We had a meeting after our sunday gathering and several of us wrote letters to the Minister Rich Coleman decrying the planned cutbacks to poor and disabled children's summer camp. Within a few days the clawback was rescinded, a small victory for the voiceless and powerless of this province. Of course we have no idea how many letters and phone calls the Minister received, but I like to think our 15 or so letters was a big part of it. Certainly it was public pressure that brought the about-face. A small moment of justice and fair play as far as I'm concerned.

My buds and i recently ran off a new batch of hooch. As mentioned on an earlier post we bought a food-grade still and began making our own spirits. Not because of a latent alcoholism but to pull one over the feds, have fun, and join the ranks of our bootlegging forebearers. Not that we bootleg it, but the "spirit's" there.

We've run off a few batches of wine which produced an interesting fruity result. You couldn't call it brandy, which it technically was, but enjoyable nonetheless and had an alcohol content of somewhere near 50%. It's expensive using wine though, so we made this last batch a sugar mash. 20 lbs of sugar and "turbo yeast" gives a final alcohol content of about 20%, which is a lot stronger than any wine and costs less than 20 bucks. We then ran the mash through our still set as a reflux column  (the wine went through it set up as a pot still which maxes out at about 60% alcohol and allows lots of flavour to pass through), which gives an ethanol concentration of 95%. Pure fuel, that. I tried a bit as it came off the still and it was so warm that it literally evaporated off the tongue (after stripping off the skin). My friend swigged a mouthful and spewed it all over everyone. You cannot drink it at that strength.
The idea is to cut it back to about 40% with water and add extracts to flavour it. For that 20 bucks of sugar and yeast we got a gallon of ethanol after the heads and tails were discarded (the bad stuff that makes you blind or sick). That's about ten bottles of spirits once mixed down with water and flavoured. I bought cherry brandy, gin, grand marnier and spiced rum extracts, and they are very good.

Some people might be appalled by the idea of running off your own spirits but the only reasons that you can make homemade wine and beer but not spirits is because of the strength of the liquor lobby, and that nobody has demanded the laws be updated (laws which date back to the prohibition era). Distilling is very simple, and as for the potential health issues, every distiller knows that you throw off the first and last part of the batch because this contains the toxins. You can also get very sick by leaving potato salad out, and yet making potato salad's not illegal.


I'm seriously thinking of taking off to Barkley Sound next week. I would be going alone as Tracy has to work. It would do me good to get away I think, and I'm craving the West Coast and the open ocean. I need to get Satan put back together and still want to replace that seal from the backstay cylinder, just because. This would be my first cruise alone.