I have been experimenting with home made bio-fuel. It works out at about 20p per litre. It is legal to produce in the UK without a license as long as you are main less than 2500 litres per year. That sounds a lot but you can mix it with pertol/diesel for use in vehicles. It seems to burn just as well as shop bought bio-ethanol liquid or gel which is a lot more expensive. I've no idea where my non-gas stoves are so I have been testing it in our ornamental burner which is basically a metal pot, like a normal stove but without any holes/jets.

If anybody is interested I can send you the recipe. It's also fully organic and vegan if that matters.

Home made Bio-ethanol by Duncan Lovett, on Flickr

I just picked up 5ltr of clear meths from the pinewood studio branch of jewsons, no idea of the cost but it seems to burn very clean

Absolutely interested please - top effort. Got some Hacienda left at mo but...

This recipe makes approx 4lt of wash.

Water 4 litres
Red Lentils 26g
Sugar 1064g
Yeast 21g (Bakers yeast will work or use brewers yeast)

Add 532ml hot water (from the tap) to the lentils. Give it a good stir (or shake). Put it aside and leave it overnight.
Dissolve sugar in 2128ml hot water (from the tap), and pour it onto the lentils. Give it a good stir (or shake).
Add cold water to reduce the temp to 28C, add the yeast and stir. Add the remaining water, add the airlock and keep somewhere warm at approx 25c. We make about 4 at once in a plastic crate with water and an aquarium heater in it to keep the temp constant.

You then need to distil it, we use a normal drinking water distiller, but you could use a pot and a piece of pipe. Loads of info on how to make them on the internet. Once distilled you will get 700ml-1lt of 30-60% proof so you then need to distill it a 2nd time and you will get 60-90 proof. I burn 70% proof and that’s what is burning in the the picture. In the UK, if you drink it after the 1st distill (as its basically vodka) then the whole process isn’t legal as you need a distillers licence, however if used for fuel and you make no more than 2500lt it is and no license is required.

These are two other recipes using things you might have in your pantry. They also work very well.

Bran Flake Fuel Recipe
828ml sugar
4l water
240ml crushed All Bran cereal
2 tbsp active baking yeast

Tomato Paste Fuel Recipe
water 4.000 l 1.057 g
white sugar 0.920 kg
tomato paste 36ml
yeast 3g

Is yeast vegan? Isn't it an animal?

I'm sure you can get vegan yeast ?
Edit; a lot of vegans eat yeast because even though it's a living organism,
It's classed as a fungus, it's considered to be ethically treated and not exploited...

EDIT: Plants are living till you eat them . Veganism is not about not eating things that are alive its about not eating things that are alive[ or their byproducts] that can feel pain suffering , discomfort etc.


its a fungus so it belongs to the animal kingdom in much the same way a mushroom does [ not at all ]. It is /was alive but that is not the same thing*
the vegan yeast you may mean is nutritional yeast but its inactive so no use for fermenting or baking

https://www.ocado.com/products/marigold ... s-71137011

* i have heard f fruititarians or the like whowill eat produce the fruits of plants, I assume you get seeds as well and possibly somepulses but not theENTIRE plant so therefore no death. I have no idea if this is true or possible - probably can just about survive without killing any plants as well . I have not looked into this personally.

Lazarus wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:12 pm EDIT: Plants are living till you eat them . Veganism is not about not eating things that are alive its about not eating things that are alive[ or their byproducts] that can feel pain suffering , discomfort etc.

Does that mean vegans can eat Tory cabinet ministers?

Yeast is one of those foods that's a grey area. Technically it is a single celled organism so yes it could be considered an animal. However does that also mean you can't eat plants as they are multi celled animals. I'm not Vegan, but my partner is and she is fine eating yeast.

The bio fuel also works as a great fire starter. I have used a few drops on damp pinecones in our bio light and it got them burning with a single spark fro a usb lighter.

I've just got to crack cold temp fermentation so the aquarium heater isn't needed to make the wash.

1tsp 70% proof bio-fuel gets a damp pine cone burning by Duncan Lovett, on Flickr

I dont think its a grey area but for some reason folk get confused when they discover we eat things that were once alive.

Technically it is a single celled organism so yes it could be considered an animal.

That is not a definition of animal I am familiar with - most bacteria are single celled but i dont think anyone considers them animals
Whilst not a biology expert I dont think there is going to be any animal that is unicellular as they are all multicellular and clearly complex with diferentiated cells doing different tasks.

Either way yeast is fine for vegans and apparently Tory ministers - though i reckon i would struggle to keep a full one down I would do it for the greater good of the country

I am going to try the lentil version above.

