Practical Question and Answer series
For more questions and answers see the
Q&A Index.
7) Pipe tobacco! And
Beer and Wine! What's life without some of the niceties?
I'll look briefly at tobacco, then discuss fermentation and distillation
of alcohol, various uses of alcohol, and other kinds of food fermentation.
To start with, tobacco is an easy one. Although it isn't an essential,
you can grow your own tobacco in most of North America. Plenty
of online sources offer information about growing tobacco at home
including the University
of Florida Extension Service.You can order seeds from companies
like Plantation
House and The
GreenWeb (though I'm not specifically recommending those sources)
but if you can find seed from someone in your area it will be
more suited to your climate and more likely to thrive. In general
I can't really recommend tobacco as a priority since it is generally
detrimental to your health, especially your lungs and teeth.
Wine and beer, and other alcohols, are actually quite easy to
make and the alcohol has applications beyond drinking.
[Chemistry aside: Alcohols come in various lengths of
carbon chains. You can make short-chain alcohols in at home. Methanol
has one carbon, ethanol or ethyl alcohol has two carbons, and
propyl alcohols have 3 carbons. Only ethanol is safe to drink,
so when I say "alcohol" for the rest of this article
I'm talking about ethanol.]
Alcohol is created by fermentation in which yeast converts sugars
into alcohol. For fermentation to take place you need both yeast
and a solution containing sugars and carbohydrates (which can
be made from refined sugar, potatoes, corn, fruit, and many other
sources). If you are planning to further concentrate the alcohol
through distillation, this source solution is called a wash.
There are plenty of resources online and in print about home brewing.
You only need some basic equipment and recipes suitable for your
source of sugars, and some time to allow the mixture to ferment.
For more information, instruction and recipes you can refer to
the online forums at Home
Brew Talk, this Brewing
FAQ, HomeWineMaking.co.uk,
and various recipes and articles at Brewery.org.
For information in print, see The
Homebrewer's Companion by Charles Papazian, Brew
Ware : How to Find, Adapt & Build Homebrewing Equipment by
Karl F. Lutzen, and The
Brewmaster's Bible: The Gold Standard for Home Brewers by
Stephen Snyder.
After you've produced a solution of alcohol in water you can
increase the concentration of alcohol through distillation. Since
alcohol has a lower boiling point then water, you can boil off
the alcohol and recondense it, while leaving most of the water
behind. To make your own still, see Moonshine-Still.com
for a detailed and step-by-step guide to the construction process.
There is also plenty of good information at HomeDistiller.org.
For good books, see How
to Make a Junkyard Still and The
Alcohol Distiller's Handbook, both by Michael H. Brown, The
Compleat Distiller from the Amphora Society, and Secrets
of Building an Alcohol Producing Still by Vince Gingery. Please
keep in mind that home distilling (and definitely selling) alcohol
for consumption may be illegal depending where you are. Check
the above websites for more information about legalities.
Obviously many people enjoy drinking the fermented alcohol, but
it has a number of other uses, including fuel, disinfection, and
preservation.
Concentrated (distilled) alcohol can be used as a fuel. Admittedly,
the distillation process requires energy to boil a solution of
low concentration alcohol. But that energy could potentially come
from a "free" source: for instance, a solar collector,
or by placing the still on top of a stove which is being used
to heat a room (similar to this stove-top
still in concept but not necessarily design) since the heat
will go into the room anyway. The potential advantage of this
fuel is that it can be ignited easily in weather too cold or damp
to start a wood burning fire easily. It also produces minimal
smoke or fumes from combustion which means that you can use it
inside as long as there is some ventilation. Generally you'll
want to avoid using methanol (a single carbon alcohol used in
anti-freeze) for fuel since the fumes can be toxic, but it's also
toxic to drink so you wouldn't be making it as part of the above
fermentation process anyway (or more accurately, you may be removing
a small amount of it from what you do ferment). Alcohol concentrations
of great than 50% (100 proof) will burn, but higher concentrations
will produce a better flame. Alcohol flames are cooler than other
camp fuels. 100% ethanol has an ignition point of about 365 degrees
C (689 degrees F) but a concentration above 95% is impossible
to create on a home still, so lower concentrations will have lower
ignition points.
You have several options for making an alcohol burning stove.
You can make a (non-airtight) container for the fuel with a wick
emerging from it, similar to a lamp, to maximize the surface area
of combustion. Make sure that the flame is limited to the wick
and that the fuel reservoir itself does not ignite. You can use
a small bowl with a small amount of fuel, but you will have to
keep refueling each time the alcohol in the bowl is consumed.
You can find various home-made alcohol burning stove designs at
this Homemade
Outdoor Gear site.
Disinfection and the cleaning of hands and surgical implements
is another application of alcohol. It is most effective at killing
microorganisms around concentrations of 70%.
Since decay and decomposition of foods is mainly caused by microorganisms
alcohol can be used effectively as a preservative of some organic
materials. For example, herbal tinctures are made by placing chopped
herbs in high concentration alcohol so that the herbal constituents
are dissolved and preserved, then straining out the useful liquid
with a cheesecloth. (For an example see "Make
your own simple herbal remedies".) The other way to preserve
foods is to to take the next step in fermentation; with the help
of bacteria (specifically Acetobacter) ethanol
will turn into vinegar (acetic acid) which is what happens in
old-fashioned fermentation pickling. Vinegar is an effective preservative.
The fermentation process in general is also very useful to induce
many beneficial changes to food. The Handbook
of Indigenous Fermented Foods, edited by Keith Steinkraus,
observes that food fermentation serves five main purposes:
1. Enrichment of the diet through development of a diversity
of flavors, aromas, and textures in food substrates (like cucumbers
becoming pickles)
2. Preservation of substantial amounts of food through lactic
acid, alcoholic, acetic acid, and alkaline fermentations (such
as in yogurt, sauerkraut or wine)
3. Biological enrichment of food substrates with protein, essential
amino acids, essential fatty acids, and vitamins (such as yogurt)
4. Detoxification during food-fermentation processing
5. A decrease in cooking times and fuel requirements (fermented
pickles require minimal energy, hot packed pickles require energy
to boil large amounts of water)
You can get started by fermenting your own pickles
and sauerkraut with the linked information from the University
of Minnesota Extension Service.
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