doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Slakum Ingredients

I have been successful in finding all the Slakum ingredients except for Spirits of Wine, or Ethyle Alcohol.

One chemical supplier (sciencelab.com) lists this:

Ethyl Alcohol, Absolute, 200 Proof, Reagent, ACS


I am assuming this is the elusive spirits, any comments?

Thanks!

Quote: "Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a somewhat potent psychoactive drug, best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages"

Seems to me I have seen pure grain alcohol under several different brand names for sale in local package stores, along with the more friendly distilled beverages. Perhaps your drug store? It's a common product. No witchcraft involved with this one.

Can't get grain here in NY but I can right over the border in CT. The main brand is Everclear which is 190 proof or 95%, not 100% which would be 200 proof.

That 5% water may make a difference.

Right, I first thought of Everclear but the water content scared me off.

Hey Chief, I bet some of that good clear Georgia Shine from around Waycross, double distilled to remove all the water, would be absolutely perfect!! Some of my ancestors were from the Okefenokee Swamp, their main cash crop was Moonshine made in the Swamp.

It's still around, you just need to where to look for it. Some of it is pure poison, containing lead from various parts used in making it, but some lessor quantities are pretty dang good, if potent! Not that I have ever consumed any of it, of course, I prefer my Jim Beam Black Label.

Making 200 proof ethanol requires some heroic measures to remove the last 5% of water. Even after it is made exposure to air will result in it slowly acquiring water from the air until it is 190 proof or 95%. You cannot distill alcohol to a higher proof than 190. I very much doubt spirits of wine is, or was, ever more than 190 proof. Go ahead and use the Everclear.

Jerry Liles

So is the thinking the alkanet was disolved in the spirits, then the alkanet/spirit mixture added to the other ingredients?

My father was a still maker in S.E. Georgia in the 40's and 50's. I recall watching him weld up a mash cooker when I was around 5 or so years old. As he owned a truck repair shop, no one much paid any attention when he was welding up something. And I hear you about the lead. Dad used silver solder for everything that touched the liquids, especially in the condenser. His family had a long tradition of making spirits.

Maybe I should make a small still and render down some Cabernet into Spirits of Wine.

I've got a good friend in Dale Edmonds who refinishes Damascus shotgun barrels, we used to get together have a few beers and talk about problems related to old recipes for rusting solutions, he'd ask mutual friends who were chemists and chemical engineers things like "what exactly is 'sweet spirits of nitre'?" He never got a good answer, then we found out that we were asking the wrong people. When people back then needed "sweet spirits of nitre", they didn't go to a chemist they went to a pharmacist. What is really useful is what is called a "National Dispensatory", basically it is the pharmacist's desk reference for the late 1800's and early 1900's. You can find them on ebay sometimes. I am sure that the spirits of wine back then would have had quite a bit of water content as well.

I soaked my alkanet root in good turpentine to leach out all the color, (several weeks, shake it up from time to time) then used the appropriate amount of colored turpentine my recipe called for along with the remaining ingredients. There are differing recipes, a number of the old recipes call for turpentine.