 Give a warm welcome to Stefan Teininger as the first part of the double feature. And because this is a double feature, I get asked to please don't walk around while this talk, please watch all the two series and enjoy it. So let's start with the first part. To my right is Stefan Teininger. You all know him from the Freibrenner podcast. So give him a warm welcome and start with the show. We graduated Master Distiller from the Institute for Firmation and Biotechnology in Berlin. I am also the fifth generation distiller of our family company Distill. So please don't diss all the commercial alcohol producers per se because that's how I do my living. And we're going to talk today about alcohol production, boost production, high strength quality production that is. And Distilling is only one way of producing hard liquor. Let me show you the other three types. The first types are liqueurs that you all know. Liqueurs are basically not distilled. They use already made neutral grain spirits that come from large alcohol refineries that are usually not distilled and it's perfectly legal to make liqueurs at home. Just buy yourself some vodka and flavor this vodka with whatever you fancy. I've got a nice Matta liqueur recipe for you later on. So we have non distilled spirits. Most of them are liqueurs, some are gin, some are vodka. And we have the field of distilled spirits. Most gins are distilled, most vodka are distilled. Their basis is always neutral grain spirits. So spirits made from grain, they are flavored, they are distilled. And the distillation itself here in Germany is legal, but you have to register and license your still. And then we have the third part and the most, well, the most true to the fruit part. That is where we do not actually buy preproduced neutral grain spirits, but we make the alcohol ourselves via fermentation with yeast. So we produce the alcohol by fermentation ourselves, we distill it ourselves, but we need a license for that, otherwise it's illegal. On the other hand, of course, the right one is the most fun to do. So how do we actually produce alcohol? Alcohol is usually or always produced by taking sugar, sugar as the basis or the fuel for our biochemical reaction we want to achieve. And our little tiny helpers, the yeast cells, some kind of fungus, they break down the sugar and they transform it into alcohol via alcoholic fermentation. This you know all from your chemistry or biologic biology classes. And how do you make it? Well, we need this sugar, this sugar somehow converted to alcohol. Where do we get this sugar from? The traditional German way is making fruit spirits. And fruit spirits have the advantage that the mash, that is basically the stuff where the yeast makes the alcohol from already contains sugar. So sugar is what we need. Usually it's a fruit juice or a smoothie from apples, pears, plums, cherries. You name it. So we make fruit juice or a smoothie out of it. Why? Because the yeast works best in a liquid environment. It also has some other pros. The mash is easier to pump and easier to measure. And you have to always take into consideration that you use the best fruits available. Only the best fruits give you the best taste and scent. And there I have to add supermarket quality fruit is not necessarily the best. Best is usually baby food grade, but baby food grade fruits you can't buy in the supermarkets, sadly. So much about the quality of our food in our supermarkets. Then if you prepare such a mash, you take the fruits, you make a smoothie out of it with a blender or you press it to choose, and then you check your acidity. Because yeast works best in an acidity of a pH 3 to 3.4. The other reason is that in such an acidic environment, bacteria that might consume our sugar and do not ferment into alcohol is not active anymore. Okay. If we have a higher pH, we use just citric acid, a food grade acid to lower the acidity of the mash. And then we take designated distiller's yeast that has some properties that we need for the fermentation. For example, this yeast ferments up to a very high alcoholic content, usually above 10%. Your normal baker's yeast would stop at 4% or 5% alcohol. And then we let this ferment. So we take our prepared mash out of the chooser, out of the smoothie maker, and we put it in fermentation tanks. Fermentation tanks is basically stainless steel, glass, plastics, whatever. It's just a bucket, basically. When you add yeast to this bucket of fermented spirits, you try to control the temperature. The yeast always has an optimal temperature that it works best. So usually it's 15 to 22 degrees. Sometimes in late August, when you've got your fruits just in harvest times, it's still too warm. So you need another yeast that is more active at, let's say, 25 to 27 degrees. Then you need an airlock on this fermentation, because fermentation generates CO2, and a lot of it. And this needs to get out, but oxygen should not get into the yeast. Because then we get another type of fermentation that doesn't produce alcohol. So we need an airlock. And this airlock lets the carbon dioxide get out, but no oxygen back in. So you check your airlocks. Then you double check your airlocks. Because every distiller that says his fermentation tank didn't blow up on him once or twice is a liar. This happens