What are you brewing?

[CaPunT Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close CaPunT]

Thanks Jannie!

[BackOffMyBrew Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BackOffMyBrew]

Loooong weekend ahead. Planning:

A Pale with Summit and Southern Aroma maybe tomorrow or Friday
Want to make a batch of Limoncello on Saturday
Maybe a Vienna / 'Fruh SMaSH on Sunday

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

Also planning a APA tomorrow morning. Have some Pahto from a previous brew that I want to get rid of ... made a "SMaSH" but wasn't impressed. Will add some other hop close to flameout for some extra flavour.

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

I've got 80l of beer I need to bottle. Damn. Also want to start up a sour mash whisky wash to get ready for distillation. I saw the price of cracked corn and thought it's damn cheap, so I want to do a proper bourbon, and first thought about going with the UJSSM recipe, but figured it's cheating. Besides, I have enough pale malt to use, so I'm going to do just that.

So I want to make a proper all-grain bourbon whisky wash, but I'm at a loss here. How do I start? I know the corn needs to be treated differently - like a gelatinisation cook or something like that? I've seen this guy's recipe and method but it looks super complicated - is it really this hard to get the stuff out of the corn?

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewt...p?f=11&t=46428

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

I've got 80l of beer I need to bottle. Damn. Also want to start up a sour mash whisky wash to get ready for distillation. I saw the price of cracked corn and thought it's damn cheap, so I want to do a proper bourbon, and first thought about going with the UJSSM recipe, but figured it's cheating. Besides, I have enough pale malt to use, so I'm going to do just that.

So I want to make a proper all-grain bourbon whisky wash, but I'm at a loss here. How do I start? I know the corn needs to be treated differently - like a gelatinisation cook or something like that? I've seen this guy's recipe and method but it looks super complicated - is it really this hard to get the stuff out of the corn?

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewt...p?f=11&t=46428

it's a pita. iirc i brought the gf up to a boil, dunked in the corn and recirculated kept it on high (93c) temp for a while, then left it overnight to cool, was around 30c next morning. brought it back to temp and mashed the grains as per usual, return on the corn wasn't great either. i probably wont make another bourbon soon, bulleit is my go to and cheap enough, knob creek is alright, but demands a spot of water. I'd rather make *anything* else before I do another bourbon. gelatinization and amylase needed for fermentable extraction.

2c on terminology a wash doesn't require mashing. a mash does :-) so a whisky mash would be in order and a rum/sugar wash.

[BackOffMyBrew Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BackOffMyBrew]

Loooong weekend ahead. Planning:

A Pale with Summit and Southern Aroma maybe tomorrow or Friday

So this didn't happen, trying a Castle Lite clone but one that doesn't taste like soda water. Likely about 3.5% ABV with a nice very pale clear colour. Let's see in about 6 weeks

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

So this didn't happen, trying a Castle Lite clone but one that doesn't taste like soda water. Likely about 3.5% ABV with a nice very pale clear colour. Let's see in about 6 weeks

same no brewing yesterday, it was a mint day and not to wasted inside. had a great lunch at limoncello and some lagunitas ipa on tap at the wine and swine, definitely didn't purchase some excellent wild fermented wines from them. of course, aegir is a few steps away ;-)

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

it's a pita. iirc i brought the gf up to a boil, dunked in the corn and recirculated kept it on high (93c) temp for a while, then left it overnight to cool, was around 30c next morning. brought it back to temp and mashed the grains as per usual, return on the corn wasn't great either. i probably wont make another bourbon soon, bulleit is my go to and cheap enough, knob creek is alright, but demands a spot of water. I'd rather make *anything* else before I do another bourbon. gelatinization and amylase needed for fermentable extraction.

2c on terminology a wash doesn't require mashing. a mash does :-) so a whisky mash would be in order and a rum/sugar wash.

That's a bummer. I noticed there's a UJSSM recipe that uses sugar, but it's not going to be a true all-grain whisky then. It is a lot simpler - corn is just used for flavour, not for fermentables. Maybe I should try the same but with a pale malt grain bill, and then just adding the corn for flavour. Apparently the fermentation on the corn allows a nice flavour to develop.

