As an experienced distiller there are a few things worth pointing out.
If you drink it at over 50% you'll be doing permanent damage to your soft cell structure where ever it touches, so you'd need to be diluting it at least 50/50 with water or something else.
At 97%, which it probably isn't because 96% is about the best you can possibly hope for from a still, it doesn't matter whether it's made from glutinous rice, pure cane sugar, molasses or potatoes. It is as near to pure ethanol as you can get (without chemical water reduction) and will have absolutely no flavour characteristic from anything it was made from. It was no doubt made with a reflux still which produces high percentage with no flavour. If you want flavour you need to use a pot still. The mere fact that it is high % does not mean it is all quality gear. Distillation is a procedure of fractioning and the first and last off the boil is pure rubbish being heads and tails. Only the middle cut or heart cut is worth keeping. If you got a headache it is too much heads. At that strength it would contain no tails.
I agree it is cheap by comparison to bottled booze, but I can produce the same thing here in my shed for about AU $3.00 per litre so about 7 pommy quid per gallon and that is hearts only. Malt Whiskey comes in at about twice that and sour mash corn whisky (moonshine, although I hate the term) somewhere in the middle.
Alcohol is dead easy. that's why they made scare campaigns, AND TAX THE CHITE OUT OF US.
Topic: 97 percent proof and up ( 8,748 )
