copper pipe is used to connect fridges.
Like for that fresh water and ice cube

feature fridges have.
unaudible

The cooling system is just an old canister
and some electronics I'll talk about

later. Let's just get back to the slides.
Back to the slides please. Thanks.

The temperature sensing - we'll talk later
about... And then that's it. So you just

connect the copper pipes like this in a
T-form with a cork on top. And the screw

thing on the bottom to connect it to the
lid of the pressure cooker. At that point

you use like an end cap for the copper
pipe, drill a hole into it and connect the

thinner copper pipe to it. That will go
onto the pressure cooker like this. Then

you need to do some soldering. Most of you
probably know how to solder. This another

kind of soldering. It's the same thing -
you use tin and copper and some flux to

make it flow easier. And not a soldering
iron but a blow torch, but that's all the

difference there is. And then you just
drill a hole into your cut open canister,

push it on there and use lots of glue to
make it waterproof - It's no rocket

science. Then the temperature measurement
we want to have that because in theory you

need a very precise measurement. In
practice it didn't seem like we couldn't

live without it, but it's very interesting
and it's helpful. How do we do that? Just

use on of those cheap integrated digital
temperature sensors, a Raspberry Pi, a

real time clock to date the measurement
protocol - that's just nice to have - and

a bit of python script. Mine is ugly, so
it's not published, but everybody can do

it. It's like a day of work that will
output a small website that shows the

current temperature graph. You can click
on this link and download the current

temperature, like all the measurements as
an Excel-file, and you can even download

former measurements. And that's why we
need the realtime clock so that we don't

start a chaos. That's all there is. If you
have WiFi that's nice because you can

leave the room well it's running. But
yeah, you see something is not going well

and then you rush back. So you probably
stay with it anyway. Now, this is how a

hypothetical run-through would look like.
A tablet in the background, showing the

temperatures, the WiFi-router ...
Laughter

It's a really great guy that he puts up
with this. So yeah, you open the lid, you

put in your mash. Remember this is only a
model. Then if your pressure cooker has a

broken locking-mechanism you use some
chains and a screw to keep the lid closed.

It's not as critical as actual pressure
cooker operation.

Laughter and applause
Yeah. It's not as critical as actual

pressure cooker operation because there
will be no pressure. If pressure builds up

you made some big mistake like plugging up
the cooling pipe. If you thought the chain

was funny then come around and show the
safety valve. it's like... yeah... as As I

said it's all cheap and made up. But it
works. No, it doesn't.

Laughter
It could work, so, as I said, you put mash

in, close the lid, turn on the gas stove.
It's a gas stove because with no other

kind of stove you can regulate the power as fast - maybe with an induction heater - but

that doesn't work with a GDR pressure cooker. Then you started heating. At some

point evaporation will start, it will go up
here, pass the thermometers so that we can

see the gas temperature. And then the gas
will run in here in the cooler. And there

it hopefully condensates so that we don't
blow up the operation. Yeah, we put some

great effort in into our non-functional
model. We even painted it to look chalked. (Laughter)

There is another thermometer in here so
that we see that the cooling system is as

cold as it's supposed to be.

And then if
it would work the alcohol would drop out

here and run over the last temperature
sensor so we can see

how warm it is.

Because if it gets too warm it will be
vapor and that's bad.

And just for the fun of it there's an

additional temperature
sensor on the connector board that's this

one here. Yeah. It's just to measure the
room temperature.So, yeah, now we come to

a totally made up graph of an operation.

The red line is the gas temperature that

is always the most important one. Because
at the current gas temperature, you can

see what, or you can at least guess, what
chemical is currently running ...

evaporating.

