Top 32 How To Make A Moonshine Thumper Keg Top 96 Best Answers

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Contents

What liquid goes in a thumper?

Just fill your boiler up to 20% capacity with a mix of 50% distilled hot water and 50% vinegar. Then, start distilling from your pot into your thumper, just like how you normally would when separating tails and distilling spirits.

Do you put anything in a thumper keg?

Mass-produced microdistilling systems often feature thumper kegs made of glass, copper, or stainless steel. A thumper keg should be no more than ⅔ full of some alcohol-based liquid. Many micro distillers and moonshiners use low wine, wash, or finished spirit. You can use water, although that would defeat the purpose.

How much liquid do you put in the thumper?

Making moonshine with a thumper instead of a pot still is great because thumpers essentially perform two distillations in one—without stripping the flavor the way reflux distillation does. Depending on your thumper, it’s typical to plan to fill it about halfway with liquid.

How big should a thumper be for a 5 gallon still?

A thumper should be 30-40% the size of your main boiler, so the five gallon would be marginal at best. Plumping is simple: the inlet from the main boiler should extend almost to the bottom of the thumper; the outlet should just penetrate the lid.

What size Thumper do I need?

How Big Should a Thumper Keg Be? A thumper keg should be 25% to 40% the size of your main boiler. If you plan to prime your thumper keg with a sizable charge (botanicals, low wines, wash, water, etc), use a thumper keg that is at least 50% the size of your main boiler.

Do you need to heat the thumper?

Does a Thumper Need to be Heated? Many moonshiners do prefer to heat the thumper. The alcohol does need to stay in vapor form to be able to rise into the condenser. Wood barrels are often preferred as thump kegs because of wood’s natural isolative abilities.

What do you charge a thumper with?

Thumper should be at least 1/3 of boiler size and it can be charged with water, low wines, tails, wash, really up to you.

How do you keep moonshine flavor clear?

Adding sugar can also adjust the taste of your moonshine

To add final touches, you can add 5 teaspoons of caramelized raw or white sugar per liter of your spirit. You can add additional sugar if you want it sweeter because your final product will greatly depend on your taste buds.

How much head do you throw away when distilling?

Additionally, commercial distillers have determined that simply discarding a standard amount per batch, based on batch size, is enough to keep things safe. The rule of thumb is to discard 1/3 of a pint jar for every 5 gallons of wash being distilled.

What is the point of a thumper?

What Is a Thumper? A thumper is essentially a parasitic kettle connected to the primary distilling kettle. The thumper gets heated with the heat already produced to feed the primary kettle. Evidently, the thumper gets its name from the sound it makes while in operation.

What do you charge a thumper with?

Thumper should be at least 1/3 of boiler size and it can be charged with water, low wines, tails, wash, really up to you.

How much head do you throw away when distilling?

Can you use cracked corn for moonshine?

Ingredients: 5 lbs. cracked corn 5 lbs white sugar 5 gallons spring water 2 ½ pounds honey 2 packets dry yeast (4 ½ teaspoons using bulk yeast) Directions: 1. Put all your water in a large pot or several pots and bring to 180 degrees.

All About Thumpers

How to Build a THUMPER For Your Pot Still!! – YouTube

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Table of Contents:

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Table of Contents:

How Distilled Beverages Are Made

Fermentation Explained

Alcohol Distillation Explained (Hard Liquor)

Pot Stills

What Is a Thumper Keg

How Does a Thumper Keg Work

Why Is It Called the “Thumper Keg”

How Do I Get a Thumper Keg

Conclusion

Welcome to Liquid Bread Mag

Legal Info

Thumper Keg: What Is It & How Does It Work? (Thumper 101) – Liquid Bread Mag

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Most searched keywords: Whether you are looking for Best Liquid To Use in Thumper Updating Find out what your different options are for which liquid to use when running a distillation thumper.
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Best Liquid To Use in Thumper

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Summary of article content: Articles about The Thumper Keg Explained – What it does and how it does it! – Learn to Moonshine An ordinary pot still, without a thump keg, is capable of distilling a wash to only a “low wine”, which will be about 40-50% alcohol. A second, … …
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The Thumper Keg Explained – What it does and how it does it! – Learn to Moonshine

