Okay, you may be thinking “how do you do it?” Well, you wouldn’t be alone. When most people discover that you can make great tasting spirits at home, very few people realise how easy it can be.

Firstly there are two options for creating the basic ingredient, the spirit itself. Option one is to purchase an inexpensive vodka or everclear (grain alcohol) from a normal retail outlet. Or you can use a still to distil water, yeast and sugars to create your own spirit.

Still Spirits has many options for distilling including the revolutionary Air Still that is right at home on a kitchen bench and as easy to use as boiling a kettle, as well as the new large-capacity T500 mega-reflux which produces the purest quality alcohol of any still on the market today.

Once you have the basic spirit in place, it’s sort of like creating a jug of boiling water and then deciding if it will be coffee, or English breakfast tea, or green tea, or whatever. So it’s time to add a suitable flavour essence, in order to put the finishing touches on the kind of drink you want to make.

That could be Rum, Tequila, Bourbon, Scotch Whisky, Irish Whiskey, Sambucca, Butterscotch Schnapps, Baileys, or hundreds of other delicious spirits. And then, hey presto... it’s done! You have a fantastic tasting drink to enjoy, with all of the characteristics (colour, aroma, texture, taste, and alcohol content) that you like.

It isn’t hard to make great spirits at home, but you do have to play by the rules. To begin with, in New Zealand, Austria, Italy, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine it is perfectly legal to home distil for personal use, but elsewhere it is not.

In most countries it is illegal for an individual to use a still for the purpose of making your own pure alcohol to drink. Yet it’s not against the law to own a water distillation unit or a simple ‘plug in and press start’ air-still, (under 5 litres in Australia) and many people already use these devices to distil water or to make essential oils.

Still Spirits strongly recommends that you check the legal status of amateur distillation in your country beforehand.

If you are in a country where amateur distillation is not permitted, you will need to purchase the base alcohol from a store in order to create your own liqueur, spirit or schnapps. Low-priced vodka or everclear (grain alcohol)is ideal for this purpose.

Please note that using Still Sprits flavourings and most other distilling products is legal in every country.

Next Steps

Getting Started
What You Need
Names & Meanings
Frequently Asked Questions