Distilling Beer, without hops.Will the beer style translate?

[BrewVegas]

Everything that I have read about distilling beer speaks to the problems caused by the oils from the hop additions. Has anyone tried to pot still a beer like a hefeweizen, then dry hop it...maybe a little orange zest? I'm curious as to how any of the flavor profiles translate after distilling.

[astronomical]

Quite a few horror stories, but, most involved making neutral. Are you trying to distill homebrew? If you're doing all grain you could always make a sugarhead from the spent grains and dry hop afterwards as you suggest.

I suggest you try mascerating some hops in your UJSM and see how you like it. I'm gonna try it myself. Sounds interesting and its cheap.

My confusion is this. Shouldn't citrus mascerate distillations do the same thing? Shouldn't anything with a lot of oils or bitter flavors do the same thing?

I see a lot of comments about it making the still smell, but, I don't see much about it effecting the flavors of spirits.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14981&start=15

Seems like you just shouldn't try and turn beer into vodka... 5 gallons of 5% yields 1 liter before cuts and losses. Waste of my time unless it was intended to be whiskey or I think it'll turn out good.

[NcHooch]

Hey Brew ,
I'm havin a hard time imagining what you're shootin for, but you gotta know that what comes out of the worm will bear no resemblance to the wheat beer you started with, right? It'll have a very light taste n smell, will be clear, and likely around 70-90 proof (in a single run) ...basically a wheat whiskey. Adding hops? ....since you're not boiling, you might not get many IBUs (bittering) , maybe just flavoring ... I don't know, never heard of hopped whiskey

You're heading in uncharted territory , let us know how it goes.

[Durace11]

Corsair makes a hopped whiskey called Rasputin, haven't tried it but sounds "interesting". The description sounds like they run the unhopped wash in the still with a gin basket filled with hops to add the hop flavor and probably to avoid the hop oils in the boiler.

[Odin]

Courages, very courages, BrewVegas!

The topic comes up every now & then. Most here don't like it. I made some "beer brandy". Not from heffe, but from a 10% Gulpener Gladiator. And yes, you can normally taste the beer back in you drink. If you use a good beer at least. I tasted some Gulpener Gladiator back after distilling, but what really struck me, was when I smelled it: unmistakenly Gulpener Gladiator.

I have pot distilled & fractionated (CM) beer. The fractionated version is off course lighter in taste, which can be good, because pot distilled ... brings over a lot of taste. I ended up blending them and that gave me a nice drink.

Did some Irish stout (I think it is called) too. Came out all right. At least to my taste!

Never had that hops problem, or maybe once, when I distilled a 4.5% beer. The taste concentration (including hops) came over a bit too intense. A higher abv beer works better, if I recall. I tried 8% and 10% with good results. A 12% beer gave me less taste then expected.

Never added hops after distilling, though.

A few German distillers make "bier brand", actually.

Odin.

[BrewVegas]

Last weekend I brewed a Blue Moon clone for the wife (Nelo's #4 attempt: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxL7TXS8tHPsNWM2YmQ1YTYtMGY1YS00YjJjLWE5ZDktMmQ2ODdmMzljNDUz/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1 and that got me thinking about the additions like coriander, sweet orange peel, bitter orange peel, dry hopping etc. I've had some success with sweetfeed and just love how the flavor transfers from the grains.

I may start off with a similar grain bill as to the recipe, and treat it like a sweetfeed recipe (sitting on the grains in the bucket for flavor) with no mashing for conversion. Probably try the S04 or a WLP300 yeast, then play around with spices and work backwards from there.

*EDIT - Fixed the link

[Odin]

Sounds allmost like your making a gin/genever. Couldn't open your link ...

[BrewVegas]

Link is fixed, thanks. You know, I didn't think about it like gin. Maybe I can add them to the basket on my still. That's the cone shaped part in the pic below. If I add hops to this basket, do you think I will have the same problems of never removing the smell as if they were in the boiler?

[Prairiepiss]

Wouldn't distilling a beer without hops give you a malt whiskey? And really all you would be doing is dry hoping a malt whiskey.

I don't think a dry hoping of a whiskey will give you the same results as distilling a hoped beer. I could be wrong?

[heartcut]

One possibility would be to boil some hops in water for an hour and use the hopped water to cut your spirits. You'd get the IBUs and if it sucked, could avoid sliming the whole batch.

[danbass]

I have another related question since this thread might get the eyes of other homebrewers who enjoy this hobby. You always hear that you want to put high quality material in the boiler to expect high quality results. I'm a frequent homebrewer and one of my main beers that I keep on tap is an imperial red (30+ gallons brewed and served in the past 7 months or so). However, I know that what it tasted like in primary 2 weeks in is going to be vastly different than after a proper secondary 6 weeks in.

I've read that you should put the wash in the boiler after primary fermentation has finished, and while that makes sense for a lot of recipes, does that hold true with more complicated all grain mashes? I finally have everything together that I need to get started, plan on doing a water and then a vinegar batch this weekend, and a sugar wash next. However, I brewed 10 gallons of an unhopped variant on my favorite beer just expecting to age it for the regular 6 weeks. Should I plan on doing this soon? It's a high gravity beer (1.07) and is still puking out the airlock with 5 gallons of headroom, so I have some time to learn my system, but I'm concerned that I wont be able to do my sugar wash and that I'll be learning cuts on my first all grain wash.

My other option is I have a 500+ full beer bottle collection displayed in my basement. Part of that collection is ~3-4 cases of duplicate bottles that were bound for the curb/sink/recycling. Is there any value to dumping all of those in to a boiler to learn my cuts with no expectation of having any usable results at the end?

[Odin]

A beer has hops in it. If you distill it part of that taste comes over as well. Why add hops later? I don't get what it is you are after ...

Or do you want to make a beer without hops and distill that with hops? Mr. P is right: distilling a beer without hops is making a whisky. No more, no less.

Odin.