That all seems reasonable enough. Tbf I can understand why some people on a vegan diet world be willing to turn a blind eye to honey/yeast/eggs etc - the eating bit must be tough enough without having to think about not having pints.

Interesting thread btw Duncan.

Been away sorting parents out. This all went off at a vegan tangent in the meantime - and why not. I love a nice digression. But having said I was interested I then thought later, ooer, maybe I need a whole field of some sort of crop, a massive still, an obscure catalyst, etc etc. I see the instructions are less onerous than that but then again '2518ml' is pretty specific even for a weight weenie like me. What happens if I use 2517ml? Perhaps I end up with some sort of tasty alcoholic beverage instead? At least I could drink that to drown my sorrows if the biofuel recipe failed to work for me .

(PS Reg's lentil bake recipe uses exactly the same ingredients which I find quite intriguing)

So I can make vodka from hippy food? Sign me up

Next time we’re out reg, I’ll sort you out a litre of the clear meths if you bring a bottle

In Reverse wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:31 pm the eating bit must be tough enough without having to think about not having pints

Had a little chuckle at this

Excellent Stevo - I'll bring a full bottle. We can drink that then I can replace the contents with the meths .

They changed the law a few years ago, as far as I know. As long as you've got a free Rectifiers license, and are not distilling for retail, i.e. personal consumption or fuel, you're good to go (IANAL though). For a few hundred quid, you can get a proper still shipped from the East...

Been there! Done that! 50 years ago! We didn't waste any as fuel. Ours was made with sugar and water and fermented with bread yeast in a 9 gallon carboy (like people make a bottle garden in). After two weeks it went into our still made from a converted fire extinguisher and a copper coil in a 40 gallon oil drum of cold water. First pass would make a gallon. That gallon would go back into the still and make a half gallon of pure alcohol. It would burn away to nothing in a spoon.

It was awful to drink, even watered down half and half with fruit juice. It had a nasty, peppery taste. I found out many years later, when I started making home-brew, that yeast doesn't ferment sucrose too well. It has to produce lots of an enzyme to break the sugar down to a form it can use. This enzyme, I guess, was why our hooch tasted so bad. There was also a risk that we could have made the wrong kind of alcohol, ie. methanol which can do you a lot of no-good they say.

It was very illegal at the time and our still was hidden under the stairs. Now? All change! You can make alcohol as long as you follow the rules.

With 'survival' skills like that Frog, I know who I'm going to be standing next to when we have the WRT Grand Depart

Just to let you all know in the UK you CANNOT distill alcohol to drink legally. Even for personal use, you do have to have a distiller's licence, which would cost about 40k to get if you did it all above board. This is the water distiller we have and it could be used to make alcohol, but we don't use it for as it's not legal. https://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/air-still-uk/

If you do make illegal alcohol then you can add these flavours to pretty much make any spirt. https://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/still-spi ... ngs-bases/

Of all the washes we have tried, the organic red lentil one has the highest alcohol % when it's completed, obviously you want to distill the best you can make to end up with with the highest % proof.

Lazarus wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:20 pm I dont think its a grey area but for some reason folk get confused when they discover we eat things that were once alive.

Technically it is a single celled organism so yes it could be considered an animal.

That is not a definition of animal I am familiar with - most bacteria are single celled but i dont think anyone considers them animals
Whilst not a biology expert I dont think there is going to be any animal that is unicellular as they are all multicellular and clearly complex with diferentiated cells doing different tasks.

Either way yeast is fine for vegans and apparently Tory ministers - though i reckon i would struggle to keep a full one down I would do it for the greater good of the country

I am going to try the lentil version above.

Sorry, can I just clarify what we are discussing here. Fuel, or drink?

htrider wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:49 pm Sorry, can I just clarify what we are discussing here. Fuel, or drink?

Hopefully fuel, as after a bit of a Google, it would appear I was talking out of my arse... Pas de changement là-bas.

Sorry, can I just clarify what we are discussing here. Fuel, or drink?

Fuel for the purists
Drink for the alcoholics
veganism - its what we do, all the time, apparently

Lazarus wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2020 12:57 pm

Sorry, can I just clarify what we are discussing here. Fuel, or drink?

Fuel for the purists
Drink for the alcoholics
veganism - its what we do, all the time, apparently

That pretty much sums up the thread.

I am trying out a new receipe that uses commercial yeast. 70% after the first distillation, God knows how strong it will be after the 2nd one. I'm actually concerned that if it's too high it might go off like lighting a petrol tank. Defo one to try a few drops off somewhere miles from anywhere, jut incase it goes bang.

The lentil one is the best as it has no smells when it's brewing, and make good fuel.