Partial Mash "Bourbon"

[woodshed]

I have always done my bourbon sorta traditionally.

You cannot do a bourbon sorta traditionally. Of all the spirits in America this is the one that should be honored by sticking to the protocol prescribed.
Sounds like this recipe makes a fine whiskey but certainly is not a bourbon.
This bastardization of bourbon just leads to confusion and more stupid posts about what bourbon is.
Call it whiskey, white dog, whatever. But to honor your craft please quit calling it bourbon.
If you want to make bourbon commit to the time and protocol mandated. Might as well start calling it all bourbon with the flippant way the word is tossed around here. Like callin a deer an elk. Just makes no sense and has no basis in fact.
Many of us take great pride in our Bourbon. This thread just leads to the dumbing down of the moniker. And lord knows we don't need anymore dumbing down.

Faux bourbon? No such thing.

[NcHooch]

Technically, that's true Woodshed. ...but it's too late to change the name of the thread.

[longhaul]

I have followed this post and never replied til now. I have also followed your partial mash grain bill pretty much faithfully. I use 3.5lbs cracked corn, 1lb 6 row malted barley, .5lb malted rye. I must confess that I sourmash using the backset at 4 qts and also use a double handful of the used grain to continue the yeast culture. I am at the 16th generation now. I have one jar of this that is only 3 months old and has the best bourbon smell and taste I have ever produced. I just have to figure what I did so I can repeat it. I have also been doing a cornflake recipe to produce some quick results so I can age this stuff longer. What I started thinking about tonight and will try with the next run, is to use the spent grain, the remaining backset, and sugar to replace the cornflake run. I think there will be enough flavor left in there to produce a pretty good product for mixing, don't know about a sipper. What do you think?

[NcHooch]

Honestly, I'd be inclined to just weigh out another 5 pounds of grain and whip up another batch instead of messin with the spent grain.
...my suspicion is that there's very little flavor and/or nutrients left for another batch.

[longhaul]

I have my 6th wash of the spent grain in the fermenter now. I have done 2 spirit runs so far and will do the last for a while after this run. I have varied the oaking with each batch, but keeping them small and using small chips to speed the flavoring process (which is the whole purpose with this). This last one I am going to sugar maple charcoal filter just to see what that does. In a couple months, I'll let you know if I have wasted some sugar and time.

[ohyeahyeah]

I tried a partrial mash using an all grain backset to cook/gel the corn. Really nice and smooth and much better yield then all grain. First sugar mash i ever really liked and i've done my share.

Longhaul if you are sugar maple charcoal filtering are you doing so chilled or not? Dickle is one of my favorite store boughts and they do chilled.

[longhaul]

I have not heard about the chilled filtration. I understood that they did it basically the same as JD by filtering through a high stack coming off a continuous still. I broke up sugar maple charcoal to marble size pieces and filled a gallon jar. I put my newly stilled bourbon in after 2 days of airing out, leave it 15 -30 minutes, and pour it off through cheese cloth, oak and age normally. It gives a nice charcoally flavor without carbon filtering off the flavor of the bourbon. It does need some time. I have produced a couple of small batches, like 1.5 liters at 63%, in as little as 4 months; and it is sippin' likker. I have one now that is 8 months, headed for a year, and it is approaching "slap yo mama" sippin likker. As the size of the batch goes up so does the time required.

[longhaul]

Now you got me thinking about this cold filtered thing. Don't get me wrong, I have always preferred Dickel over JD. But I fail to see what difference it would make to cold filter raw liquor as opposed to room temperature. Especially when the only thing you can gain through the filtering is to remove some of those nasty heads and tails from the continuous stilling. I suspect that the only difference may be promotional.

[ohyeahyeah]

Well my understanding is this. Chilling causes clouding as higher alcohols become waxy making them more easily filtered out.

Are you sure dickle is continuous column still? My understanding was it, unlike JD, it is double distilled. Which is to say comes off a continuous column then is run through a batch kettle like Buffalo Trace and Jim Beam do.

[longhaul]

No, I'm not sure. I read it somewhere on the internet so therefore it must be absolutely true.

[longhaul]

I am reasonably sure they continuous still before it goes through the charcoal stack, after that I don't know, you are probably right. But assuming they are running through a batch kettle after the charcoal filtering, I don't see the advantage to paying the cost of chilling the distillate. Why bother to double distill if you aren't going to make cuts, which should remove the higher alcohols anyway. Looking from the other direction, if they are going to pay the cost of chilling the distillate to remove the nasties better, why bother to double distill, other than to reach a higher more optimal aging proof. I'm not trying to antagonize, I'm just spit-balling here. Who knows, maybe I'll learn a little more out of this.

