Oak Smoked Single Malt

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Cold smoking malt with oak smoke makes for a single malt that brings some American character to an Islay style smokey malt whisky. It is different than peat, but more like it than the campfire or BBQ you might expect. There are phenolic, earthy, smoky notes and when 100% of the grain bill is smoked malt, the character is every bit as assertive as a Laphroaig or Ardbeg. However, a batch of unsmoked malt whiskey that is otherwise identically made can be used to blend with for a more subtle effect.

Although the smoked single malt is of Scottish style, fermentation and distillation are both done on the grain in a plated column still without separating the liquid wort from the grain, like they do in bourbon country. This whiskey is also aged on newly charred once used oak, which is kind of a hybrid of Scottish and American styles. If you are not set up for indirect heat (steam) distillation, you can lauter the wort out like a beer and go off the grain like they do in Scotland.

Smoking the Malt

The malt is cold smoked and then rested for a week or longer prior to mashing. Here is the setup I built to perform this operation:

Cold Smoking Setup

Inside Smoker Box

Grain on Screens (on Kegerator!)

It is simply a plywood box with a hole cut for the smoke inlet, some smaller holes on the other side to vent the smoke, and a rack inside to hold a layer of grain. The rack was constructed by putting a 2”x4” wood lip around the inside of the box. A sheet of expanded metal sits on that lip, and a window screen sits on top of that to hold the grain. The smoke enters below the screen and the vent holes are above the screen. The lid is just a sheet of plywood that sits on top. It can be held down with a brick or something similar if desired. I also reinforced the box with some boards around the top that can be seen in the photo showing the inside of the box.

The outlet vent on the charcoal smoker is piped to the cold smoker box with flexible dryer vent hose. A dryer vent flange attaches the hose to the cold smoker, and the other end has a flange attached to a cardboard square. I tape the cardboard square over the smoker outlet vent with duct tape.

To prepare the malt, spread a thin layer of about ½” on the window screen placed in the cold smoker and spray it with a spray bottle of clean water until it is slightly damp. Keep adding layers and dampening each with a spray bottle. You can stack the grain 4” or 5” high.

To prepare the fire, light about 10 charcoal briquettes and place several fist sized chunks of smoke wood on them. I use Central Texas live oak, but you can choose a different wood if desired. Close up the smoker and shut the inlet vents almost all the way so you get a lot of smoke, but not too much heat. I have used a thermometer sticking in through one of the vent holes to ensure that it doesn’t get above 100F or so in the box so as not to deactivate enzymes in the malt. Unless you have built too large of a fire, the box stays near ambient temperatures throughout smoking.

You can experiment with smoking times, but I do between 1 and 2 hours, or until the grain is dry again. Turn the grain with a scoop or your hands every half hour or so while smoking to promote even drying and smoke exposure. You can leave the grain out in a dry place to dry out if it is still damp when you are done smoking. Let it rest for a week or longer prior to mashing (in a bag or storage bin is fine) and it will mellow a bit and make a better product.

Mashing, Fermenting, and Distilling

This recipe is scaled to a 20 gallon batch to give back to back 10 gallon runs in a beer keg boiler.

1. Mill 40 lbs of malt. Use a very fine crush if you are not lautering and it will increase efficiency.
2. Add 15 gallons of strike water to the mash tun and heat to 153F.
3. Adjust the strike water to pH 5.3 prior to mash in, add 7g CaCL, 5g gypsum, and a Campden tablet.
4. Add the grain and perform a round trip step mash cycling from 145 to 140 degrees F, then up to 149 and back to 145 over a 2 hour period to maximize fermentability. If you don’t have the ability to step the temperature, it is fine to do a standard mash at about 145-147.
5. Cool to < 90F with an immersion chiller or your method of choice and top up to 20 gallons with 2 gallons of cold water.
6. Pitch a healthy quantity (2 tablespoons) of DADY yeast to get the fermentation going quickly and strongly.
7. Ferment 3-5 days at 80F-85F until finished. Cooler is OK, but it may take longer to finish.
8. Distill on the grain through a steam injected 4 plate flute and make whiskey cuts.
9. Age on charred white oak bourbon barrel staves for 4-12+ months at about 65% abv.