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Summary of article content: Articles about Explaining The Thumper Keg: The Basics | Homebrew Academy The thumper keg uses the waste heat emitted by the steam pot, making it a very efficient distillation apparatus in moonshine stills. …
Most searched keywords: Whether you are looking for Explaining The Thumper Keg: The Basics | Homebrew Academy The thumper keg uses the waste heat emitted by the steam pot, making it a very efficient distillation apparatus in moonshine stills. If you’re someone who has zero knowledge about this and is hearing the words thumper and keg together for the first time, you might be thinking that this is what rabbits and bunnies use to party. Don’t worry. We made this guide for the home distiller who needs to know everything about thumper kegs, what it does, what
Table of Contents:

A Quick Summary

What Is a Thumper Keg and Where Is It From

What Is a Thumper Keg For

How Does A Thumper Keg Work

Infusing Flavors Using A Thumper Keg

How Does It Compare

What’s the Right Size of Thumper Keg

How Do You Clean A Thumper Keg

Thumper Keg Recommendations

Final Words

Explaining The Thumper Keg: The Basics | Homebrew Academy

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Summary of article content: Articles about How to Build a Thumper Keg – Beer Snobs How to Build a Thumper Keg · Non-reactive vessel. · Two pipes, elbows and t-fittings. · Two copper unions that fit the openings of the condenser … …
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Table of Contents:

How to Build a Thumper Keg

How to Build a Mason Jar Thumper

How to Add Flavors Using a Thumper Keg

How to Clean a Thumper Keg

How to Determine the Suitable Size for Your Thumper Keg

Overview on Thumper Kegs

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Explaining The Thumper Keg: The Basics

If you’re someone who has zero knowledge about this and is hearing the words thumper and keg together for the first time, you might be thinking that this is what rabbits and bunnies use to party.

Don’t worry. We made this guide for the home distiller who needs to know everything about thumper kegs, what it does, what it’s for, its purpose, and how it works.

A Quick Summary

If you’re in a hurry and just need to know the most essential information about the humble thumper keg, here it is.

What Is It? A thumper keg works to distill your low wine a second time. It may be made of copper, steel, or wood, and sits between the still pot and condenser.

A thumper keg works to distill your low wine a second time. It may be made of copper, steel, or wood, and sits between the still pot and condenser. What Does A Thump Keg Do? It speeds up the distillation process and transforms your low wine into a liquid with higher alcohol content, which is critical for making moonshine or bourbon.

It speeds up the distillation process and transforms your low wine into a liquid with higher alcohol content, which is critical for making moonshine or bourbon. What Size Thump Keg Do You Need To Use? It should generally be about 25% to 40% of the size of your main boiler.

Now, if you need to know more about the thumper keg, keep reading.

What Is a Thumper Keg and Where Is It From?

A thump keg, aka. the doubler, thump barrel, or thump chest, is usually referenced along with the backwoods whiskey still. It has a very old, classic design.

Quick History Lesson

The prevailing theory is that early settlers brought this design of the thump keg along with them and incorporated it into the stills that they eventually started constructing once they’d, well… settled.

If you look around, some of the older European stills support this theory because they also made use of what looks like the same chambers that functioned as thump kegs.

This means that the design and ingenuity of how it works were already well-known to the colonists who came over from the British Isles!

During the Prohibition Era, bourbon distillers and moonshiners in the Appalachians favored using thumpers for their recipes [R].

The Thumper Keg of Today

Nowadays, the thump keg remains to be one of the most iconic and clever design elements of the traditional hillbilly still.

Anyone who makes moonshine will know how important this is for their moonshine stills.

The thumper keg can be made of copper, steel, or wood, and sits between the stillpot and condenser.

Why is that, you ask?

Simply put, its purpose is to distill the output of the pot still a 2nd time without having to run the distillate through the still again.

What Is a Thumper Keg For?

Still confused what it does?

We’re getting there.

So we briefly stated what a thump keg is meant to do. Now, let’s get into the details of how this works.

Ordinarily, a standard pot still that does not have a thump keg can distill a wash only to a “low wine”. This will give you an output that is 40 to 05% alcohol by volume or ABV.

If you want to achieve the high alcohol content for high-proof whiskey or any other spirit like moonshine, YOU WILL NEED…you guessed it!

A second or even a third distillation.

Now, a lot of distillers in Europe continue to use the swan-neck pot stills and a beer stripper to distill wash to the low-wine state, while using a second spirit still to transform it into a high-proof spirit.

In the case of hillbilly stills, the thumper keg acts as the second distillation apparatus, much like the spirit still.

How Does A Thumper Keg Work?