The big plateau you can see
at the top that is where the alcohol would

be, assuming that for a long time there
would be alcohol coming out of the mash,

that turns into a plateau. The orange
temperature is the air temperature. The

green line is what the output temperature
would be. At the beginning it's something

like the room temperature. And then at the
point where actual product starts dripping

out it cools down to the cooling water
temperature and then running through it at

some point it will start separating because
the cooling can't keep up because we don't

have a run-through cooler, we just have
water in there, and that will start to

heat up. The ticks at the end, where the
temperature suddenly drops, yeah, that

could be caused by having too high
temperature and too much alcohol running

through the cooler. So then you'd turn
down the heat a bit and it would start to

drop, and then you turn back up and it
starts rising again. And at the end of a

run-through, when you open the lid again
and the cold air comes there all the

temperatures drop again. And you're done
with it. So as I said, it's all

hypothetical. And the hypothetical results
could be something like ... Stop! There

was this methanol thing. So, with a still
of this size, you won't get any dangerous

amounts of methanol. Yeah, we just...To be
safe we drop the first 15 ml. We dispose

of them properly by burning them on the
ground.

laughter

Then, what could the output look like?

If you would do this, it'd be a
great idea to separate the output in 100

ml jars and measure each separately, so
that you can follow what happens.

And it could be like the first jar would be maybe
58%; maybe the 9th jar would be 35%,

because the higher the temperature gets
the more water evaporates and so the

alcohol rate is lower.

Of those six
glasses maybe the first six would be

usable, because the afterrun that has the
stuff that evaporates at the higher

temperatures would taste bad. And if you
wanted higher percentages, you could just

still it again and then you'd maybe get up
to 78%. As Francisco already said, we

measure the output of the still - we would
measure it - with the hydrometer.

And then 78% percent is nothing you ever drink, you
only taste alcohol and nothing of the

fruit, so if you had a still output with
78%, you would dilute it with water to

get it to 40.

Now, this is illegal, so we
don't do it, but there is another method

which is kind of interesting. It basically
uses the same principle, just it's not

separate boiling points, but separate
freezing points. And then, to use this,

you put alcohol -maybe red wine - into a
plastic bottle, put it into your freezer,

let it freeze through, and then you turn
it around, and the first stuff that will

drop out is alcohol. Kind of an
interesting picture is this here, because

we have liquid dropping down, which is so
cold that the condensation on the other

vessel freezes. So, we know the liquid is
something with a freezing point well below

the freezing point of water. If you
measure this, you'll see that the output

has something between 20% or 40% when
starting with a red wine of 10%, so it

really works. And I found it kind of
interesting, because - except some crazy

guy in Bavaria -, I don't know of anybody
actually using that. And that guy uses it

to the create world's strongest beer with
like 58% and it's still legally beer

because of German laws.
Laughter

Here we see... That's the stuff that
stayed in the bottle, after it unfroze.

And that's the stuff that dripped out
below, so if you put a light behind it,

you see that's the one side is much
darker, so apparently the pigment is

soluble in alcohol. It's just an
interesting fact we saw, too. Well, that's

what we did. So in conclusion, it's
totally possible to build a non-functional

model of a still with hardware-store
parts. Running this... risks exist, but

are manageable. Watch out for proper
cooling; with such a cooler, it's just...

make sure that there is water in it before
you start it. Methanol poisoning can be

prevented by using a clean mash like mash
you'd drink unstilled. And discarding the

first 15 ml. And if you had something like
this and say you tried to still whisky,

you should look out for foaming, because
if you try to run it too fast, maybe the

mash would foam up and clog your still and
it'd be bad. So yeah, don't do that. In

conclusion, it's great fun...
theoretically.

Laughter
And yes, do not do this. It's illegal.

Thank you.

Applause

H: What a fabulous, practical
introduction. So we have now five minutes

for Q and A... Everybody who wants to ask
a question please go to the microphones,

and please stay in the room for this five
minutes. If there are any... Keep in mind,

this time everybody has to go out on this
side. So is there any question in the

room? Microphone 1 please.

Mic1: Yes, thank you for the talk. Thank

you for the ideas. Do you know how the
legal aspects are in Switzerland?

