Several years ago, I bought a home “water distiller” on Amazon. There are tons of different ones on Amazon. My model appears to be discontinued but here is the page of lots of similar ones.
The one I bought I made sure had settings that would go past the boiling point of alcohol (78C) and water (100C), with a temperature setting. This would allow me to distill alcohol if I wanted to, by setting it at 80 or so.
However I’ve never distilled alcohol in it and I might never do that – it is probably illegal (laws are in flux) but more importantly, I will never distill any alcohol that is better than something I can buy, nor cheaper. Pointless.
At this point in the blog post, I was going to list some things that I have distilled, but then I remembered that I already wrote a blog post about that in 2022.
Long story short, here is how to make delicious, nonalcoholic, carbonated strawberry soda:
– Cut up about 5 medium sized strawberries (I just used ones from my local bodega, nothing organic)
– Boil about 2 liters of water – you can just boil it in the still or in a pot and add it to the still, which is what I did as the stove is faster.
– Add the strawberries to the boiling water and turn on the still. I don’t add the strawberries to the water while it’s heating up as I want to avoid cooked flavors.
– Distill it until you get about 2 cups of water (.5L), until the distillate is lacking in most strawberry flavor. No need for heads cuts since we’re not distilling fermented liquid.
– Fill a Soda Stream or other carbonator with the strawberry water, plus enough plain water to fill it. (You don’t need to have 100 percent distilled strawberry water – it is intense!) Place in fridge to chill for several hours or overnight.
– Carbonate it and it’s ready to drink!
Strawberry water made in this method tastes like Fruity Pebbles (to my recollection; I haven’t had those in 30 years) -a simple, bright strawberry flavor. I bet if you used better or more interesting strawberries it would be even better.
I think this water is spectacular on its own and tastes sweet despite having no sweetener. Then I sometimes use it for a base of a cocktail like a strawberry vodka soda. As I type this I am drinking it mixed with unaged cachaca. A hit of a liqueur like Cointreau is also great to give it the body that comes with the sugar.
Enjoy!
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