What do you get if you distill beer? Whiskey? Something else? I'm curious because I love whiskey and I have five gallons of homebrew lager waiting to be bottled.

You could just drink the beer and then make your own moonshine.

Whisky is just malt isn't it? Beer has quite a few other cereals in it, I'm sure what you'd get wouldn't be whisky.

Why don't you try it and see?

Sam Adams Utopias is a beer brewed with yeasts that can survive at up to around 25% alcohol, so it continues to ferment until it is that strong, unlike most brewing yeasts that die out around 12%. Some wines are up to 15-16% alcohol by volume, but even they require specialized yeasts.

Distilled beer would be different though, there would be a more ethanol bite and burn like other distilled liquors.

Whisky is actually similar to distilled beer, except its not hopped, but whisky can be made with barley, and yeast, just like beer before hops are thrown into the equation.

That being said, with hops.. distilled beer tastes fairly different. Usually pretty sweet. Its called either Beer Brandy or Beer Schnapps. I've had three different varieties when I was in Europe. Two German, and one Belgian. They're rare, and I've never seen one in a store (Though I've seen them for order in German stores) however. All except for one, and thats Uerige Stickum, which is a German beer brandy. It can be found in some stores for order every now and then... but only rarely.

Its more common to distill the green beer than the finished product though. And after all, without hops.. the wort is just like a wash in whisky production.

^ Well informed as usual, good post, I was just reading about that online right now, it's a very interesting topic, I guess what would happen if you were to make your own hopped wort, distill it and then age it in oak, I'm sure it will be quite different from whisky.

There's a specialized shop around here that sells supplies for home brewing, I'll go in to ask a few questions next week, if it doesn't cost too much I wouldn't mind making my own beer at least for the time being, then maybe I could try to distill later on.

^ Just don't mention your plans to distill, such is illegal.