Now, you may ask yourself how this magic happens. Well, the way a thump keg works are extremely clever.

The thumper keg uses the waste heat emitted by the steam pot, making it a very efficient distillation apparatus in moonshine stills.

Let me explain.

A standard still will heat the wash or fermented solution to a high temperature. This releases the alcohol vapors. These vapors are then captured by the condenser into the solution called low wines.

Did you know: Without a thumper keg, you will need to distill this liquid through various stills to achieve that high alcohol content. This multiple distillation process, while effective, is expensive and time-consuming.

The thumper keg simplifies the moonshine-making process, which is why more moonshine-makers prefer it.

So How Does It Work, Exactly?

Some moonshine distillers add additional ethyl alcohol into the thumper during these distillations to make a more potent liquid with a much higher alcohol content.

One of the things you need to do in your distillation process is to allow your mash to reach the boiling point. When it reaches this temperature, it will start emitting steam or hot vapor.

Now it’s basic science that steam has to come out somewhere (otherwise things will start going ka-boom and nobody wants that).

So, this steam will look for a way to escape, which means it will find its way out of your moonshine stills.

Here’s where the thumper keg comes in.

As the hot vapor exits your still, it will pass through the arm into the low wine that’s already condensed in the bottom of the thump keg. You’ll start to hear a thumping sound as the vapor and condensed low wine erupt out of this pipe every so often. This is where the thumper gets its name. By heating the liquid again, the thumper keg sends highly purified alcohol vapors from your still to the condenser. This thumper liquid is the high-proof spirit that all moonshine-lovers covet.

Pro-tip: the temperature is a great indicator of where you will need to make cuts to achieve the proof you want.

You see, the vapor’s temperature is fixed based on the ratio of alcohol to water.

By measuring the temperature of the liquid anywhere in your set-up, with or without your thumper, you will have a good idea of the proportion of alcohol in your mix.

Watch out for the mash you’re using. Remember to never let your mash boil over into the thumper!

The Result

The effect of this entire process is that hot vapor will continuously heat the low wine to the boiling point of alcohol, “distilling” it a second time.

This results in a high-proof moonshine, bourbon, or spirit you cannot get from a single run of the liquid through an ordinary pot still.

This is why moonshiners and other distillers prefer to use wood for their keg.

Wood has great insulation and is better than metal at keeping heat trapped inside to maintain this temperature, so moonshine distillers are sure the process is as efficient as possible.

The more heat there is inside the barrel, the better it is for your thump keg.

Infusing Flavors Using A Thumper Keg

We’ve already given you a pretty good idea of how a thumper keg works. But did you know you can also use it to add more layers of flavor to your moonshine?

Before you start distilling, fill the thumper keg with a small number of spirit tails from a previous batch (best option), some wash from the current batch, or water (water is the last resort).

This is the thumper liquid and it is meant to COOL the vapor that comes in from your pot still.

If you want to infuse extra flavor into your moonshine, you can also add fruits, herbs, or spices at this stage.

You will have several options for doing this.

Add fruit-infused spirits to your thumper keg – You can place your chosen fruits, spices, and herbs into a big container of low wines or head/tail spirits. Then, let it sit for about a week or two to gradually infuse these flavors into the liquid. Once it’s time to distill, just add this solution to the bottom of the thumper keg to impart its flavors into your final moonshine. Add juice or oils directly into your thumper – In case you want a simpler and faster process than the one above, you can also add liquid ingredients like juice (apple, lemon, peach, blackberry, etc.) and coconut oil directly into your thumper keg. Add raw ingredients directly into your thumper – Now this is a combination of the first two flavor infusion methods we’ve mentioned. You can choose to add fruit peel, herbs, spices, and mashed ripe fruit directly into your thumper keg. Just remember that in the case of mashed fruit, you will need to add large quantities to impart that flavor. Also, it can result in quite a mess.

Regardless of which method you choose, you need to extract the heads from the ethyl alcohol before infusion. This will make sure the flavors will infuse the distillate that you will drink.

How Does It Compare?

While the thumper keg is a step up from an ordinary pot still, don’t expect the same results as you would from running your vapor, water, and distillate into a sophisticated reflux column still.

The reflux column still can yield up to the theoretical limit of 95% alcohol by volume or proof, if it is well-made, while also giving you better separation of the ethyl alcohol, esters, and ketones in the heads, or the heavy fusel alcohol in the tails.