all the time. And then we ferment this mesh for about two weeks. So we have the smoothie. We add yeast. The yeast does its work. And then we have a smoothie that contains around 10% alcohol after two weeks. The bubbles is the CO2 that is evaporating, and we don't have any more bubbles. So then our fermentation is complete. And then we try to distill it as soon as possible after fermentation, because a fully fermented mesh is not getting better with time. And then we come to the part for some small fermentation tank we see here. It's just 10 liters. We have this tiny airlock where the CO2 can bubble out via this water filling. But no oxygen can go back in. So this is something you basically can do everywhere at home. And if you got this fermented mesh, we come to the distillation. Distillation itself is just a physical process, a physical means of separation of liquids and solids and of concentrating alcohol in that matter or taste and scent. Because the boiling point of alcohol is lower than the boiling point of water or the solids don't boil at all. So if we heat up this mesh, the alcohol will start evaporating sooner than the water. And so we fill the mesh in the distill, we heat it up, and as soon as the distill gets to around 70 degrees centigrade, the alcohol starts to evaporate, rising with it, the molecules that make up the scent of the spirit that we want to distill. So it's basically essential oil, aldehydes, esters, some ketones. But stuff that evaporates and then we cool it down again at the condenser. So the alcoholic vapor that we just produced by heating up is going to the condenser, then cooled down. So it liquefies again and it goes down and basically we have our distilled spirit. Then we can cut off heads and tails and hearts. This is basically three parts of the distillate that we get. The heads parts are the earliest evaporating parts. These are short alcohols that are aldehydes that we do not want. For example, methanol is among them. Those are slightly toxic. I just say they're not actually that toxic, they're just bad for your health. And they taste like solvent. And the tails, they start to smell and taste like cellar, a foul flavor. So we don't want those flavors in our spirit. So we cut it into heads, hearts and tails. Those hearts, those fine tasting alcoholic parts we keep, we collect, and then we re-distill these ones to get rid of even more of the heads and the tail parts that might still be in the first heart part. So this is laboratory still, this still you could buy in an online shop, in any laboratory device shops, 500 milliliters, it is still legal. You can do this at home until the day after tomorrow. Then those get forbidden, so you can't buy them anymore. So if you do want to have one, go to the local drug or the laboratory dealer. Here you can quickly demonstrate how this works. So we've got the heater here, it's just propylene gas going up. Here we've got our mash inside. The alcohol evaporates, goes up, goes into the condenser, the condenser cools it down and the distillate comes out here again. Here just in a quick schematics, but same principle and this is just stuff that you could basically buy almost everywhere where laboratory equipment is sold. As said, until the day after tomorrow. From 2018 on, all home stills in Germany will be illegal. So you can buy one in the next three days and you can still use it in 2018 but you can't buy any more of them from 1st of January on or 2nd of January on. So we have one exception. You can buy stills of up to two liters of size if they're only used for the production of essential oils or distillation of water. But the basic physical principle stands. But don't buy this stuff online and don't buy it anywhere where someone will register your address because that's what they're legally obliged to do. Any vendor of distills has to register your name and address by the tax office, which gives us back to the hacking aspect. We're going to see later on about building stills, which is totally illegal by the way. Don't do that. But that's one exception. And this, I have to say, we're leaving now the part of the home distilling, unfortunately. We have to go semi-pro if you want to continue distilling brandies. You can go craft distilling. Craft distilling, on the other hand, is far more easy to do from 2018 on than it used to be until the day after tomorrow. A lot of things change. Your precious Brandwein Steuergesetz is basically gone out of business because of the EU. Thanks, Brussels. But we get the new alcohol Steuergesetz. And the alcohol Steuergesetz is actually quite nice for craft distillers. Because if you fulfill the requirements that this law states, you are legally obliged to get this distillation license. Until now, you can apply for one. But if you don't get one of those brandwein rechte, Brenn rechte, so the right to distill at the moment, well, you can start from 2018 on. You must get one if you apply for one and if you fulfill the requirements. This is called Abfindungsbrennen, because it's basically you compensate the state for the tax of the alcohol that you're going to produce. Until now, the Abfindungsbrennen is only in the southern parts of Germany. So Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, parts of Hessen, so not in the north, not in