Grain spirit

[El Boso]

Looking for some food grade, high percentage, alcohol to help me make herbal tinctures. 

[Alchemica]

Not sure if you found some but an old trick the master T used to give is to get alcohol that has been 'denatured' with almond oil, add a pinch of permanganate to oxidise to benzoic acid and then distil, if that is in your reach. You could do the same with some food grade bulk almond essence, you can get a litre of high ethanol almond essence delivered for $25

 

There's various techniques for improving industrial ethanol but they can change the denaturants, anywhere from ketones, to denationium benzoate to t-butanol. It shouldn't be considered anything else than technical grade. 

 

[Starward]

There are tens of thousands of home distillers all over Australia. I am sure if you asked a friend who knows a friend, you will find someone local. The police seem to have totally given up trying to prosecute home distillers as long as they do not sell. However, it means people are very mum about it.

Otherwise, go to your local quality homebrew shop; they will sell you a basic still for about $200+.  Home distilling neutral spirit is easy and safe with some basic precautions. It is easy to get a 70% ABV spirit with a basic still, and with a little more effort, you can get to 95% ABV.

I have seen brewshop that are rather brazen about it; they have bottles of moonshine sitting on the counter labeled 97.5% ABV as a point of pride. They had a spiced rum aging on the counter that you could sample at one point. They will sell you everything from 50kg bags of dextrose to every imaginable flavor to simulate your favorite poison.

A sugar wash or molasses is really simple and cheap. However, an all-grain spirit is far more complex and expensive because you have to mash the malt grain to convert starch to sugar. DO NOT try distilling fruit and grapes this is an advance topic.

You can also buy Polmos Spirytus Rektyfikowany Rectified Spirit 95% in a few places in Australia if you are only going to do a small amount of tincture. Dan Murphy’s used to sell it, but some idiots poisoned themselves trying to drink it.

However, if your plant material is dry, then your standard 40% ABV vodka will be just fine.

Edited March 27 by Starward

[El Boso]

Thanks fellas. I'm looking into buying a still. And I will probably work with sugar wash, and if I can get to 70 I'll be happy. I read somewhere 70% is not enough for tincture, but If I use enough I'm sure it's fine. 

[Starward]

If the plant material is dry, then the 40% ABV is enough to act as a preservative. If wet, then 70% ABV or higher is better because the water in the plant dilutes the ethanol.

50% ABV alcohol is enough to dissolve flavanoids out of wood.

Getting a higher ABV off the still can be achieved by packing the column to increase reflux. OR taking only a small hearts cut you can easy get  to 80%.

Distilling is not that hard, and there is a strong support community. The best advice I can give you is to run low and slow, and watch your cuts.

 

EDIT

 

Water is also a solvent - certain compounds dissolves in water that does not dissolve in pure alcohol. This is why different distillers age their spirits at different ABV's, because it results in different compounds being extracted from barrel resulting in different flavor profiles in the end product. The same would apply to plant material. However I doubt that it has been studied as systemically as it has in distilling.

Edited April 16 by Starward

[El Boso]

Tyvm