[paul.stevens Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close paul.stevens]

Living on the edge.

Making 45 L Vanilla Porter in a "50 L" urn

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

[BackOffMyBrew Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BackOffMyBrew]

Sho, that's really pushing the limit, nice!

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

That's a bummer. I noticed there's a UJSSM recipe that uses sugar, but it's not going to be a true all-grain whisky then. It is a lot simpler - corn is just used for flavour, not for fermentables. Maybe I should try the same but with a pale malt grain bill, and then just adding the corn for flavour. Apparently the fermentation on the corn allows a nice flavour to develop.

I wont add dextrose or any form of sugar though, rather just mash the corn, look into cereal mashing. The taste of the bourbon I made is extraordinary, I did add a smidge of rye and wheat, on both reiterated mashes, 16kg grainbill in total ;-) You can understand why I'm not keen on the effort again. I'm doing the same for the peated whisky too. I'm also dead against fermenting on corn, why do distillers do this? You can sour your corn separately and add that to the mash?

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

looks good - keep that mash paddle near

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

I wont add dextrose or any form of sugar though, rather just mash the corn, look into cereal mashing. The taste of the bourbon I made is extraordinary, I did add a smidge of rye and wheat, on both reiterated mashes, 16kg grainbill in total ;-) You can understand why I'm not keen on the effort again. I'm doing the same for the peated whisky too. I'm also dead against fermenting on corn, why do distillers do this? You can sour your corn separately and add that to the mash?

I have no idea. Have you looked at the UJSSM method? It's a "generation" based thing. Ferment, distill, store. Use backset, replace some of the corn, add backset, ferment again (I don't know with what), or something like that. It seems like a mission. I just want to mash, ferment, distill and I guess I'll have to do it at least twice if I want to call it a sour mash.

How did you do your bourbon? Was that the overnight-mash one? I don't mind an overnight mash (at all), I can do it in the cooler box easily I guess. I see you can do the gelatinasation thing with corn at a lower temp, it just takes longer. Guess that's where the cooler box will shine again.

[groenspookasem Banned Find all posts View Profile Close groenspookasem]

Yep, you can sour without going through the effort, like wort, corn sours quickly. I mashed the corn at 93c for an hour, switched off heat and pump and left it to cool, at around 75c ( i think) I added some liquid amylase. Next morning, brought the heat up to 68c, mashed it a bit further - removed the corn and added the grains. OG was 1.05 before mashing the grains. Mashed as per normal from there. Stripped in on the alembic - kept the backset. Repeated the entire process - kept the backset. Added both runs and a mix of the backsets to the spirit run. It's doable, just a pita - the flavors are there !

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

That sounds like a lot of effort, I agree. Stupid question - the "sour mash" mean you use some of the spent grains in the new mash, or does it mean you use backset in the new mash? I'm totally lost now. I thought I could just mash corn and malt together and make whisky. Seems I might be very wrong about that. My plan was, not sure about it anymore now:

1. Mash the corn. I've only got 2kg crushed corn, so that's not a lot (will do a small batch for now). Will keep it very hot (will probably do it in the urn with the grain bag) and keep the urn's temp up as well. Mash for long, and hot.
2. Once that mash is done, I'll add my milled malt. The enzymes in the malt will do the starch conversion. Once the starch conversion is done, the mash should get a lot runnier as the sugars are not prone to sticking like the starches are.
3. Remove the grain bag, sparge and squeeze and whatnot like normal. Now my question - do I store this spent grains, and let it sour? Is this what's going to make it a "sour mash" if I use it in the next batch?
4. Do the cooling and fermenting of the "wort" like usual.
5. Distill. Do a stripping run and collect all the booze. Now, my question (continued), do I save this backset remaining in the still and use it as the liquid to start the next mash I do? Is this what makes a "sour mash" then?

I have no idea. The methods I saw ferments the whole thing. Grains and all, all in the fermenting bucket. That means they ferment on the grain bed, but I agree, I don't know why or how that benefits anything.