the east. The background is, no, now you can do it in the whole of Germany. So everywhere where you are, you can apply for Abfindungsbrennenrecht. And if you are a farmer or even a part-time farmer, the state allows you to distill this amount of alcohol. This is a usual craft still. This is ours. It's from the 70s. It's not very high-tech, but it gets the shop done. And you can buy or build something comparable to this. This is a size of about 150 litres. In the future, this size and the quantity of the steels is no longer regulated. So you can basically buy any size that you want from 2018 on. So this Abfindungsbrennerei allows you to produce 300 litres of pure alcohol per year. That doesn't sound much, but actually it is, because it's litres pure alcohol. Who of us consumes the pure alcohol? We water it down and we sell it in tiny waters. So if you divide it by 0.4 for the brandy and by 0.5 because we only have half a litre bottles, then we get 1,500 bottles per year allowance. You have to drink that or you have to sell that. And then there's even another thing, we get an allotment. So we could produce 900 litres in one year if we then don't produce any more in the two following years. There's only one small cut. You can only make fruit or grain spirit, no molasses. So no rum and no chunk, I'm sorry. But as said, you need to be a farmer or a part-time farmer. Well, that's actually not so hard. You need three hectares of regular three orchids or you need 1.5 hectares of intensively farmed fruit or charts. This is the one thing that maybe will hold back most of you guys thinking about opening a opfinums banana rye. But there's a tiny way around it, cheat code. You can rent or lease it and you can rent or lease it any time in the next 10 years and you have only to show it once to your customs. And when the custom guy then has checked your mark that you owned or rented or leased, then you're good to go forever. So there's going to be some areas of three hectares that are going to get at least for 365 days per year to 365 guys. The other exception is it has to be mixed fruit trees or intensely farmed fruit trees. Well, there's also a cheat code because there's one fruit or one bulb that you can grow, that is allowed, and that you don't see and that is no tree that you need to plant and wait for five years or so. This is the Jerusalem artichoke or topinambua, very well known in Baden-Württemberg. This one can be planted anywhere and you can just rent any area of just three hectares like Rosland, like a forest, like a jungle, and you say, yeah, tomorrow I'm going to plant some Jerusalem artichoke and the customs agent has to say, yeah, of course you do. Then we have another requirement. This might be a bit tricky for some of us or for some of you because I have an upvendungsbrindricht. You have to have a clean cheat in taxation. So if you cheated on your taxes once, you're not going to get the upvendungsbrindricht in the future. The next is you have to have an economic interest in producing. But this is just what we say, a paper tiger because if I have an economic interest of giving Andreas a bottle of liquor, then my economic interest is fulfilled. So this is not a requirement per se. The taxation rate, this one liter of pure alcohol that you're going to produce, you have to pay the state a tax for it. This tax is reduced, one of 10 euros, 22 cents per liter of pure alcohol. So if you have 300 liters of pure alcohol, you know how much tax you're going to pay for it. And just as an example, how much of Apple's peers or plums or so you're going to need. There's a list of these auspoity sets. So a calculated result from certain mash. And for Apple's we have 3.6 liters of pure alcohol for 100 liters of Apple mash. So we can calculate how many apples you have to buy or have to use if you want to get your 300 liters. And this is maybe not the best for your privacy aware guys out there because if you own a still and if you've got a licensed Apfenungsbennerei, then the federal customs agents are allowed to check this still every day, every night whenever they choose fit. The next is the food inspectors have the right to check your still. But they only come on business hours. So that's a bit better. And then you need to enter a professional association called Berufsgenossenschaft either for the farming industry or for the food service industry because if you blow yourself up while operating a still, then you're at least insured. Which brings us to the safety issues of operating a still because, well, accidents happen and they happen all the time. Usually once or twice a year, a person in southern Germany blows him or herself up because he or her didn't check the safety regulations. The most important thing about running a still is knowing that alcoholic vapor is by itself explosive. It's low grade, it's not dynamite, but it is dangerous. So you always have to check that you don't have a huge amount of alcoholic vapor just running around. So the legal stills will be checked by the technical control board, by the Berufsgenossenschaft and by customs agents for different reasons, but they're all going to check your still until you get your license to produce. And the first and foremost safety mechanism is build something that controls or that checks if your