Rye Eau de Vie

[Odin]

"Eau de Vie" means something like "the water of life". It refers to a distilled drink that tries to give you the true (or as close as) taste of the fruit of grain it is made from. Or at least that's what I understand about it.

Anyhow, I have been doing some 5 generations of an all rye UJSSM. First gens I made into a vodka. And since my potstill is disabeled right now, I had to distill it in one go from beer to azeotrope (or at least: close to that). It gave me an old style vodka with some taste left. Not a neutral, not by far. It would have been more neutral (but better) after a stripping run, but again, my potstill is "out" right now.

That got me thinking. What if I would try to use my CM fractionating still in order to try & get more taste over? I wasn't looking for a whiskey kinda taste. Somehow, distilling at 95% abv takes out too much flavour. But what would happen if I were to run it a bit harder? So that is what I did.

I let the colum equilibrate for like 45 minutes. Took of fores/heads very slowly and then speeded up to in between a trickle and the smalles stream. Temps stayed very constant, eventhough I expect that some minor smearing from tails took place, because I ran my rig like 25 to 30% faster than I normally (in vodka making). Like that I could collect at around 94% and get over pretty much taste. I stopped early, to prevent further tails smearing into my hearts.

After I diluted it to 42% and let it air ... it gave me a pretty nice drink. Less taste intensity than a whiskey, therefore a Rye Eau de Vie? Don't know, but it tastes very good white & unaged!

Odin.

[NcHooch]

Hmmm, I don't know about the rest of Yall, but it sounds like a winner to me.
I'd be interested to hear how it is after spending some time on oak too.

[Barney Fife]

Sounds like what you're making is a very lightly flavored white dog whiskey, which can indeed be very nice! Put it on oak for a year, and you'll have a fuller "whiskey" flavor profile.

What you've found is the reason why many prefer to leave their whiskey white. I keep a bit of my cleanest whiskeys in the white for that reason; I'm not a big big fan of it, but it makes a nice "treat" every now and then, just for a change.

[johnny108]

White grain spirit- unfiltered, but not flavor-heavy like a whiskey...
Sounds like the "Korn" or "Doppelkorn" that comes from my neck of the woods (Germany).
(My favorite is similar- just with barley malt)

[astronomical]

I'll give this a shot when I hit gen 5.. I'm on gen 3 now with unmalted winter rye

[Odin]

Johny,

I guess it is close to a "Korn" indeed. I made this from malted barley as well. And unmalted barley. All are nice, though I favour rye.

Odin.

[Odin]

Did a small experiment on my Rye Eau de Vie this morning. Before, I ran it thru my fractionating still. I was happy with the result, but thought by myself: "why not run it again, and now in a pot still?" I just wanted to see what a pot run would do to my (diluted to 43%) Rye Eau de Vie would do. Since I only had like 4 liters of 43% I ran it thru my Alambic. Slow. Eventhough I couldn't smell fores or heads (made cuts on the fractionating run), I tossed the first 10 mls. And I stopped with some (not much) left in the boiler. And I just diluted the around 80% result back to a bit over 40% just right now. Funny thing is (and I noticed that already during the run), that the distillation itself seems to make the drink smoother. I didn't lose taste. It just got smoother.

Brings back to mind an article I read. Forgot who wrote it. Must have been in one of our "standard" moonshine books ... that ... oh, how was it ... Well, something like one run has to be "alkaline" the other ... dunno what, have to look into the books again. Anyhow, a second distillation, was the conclusion, was just what was needed to tackle some problems the writer indicated.

In the end, it gives me a rye that is even smoother then before.

Why not the other way around? First a stripping run in a pot still, and then the fractionating run? Two reasons. My big pot is currently under reconstruction. But most importantly, in this case, a pot still stripping followed by a fractionating run will give a great rye vodka with some mouth feel left. Doing a fractionating run directly on the wash brings over more taste. And pot stilling afterwards makes it smooth out.

I am having a happy Easter! How about you guys?

Odin.