However, some distillers don’t prefer this because they say it strips too much flavor away from the distillate, giving you less tasty alcohol in the end.

Who wants that, right?! (**says the person who loves coffee**)

These purists prefer a thumper to maintain that flavor in your distillate, while still achieving the right alcohol by volume or proof. This is true, whether you are making moonshine or some other alcohol.

In the end, though, we recommend going for a thumper if you want to achieve that higher alcohol by volume or proof without having to run your distillate through a more expensive set-up.

We’re talking to you, home moonshiners!

What’s the Right Size of Thumper Keg?

As we’ve mentioned at the start of this article, a thumper keg should be 25% to 40% the size of your main boiler.

But if you are planning to prime your thumper keg with a big amount of charge, whether it be botanicals, low wines, wash, or water, get a thumper keg that is at least 50% the size of your main boiler.

How Do You Clean A Thumper Keg?

If you’re looking for the easiest way to clean your thumper keg so that it’s ready for making your moonshine, you will need to do a vinegar run.

Just fill your boiler up to 20% capacity with a mix of 50% distilled hot water and 50% vinegar. Then, start distilling from your pot into your thumper, just like how you normally would when separating tails and distilling spirits. Let it reach a temperature of at least 170 degrees Fahrenheit and keep this going for at least 5 minutes. Once that’s done, turn off your heat source and let your distillation equipment cool down to a temperature that you can handle. Empty the vinegar solution, and you’re done!

Note that you only have to do this if you have a brand new thumper keg. Otherwise, just do everything 2 to 3 times a year.

Thumper Keg Recommendations

If you need to get a thumper keg and want some recommendations, this is for you.

Stampede Stills 2 Gallon Copper Moonshine Still Thumper Keg (Doubler)

A thumper keg that is completely made out of copper (20-ounce copper sheet). It can hold up to 2 gallons of liquid. It also comes with a half-inch ball valve drain and half-inch copper pipe handoffs.

HOWEVER!

If you’re looking for a thumper keg that is made of stainless steel, you can check out this for your pot….

DIY 2 Gal 10 Liters Thumper

It’s made of food-grade materials and high-quality stainless steel that is 100% lead-free for safe distillation. It even comes in various sizes!

Stampede Stills Copper Half Gallon Widemouth Mason Jar Thumper Kit [R]
Another great and affordable option if your purpose isn’t to make large amounts of alcohol.

It is a handcrafted copper tube and seals that can covert any wide-mouth mason jar into a thumper using its gasket and pipe.

Just note that it does not include additional pope or coupling unions to connect it to your setup.

Final Words

The world of moonshine-making is vast. This is just some of the information that will greatly help you along so you can perfect your moonshine. Have fun!

Thumper Keg: What Is It & How Does It Work? (Thumper 101) – Liquid Bread Mag

The thumper keg is an intrinsic part of the small-scale distillation process. While traditionally jerry-rigged, this piece of equipment is now mass-produced and commercially available. But what is a thumper keg, and how does it work?

The thumper keg is a cheaper alternative to having multiple stills and more complicated distilling equipment. A thumper keg is used to reduce the amount of water in distilled liquid. In producing alcoholic beverages and spirits, it’s used to increase the alcohol content.

This article will explore the function and use of thumper kegs. But first, we’ll explain how distilled beverages are produced.

How Distilled Beverages Are Made

Distillation is the separation of component liquids in a mixture through selective boiling and condensation. It takes advantage of the differing vaporization temperatures of different molecules.

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Distillation is performed by heating a volume of mixed fluids to the boiling point of one of them. If one or more fluids in a mixture have a lower boiling point and the mixture is heated to that temperature, the constituent fluid(s) with the lower boiling point will evaporate. The hot vapor can then be cooled, condensed, and collected to produce a purified form of that liquid.

Fermentation Explained

The alcohol in alcoholic beverages is produced by microscopic single-celled yeast, relatives of fungi. The yeast used in alcohol production is closely related to bread leaven. They can actually be used interchangeably.

Yeast cells eat sugar.

Under normal conditions, yeast ingests and metabolizes sugar and releases carbon dioxide, among other metabolic wastes. That’s essentially how human metabolism works as well. But when yeast is placed in an oxygen-deficient environment, they switch to a different metabolic process called “fermentation.”

Fermentation uses a different and less energy-efficient enzyme path to break down sugar into more simple molecules. The important part is the ultimate byproduct of fermentation: ethanol.