cooler is actually running. Here we have a cooler and this cooler, as we said before, condenses the alcoholic vapor back to liquids. If it's not working, we don't get a liquid, we get the vapor straight out of the hole. The vapor of alcohol is heavier than air, so it goes down on the surface and then you just need some igniting spark and you get blown up. So the most important thing that the Berufsgenossenschaft and the TÜV is going to check, do you have any reason to check if your condenser is working or not? Second of all, have a good ventilation. This is usually acquired by just having it ground floor and opening a big door and then you have natural ventilation. If there are alcoholic vapors, not rising, but existing, they're going to just diffuse outside in the air and fresh air and this danger is then compensated. And the third is, if you use electrical equipment within one meter of the still, make sure it's according to the ATEX, the anti-explosive, whatever, certification. Usually we do this by using only compressed air valves, for example, because compressed air does not ignite any sparks and so we don't have the danger of exploding. So much for safety now about the economics because, as I said, you're a part-time farmer now and this doesn't come for free. If you buy a new still by one of the established German coppersmiths, this still will cost between 25 and 45,000 euros. You need to sell a lot of those 1,500 bottles per year to get this back. The alternative is, of course, buy a used still. Those are a lot cheaper, you even get them refurbished like MacBooks. So they are actually checked again by the producer and those are a really, really good alternative. You can also buy in Far East. I wouldn't recommend that, did that, got the T-shirt or you could build one myself. But please don't do these US-style moonshine stills that you see in the moonshine forums or so. Do one like this where Andrea Sanfrancisco is telling you about later on. The energy costs. If you heat up a still of a 150 liter and if you do this five or six times a day as you can, you have about 100 euros of energy consumption, 100 euros you need to get into energy consumption per 100 liter per still per day which equals around 15 euros per 100 liter mesh. Tax is around 40 euros of alcohol tax per 100 liter mesh and if you calculate all this together and divide it by 1,500 bottles and then you take it about eight years or what you say about this is your usual investment calculation time, then you will need to charge at least 20 euros per bottle for a liquor from our upfinems banana to reach the break even. So I see a lot of farmers market spirits that sell their booze for 10, 12, 14 euros. There's a saying in our distiller's circles, if you do this you could also just take a five euro note and put it on the head of the bottle because you're cutting your road throat. So if you want to start upfinems plenary, first don't panic. This is something that's done for ages and now you can do that too. Check the online resources at the customs office but I have to admit some pages at the customs office are according to the old law, some already to the new law so maybe check again in a couple of months or just call the customs agents. I mean it's their job to help you doing this. They don't want to hinder you, they want to help you but don't try to screw them over. Those are people, those are professionals that are doing their job. If you call them and if you meet with them then they're going to be happy to help you. Then check the details on what still you want to build or to buy always according and in coordination with the customs agents or with the guys at the Berufsgenossenschaft, the professionals association and then you can basically apply for this. As I said if you fulfill the regulations they have to give you this license. Then as I said Berufsgenossenschaft is a way to talk and then you might check in with the local farmers club or organic farmers club or for example the University of Hohenheim has really good distillers classes because it's one thing of reading something in a book, it's something totally different to actually take part in a course. Such a course sets you back another 3, 400 euros but it's money well spent because if you ruin a batch of 1,000 kilos of apples that's going to be more expensive. Yeah and this is basically the end of my talk. Here's the Marte Liguris heap that I wanted to show you because if you don't want to apply for an Apfenungsplenrecht and although it can be done it is quite a hassle. It is easier just to aromatize using a neutral grain spirit. So here's the recipe. You take aqueous root, you take some coriander seeds, some martéed tea leaves, you take galangal root, some cinnamon, some cardamom, you just mix it with 200 milliliters of 50% vodka and let it stand for 10 days, filter it through a tea filter and then you have a martéed liqueur macerate and this macerate is basically a concentrate you make your liqueur out of and then mix it again with 1.4 liters of vodka, half a liter of water, 500 grams of sugar, mix it, maybe filter it again through the tea filter and then you have your delicious marté liqueur and this is basically the end of my talk. So thanks a lot. A warm thanks for Stefan Peininger for this double feature start.