Restrained laughter

Stefan (S): In Switzerland you guys are

actually quite well off, because you are
allowed to have small stills until the

capacity of 5 litres. We have until the
end of the 2070ies that 0.5 l, which is

basically useless. You can try it once,
but for each run you get maybe a shot of

usable liquor. In Switzerland, you have 5
l and then you get at least some... yeah,

200 ml of usable spirits, and this is
actually fun to tinker with. This is

something you and your fellows can, well,
have a decent evening.

H: Microphone 5.
Mic5: Yeah, so... When I saw the

electronics, that's usually not so safe to
drink from lead and everything. So, do you

have any tips for how to solder, so it's
safe for drinking?

W: Yeah, I forgot to mention it, we used
lead free solder. That's a really great

comment of you. And I looked it up and
solder, you can find it in the hardware

store next to the copper tubes that is
lead-free. But check that to be sure.

You don't want lead into your spirits.

H: Microphone 1.

Mic1: Would you do the cooling per air
flow instead of water?

W: I've seen online some people who did
that with a construction that looked kind

of like a CPU cooler attached to something
which had the vaporized alcohol run

through it. I mean, it'd be illegal to
try, so I haven't and... But this guy

apparently has and it worked for him, so..
Yeah. But I don't know how you'd

construct the copper block which you
attach to the CPU cooler, so there's that.

S: I've seen silver etchings in really,
really old manuscripts that were using

just air to cool down, but... well, that's
technology 500 years ago that says "Yeah,

use water."

H: Microphone 5.

Mic5: You showed the glass part still and
you said this could not be purchased after

the 1st of January, right? But if you just
purchase the single parts, because it's

standard lab equipment, is this also
illegal?

S: Yes, I mean, you don't purchase a still
per se, do you?

Mic5: Exactly, it's standard glass...
S: I don't think this is gonna be a

problem, but, you know there's laboratory
equipments and they sell you a still made

from glass for training distillation...
And this costs some 250 euros and they

sell you the same exact part this still is
made of for cheaper. So basically, order 3

or times...3 or 4 times different
equipment parts, maybe from different...

And...I mean, this is ridiculous. Really,
it is.

Mic5: Thanks.

H: Okay, Mikrophone 1.

Mic1: Yeah, hi. Thank you for your
theoretical explanation. I have one

question but first I just wanted to
mention, that you can build all this

without programming. You can buy a
physical thing to measure the temperature,

so if anybody is afraid because of that
part. And than yeah, my question is there

a reason why you don't use or just
mentioned, turbo yeast, stuff like

that where you can reach 20 percents in
two days. Is it not that tasty or stuff?

N: Yeah, I think actually we just used the
first one, we got hands on, didn't we?

For the first experiments. I mean, you could
try it but then you always have, it has

negative parts, so... maybe it's the
taste, maybe it's something else.

But I mean, I wouldn't claim that you
achieve high quality taste with

what we just showed.

S: I can answer one part for the

"Abfindungsbrennerei", you could use turbo
yeast, but turbo yeast is something...

I'm not really sure about the translation. It
is called "Hefenährsalze" which is salts,

that you need, to actually have an
environment for this turbo yeast. And these

"Hefenährsalze" are unfortunely not
allowed in "Abfindungsbrennerei".

So usally you don't...you don't use turbo
yeast and you don't actually need it for

fruit spirits. It's okay, if you want to
make grain spirits but you know the higher

the yeast ferments the less taste and
scent remains in the destillate.

So we won't have taste otherwise we could just
buy vodka in the store.

H: Okay, Mikrophone 5, please.
Mic5: Thanks again for your talk.

Regarding the cooling. Is it necessary to
cool it with room temperature water or why

not chuck in some ice cubes or crushed ice
to keep the temperature lower or hinder

the rising of the temperature in the
cooling vessel?

W: Well let's say we had run this
hypothetical operation in our minds

multiple times. Maybe the first time we
had tried it with ice cubes and then

started exchanging the water. Maybe we had
a few times thought about running it and

using just tap water and exchanging the
tap water multiple times. And then maybe

in our minds one time we forgot to change
the water and it still would have worked,

so we made up all further operations just
with a bucket of water and not changing

it, so yeah. Point is, that's the easiest
way and it works.