Alcohol producers introduce yeast to a closed container full of a sugar-rich food source and water. Wine and brandy producers use grapes or other fruit, most beer producers use barley and/or wheat, tequila producers use blue agave, and most whiskey and vodka producers use cheap grain. The water and food source mixture is called the wort (“must” in winemaking).

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The container is closed once the yeast is introduced. The yeast multiplies rapidly and soon exhausts the oxygen left in the container when it starts fermenting. Fermentation is often accelerated by heating the container.

Fermentation is a self-destructive survival strategy for yeast. Brewers’ yeast can only tolerate an alcohol concentration between 6% and 15%. When the alcohol level in the wort nears or exceeds the yeast’s alcohol tolerance, it either dies or goes into an inactive state.

What happens now depends on what alcoholic beverage the producer is trying to make. Wine, beer, and malt liquor producers filter the now ethanol-infused wort/must to remove leftover solids and yeast and bottle the remaining distilled spirit as their finished product. Spirit producers distill the wort to extract the alcohol.

In the spirit industry, the fermented wort is called “wash.”

Alcohol Distillation Explained (Hard Liquor)

Once the wort/must is fermented, the alcohol has to be extracted. This is done through distillation.

The wash is transferred into a container called a still. Stills were traditionally made out of easily workable copper, but most modern stills are stainless steel. Copper stills are still used by some small-scale and tradition-minded distillers.

Once full of wash, the still is heated. Ethanol boils at 173.1°F (78.39°C), but water boils at 212°F (100°C). As long as the internal temperature of the still is kept between those two temperatures, the ethanol will boil out of the wort while most of the water stays behind.

The ethanol vapor is then routed into a condenser (usually copper tubing) when it condenses into its liquid state. The leftover wort/must is discarded, often sold to farmers as animal feed. The condensed liquid is called the “distillate.”

Pot Stills

There are two primary types of still used in alcohol fermentation, pot stills, and column stills. Pot stills are related to this article’s topic.

Pot stills were originally invented in the late 8th century CE as a development of an older distilling apparatus called the alembic. Most flavored beverages like whiskey, tequila, rum, brandy, and vodka are distilled in pot stills.

Pot stills are used for batch distillation, in which a set volume of wort can be distilled at any one time. When distillation is over, the still must be cleaned out and refilled with wort.

Pot stills produce a distillate with an alcohol concentration between 25% and 35% alcohol, with the remainder consisting of water and other impurities, referred to as “congeners.” Congeners are mostly metabolic byproducts produced by yeast during fermentation and are the primary cause of hangovers. The distillate produced from the first distillation is called “low wine.”

Low wine can be run through additional distillations but will top out at an alcohol concentration between 60% and 80% alcohol. Industrial alcohol distillers use multiple sets of massive pot stills or column stills to enable constant production.

What Is a Thumper Keg?

As mentioned above, pot stills can only produce a maximum alcohol concentration of 35% from the first distillation. Achieving a higher concentration requires multiple pot stills, which would be expensive, or multiple distillations, which would take more time.

Micro distillers and moonshiners typically lacked the extra time and money.

A thumper keg is a simplified secondary still to extract higher alcohol concentrations. But instead of using a separate heat source, a thumper keg uses the waste heat carried in the low wine vapor.

The historical origin of the thumper keg isn’t clear. It was brought to North America by Northern European colonists, possibly the Scotch Irish, sometime before the American Revolution. It’s possible those who invented it were illiterate, which would explain the lack of documentation.

A thump keg can be made of any heat-resistant container. It should be ⅓ the size of your pot still. Mass-produced microdistilling systems often feature thumper kegs made of glass, copper, or stainless steel.

A thumper keg should be no more than ⅔ full of some alcohol-based liquid. Many micro distillers and moonshiners use low wine, wash, or finished spirit. You can use water, although that would defeat the purpose.

Low wine vapor is piped out of the still into the thumper keg and ends below the surface of the liquid in the keg. A second pipe leads from the thumper keg to the condenser.

How Does a Thumper Keg Work?

A common setup for microdistilling and moonshining has three parts, the pot still, the thumper keg, and the condenser. The condenser, often called the “worm” by moonshiners, is typically a section of coiled metal copper tubing which ends in a final collection container. As the name implies, the condenser converts the final vapor from gas to a liquid.

The thumper keg sits between the still and the condenser. Low wine vapor is piped into the thumper keg from the still and injected into the liquid in the keg. Some vapor will bubble to the surface, but most will re-condense into liquid.