[NcHooch]

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming ... I believe the thread is about a partial-grain whiskey recipe.

[NcHooch]

Hey Y'all,
Thought I'd share a little experiment I did a while back using this recipe scaled 2x.

First, I split the 7 pounds of cracked corn into 2 pots (so they'd fit in the oven) with 2 gallons of water and baked it overnight at 190.
...next day it was thicker n concrete.

I crushed two lb of 2-row barley and 1 lb of malted rye and added to my RIMS mashtun (this a self-heating and recirculating mash tun for beer) with 7.5 gall cold water. The reason for the cold water was to compensate for the big load of 190 degree corn I was fixin to add.
After carefully adding the corn while stirring gently to prevent disturbing the grain bed on the false bottom, the temp was approx 130.
I turned on the recirculation pump and heater and slowly, the temp rose to 145... I left it recirculating like that for an hour . Starch test was negative after an hour, and the wort was crystal clear, so we dumped all that grain and wort into two fermenter buckets. added 5 pounds of table sugar into each bucket and stirred well. topped off with ice-cold water to bring the temp down to 85 and the volume up to about 7 gal each, and pitched a healthy dose of yeast .

It fermented hard for about 4 days and then finally finished about day 10.. filtered out the grain and let it settle a couple days and ran it. Total yield was 1 gallon @ 160 after cuts (3" flute)
I tasted it, turned out terrible, had to throw it all away

So, it's possible to mash corn and barley in a RIMS mash tun and not plug the thing up with corn, pretty cool . You can do the same recipe without the RIMS mash tun , use a 10 gallon cooler and stir by hand, just try and hit the 145-150 mash temp before adding the malted grain.

[MitchyBourbon]

Why do you suppose it didn't turn out to your liking? Maillard reaction not appealing? Perhaps the sugar gave it a sharp taste? Did you siphon the fermented wort off the grain bed or squeeze every drop from the fermented grain? Any possibility that aging on oak could turn it around? I hate to see a good mash go bad.

[NcHooch]

that was a sarcastic smiley MB , it was heavenly.

[MitchyBourbon]

Well... You certainly had me going. Glad it was a false alarm, I hate to see a good mash gone bad. I'm a ginnit (said with my best West Virginian accent).

Now, let's try this again. What do you attribute the ability to do a rims style mash without getting stuck?

[NcHooch]

the barley and rye were forming the grain bed instead of the corn... thats why I was going so careful when I added the corn puddin

[MitchyBourbon]

That's a novel idea. I wonder how much energy is used heating an oven to 190 for 6 or 8 hours.

[NcHooch]

That's a novel idea. I wonder how much energy is used heating an oven to 190 for 6 or 8 hours.

This time o' year, the heat's not wasted, it just heats the house.
I think Barney Fife used to cook his corn this way, it's where I got the idea.
Works good

[MitchyBourbon]

Good point, winters are usually pretty cold in the land of 10,000 lakes and 10 billion mosquitoes. I'm not terribly concerned usin a little extra power if it's for a good cause. Making mashing easier is definitely a good cause.

[varocketry]

OhYeahYeah:

I did the Bourbon Trail last Summer that included both Buffalo Trace and Jim Beam. I can say with 99.99% certainty they are only continuous column distillation and do not use a secondary pot stilling. Jim Beam had a small demo potstill in their new tourist tour building just as Buffalo Trace had a small potstill test platform but neither of these were part of their industrial production.

Woodford Reserve on the hand was a potstiller's delight and a offers a great 'behind the scenes' tour for those interested.

[ohyeahyeah]

http://www.jimbeam.com/about-bourbon/process-flowchart" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Go to step 6b. Buffalo Trace is the exact same process. Woodford reserve use Scottish style stills original designed for making gin then the blend it with Old Forester(made as above) to make it drinkable. No you wont find a scottish gin still at Beam or Trace, their doublers and much larger and industrial looking.
Sorry for the thread jack nchooch

[thatguy1313]

Now this interests me. I have a stainless 55 gallon barrel I was planning on using to mash all grains (which I still plan to do) but this "partial mash, partial sugar head" is a very nice idea. Will try it with several different sugars to see what flavors can be introduced.

[warp1]

Yeah....loved this post when I ran across it. On my 3rd batch now....only used panel a for the sugar this time.