M5: Excellent.
H: And I saw there is some question from

the internet.
Signal angel: Exactly. The internet wants

to know if there is a limit or a legal
limit to the freeze destilation of the ice

rifing process?
W: I tried to look it up, but I didn't

find anything about it. So, maybe there is
a thing that if you...

Let's just stay with the beer guy from
Bavaria. The customs actually have a page

about producing beer at home. You can do
that legally in Germany and the first 100

liters are tax free, so you can just do
that. So, yeah, then you have 100 liters

of beer and you start concentrating them
and when you are done with that it gets

complicated. So, I guess that's the limit.
And then that guy probably just taxes the

further beer and that's how he does it.
N: But then you don't have to register

your freezer at the tax office so maybe
people won't be that eager to check.

H: Ok then the last two questions,
Microphone 1.

Mic1: Okay, so my question is about the
freezing method as well. What is about the

methanol for the freezing method. Is there
some way to get rid of this, or is it

really unnecessary?
W: Well, as I said the stuff in the

pictures was red wine from Aldi because
you don't experiment with expensive stuff.

And if I drink a whole bottle of Aldi red
wine, nothing bad happens to me. So I

guess if I take any part of a bottle of
red wine from Aldi, nothing bad will

happen, too. So there's that.

Mic1: So there shouldn't be
methanol in the orginal stuff.

A: There probably will be but less
enough so that it's not a problem.

H: Okay.

S:The thing about the methanol is, if I'm
allowed to add, methanol comes from the

pectines. Pectines are basically the
building substance of the cells.

But if you have juice or wine we already pressed
it down and the pectins stay in the stuff

we throw away and so in the juice and in
the wine that we cool down so there is

very little methanol in it. That is
different if we make a mash and have all

the cell residue still in the mash, then
we have the methanol in this mash.

And so we have it in the destillate.

H: Okay, the last question,
microphone one please.

Mic1: Hi. Thanks for a great talk. My questions
are around the head, hearts and tail,

the hacked distilling method that,
I gather, you pretty much did

what you took for second
third, fourth part of it, and you divided

it up like that. But in the craft
distillery, how do you do to use it, but

controlling the temperature of the
evaporation and the stilling liquid, or

do you also do it by breaking into segments?
What's the technique you used to separate?

S: There's actually many roads that lead

to Rome. So you could basically use this
fractioning method that there was

described here that you just take one liter and
one liter and one liter and then you check it

by smelling and tasting, if it's okay, or
if it's not. And then the other way is,

for example, temperature control. So if
you buy a modern still from an experienced

copper smith, this is made with any types
of sensors and that are telling you the

temperatures, the flow, the alcohol
content. So you can basically program your

still to automatically cut the foreshots
and the aftershots. So this is another

way. Then you could, for example, distill
once or twice, and with the first

distillation, just take every alcohol
that's coming out and then collect this

first run, and then redistill it, and then
make your cuts for the heads and the

tails. And you can make it otherwise it
can cut the head and tails in the first

run, and then just basically concentrate
in the redistillation. So there's many

roads that lead to Rome and you're just
gonna find out your way that suits you

best. But if you start, I would take the
fracturing, the fracturing method. Yes.

Mic1: What was your run, your still on?
What technique did you use for your

business, your still?

S: You mean my still at home?
The craft still that I get on the...?

Yeah, this is experience.

So we know the first 1.5 liters
is foreshots,

so we collect those and then we
redistill them again. But. Yeah.

At some time my great-grandfather, most
probably found out the way and he taught them

his son and his son. And I know that I
didn't need to get rid of 1.5l of foreshots.

Mic1: Thank you.
S: You are welcome.

H: Then at the end of
this double feature, I expect a very big

warm applause for Franziska, Andreas,
and Stefan

Applause

subtitles created by c3subtitles.de
in the year 2019. Join, and help us!