The liquid in the keg is quickly heated to the boiling point of alcohol by the injected vapor. Ethanol evaporates, leaving behind water and congeners. The thumper keg vapor is then condensed and collected in a final container.

The low wine vapor produced by the pot still will have a maximum concentration between 35% and 40% alcohol. The spirit produced by the thumper keg will top out around 80% alcohol.

Some micro distillers and moonshine makers also use the thumper keg to infuse their spirit with flavor by placing fruit, herbs, and other agents in the thumper keg. Sources differ on whether this works.

Why Is It Called the “Thumper Keg”?

It’s called the thumper keg because it thumps. The thumping is caused by backpressure between the still and the keg. Because the pipe feeding the low wine vapor into the keg ends below the fluid line, pressure builds up in the pipe and still.

When enough pressure builds up to force the liquid out of the pipe, the pressure is released in the form of a large bubble. The pressure release makes the whole keg shake.

How Do I Get a Thumper Keg?

Traditionally, thumper kegs were jerry-rigged from an existing container and piping. Any premade container can work as long as the materials can withstand the temperatures and pressures involved and don’t contain any lead.

Modern micro distillers and moonshiners use mason jars, carboys, or even buckets.

The other requirement for a homemade thumper keg is to have an airtight lid with airtight seals around the places where the pipes enter the keg. Modern silicone seals work the best.

But if you don’t want to build your thumper keg, you can buy one online as a kit or fully assembled. In fact, over a dozen types of microdistilling setups are available for between $80 and $500.

Pictured above is a ready to go (Amazon). It’s a pot still, thumper keg, and condenser all in one which makes it easier to use. This one uses a flame, such as from a stovetop burner, as a heating source.

Many models available today, however, use electric heating elements instead of the traditional open flame. For obvious reasons, electric heating is considerably safer. Alcohol vapor is extremely flammable.

Check out this video below to learn a whole lot more about Thumpers:

https://youtu.be/hZMnid8_3UE Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: THUMPERS 101 (https://youtu.be/hZMnid8_3UE) A beginning class in Thumpers.

Conclusion

Thumper kegs use waste heat to redistill the low wine produced by a pot still into a high-proof spirit. You can make one with parts from your local hardware store or buy one over the internet.

Best Liquid To Use in Thumper

Making moonshine with a thumper instead of a pot still is great because thumpers essentially perform two distillations in one—without stripping the flavor the way reflux distillation does. Depending on your thumper, it’s typical to plan to fill it about halfway with liquid. This is the case for our Brewhaus thumpers, but if you are using a different thumper, check with the manufacturer or adjust the fill level as you see fit. But what’s the best liquid to use in your thumper when you’re making moonshine? Just water? That’s what I used to think, but it turns out that water is one of the last things you’d want to use.

Tails From a Previous Batch: Best

The way the thumper works is that it takes the vapor from the head of your kettle and travels down a tube into the bottom of the thumper. This vapor is cooled when it enters the liquid in the thumper, which condenses the vapor while also heating that liquid in the thumper. So the temperature of the liquid in the thumper gradually rises and then vaporizes up into the condenser and out as product.

Ideally, you should use tails from a previous run for the liquid that you put in the thumper. This is because you’ll be able to get a bit of additional alcohol from those moonshine tails as the liquid heats. If you do use tails for this, only go for the ones that you collected earliest. As tails are collected, the traces of congeners and fusel oils increases, so your most pure tails are the ones that you got right after the hearts were finished.

Some of Your Current Wash: Good

Another option is to use some of the liquid you’re about to distill. Even though this won’t have as much alcohol present in it as tails from a previous run, it’s better than water because it’s still got some alcohol in there. It is also readily available since you’re about to use it to make moonshine anyway, so go ahead and fill your thumper up about halfway and start distilling.

Water: Better Than Nothing

When I first learned about thumpers, I assumed that you would just use water in it, but Rick says that water would actually be your last resort. He said that it technically works, but if you use water then you’re not getting the benefits of using something that already has alcohol present. If you don’t have tails from a previous batch handy, then he recommends to at least use some of your current wash. Again, there’s no real harm done if you’re using water, but you’re simply not going to get as much from this “double-distillation” as you would if you used one of the other options above.

I hope this info helped you learn more about what to put in your thumper when you’re making moonshine. If you still have questions, feel free to send us a message through Facebook or contact us through our website. Happy distilling!

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Best Liquid To Use in Thumper

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