OG = 1.077, FG = 1.000, ABV = 10.2%

[*UPDATE* - After further discussion based on the observation that the OG of 1.077 seems high, I am adding this note. I used pale ale malt with an extract potential of about 83% by weight, or 38 ppg. I also crushed the grain very finely and followed the other mash protocols listed above, resulting in very high conversion and extraction efficiency near 100%. If you use a malt with lower potential or a coarser crush or different mashing procedures, you might get a lower OG. For example a malt with 36 ppg potential (78% sugar) and 85% efficiency would achieve a gravity of about 1.063, and a malt with 32 ppg potential (70% sugar) at 85% efficiency would have a gravity of 1.056.]

With plain water in the steam boiler this yields about 1.75 gallons of total still output with about 1 gallon kept as hearts. Feints from prior runs can be added to the steam boiler up to a 3-4% ABV 10 gallon steam charge. This increases total yield to 2.5 gallons or so with 1.5 gallons kept.

You can repeat this recipe exactly with unsmoked malt and then try different ratios of blending the two together to get the precise amount of smoke you desire. If you find a ratio that you want to stick with, you can then try a mash with the smoked and unsmoked grains together in that proportion.

My Emptyglass Flute

Steam Mashing and Distillation Rig

[cuginosgrizzo]

Well done and described, FJS! Thank you!

Just one question: how can you get 1077 OG with 40 lbs of malt in 20 gallons water? That looks like it's beyond 100% efficiency to me....

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Just one question: how can you get 1077 OG with 40 lbs of malt in 20 gallons water? That looks like it's beyond 100% efficiency to me....

There are not 20 gallons of water, but about 17. There is 20 gallons of total volume, grains and all.

The math works like this: The grain has a potential of about 38 gravity points per pound of grain in one gallon of water. So the total gravity points available are roughly 40 * 38 = 1520. Divide that by the 17 gallons of water and we get about 89 gravity points per gallon. So, at 100% efficiency my OG would have been 1.089, but it was 1.077, or about 86% of potential. Going at it the other way we can take my gravity reading of 1.077 and multiply by 17 to get 1309 total points, divided by 40 pounds of grain = 32.7 points per pound per gallon. That is 86% of the 38 points per pound per gallon potential, which matches the first calculation. I just double checked my memory on the potential of the grain, and of course it varies, but it looks like a more generic number that people use is 36 points of potential rather than 38. In that case the efficiency rises to about 91%.

Also, unrelated, the recipe is efficient due to having no lauter or boil. Nothing is left behind in spent grains and the mash conversion continues slowly in the fermenter since the enzymes have not been denatured.

[der wo]

2row malt has not more than 70% starch/sugar normally. So 40lbs malt have 28lbs sugar after 100% conversion. 28lbs sugar made up to 20gal are according to the parent site calc SG 1.064. With FG 1.000 8.6%.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Also, I copied this text from a log I had kept, and I think I stated the yield as the output of a 10 gallon run through the still rather than the 20 gallon batch size of the mash. Roughly, I get about 85% of the alcohol produced in the ferment out of the still and about 60% of that is the product cut. That means that I get .85 * .6 = 51% of the total alcohol produced as product. If the ferment has 17 gallons of alcoholic solution at 10% abv, then there is 1.7 gallons of total alcohol. 51% of that is .867 gallons of 100% abv, or about 1.9 gallons at 45% abv drinking proof. In round numbers I think this recipe gives about 2 gallons of finished product, before the angel's share, from a 20 gallon ferment. At 4 pounds of grain per finished fifth of whiskey that is pretty efficient.

Here is an actual line from my run log for a 20 gallon batch with feints added to the steam boiler:

Distilling this today: 4 plates, 1.8 qts of 64.5% feints from previous run added to 10 gallons of water for about a 3% abv steam charge.. 2nd batch: 9 gallons at 4.2% abv in steam boiler. This run went fine. Total collected was about 2.6 gallons, cuts were 1.5 gallons at 79.5%, which went into the barrel as 2 gallons at 61.5%. This will make 2.73 gallons at 45%. The feints really pump up the amount of product.

[der wo]

But you wrote you have total 20gal, not 17gal.
Did you strain the grains out? No. So you have 20gal, not 17gal.
And btw, do you think, 3 of the 20gal are solids? No. 40lbs malt have around 8lbs unconvertable solids. 8lbs solids perhaps are 1gal, not 3gal.

Edit: Did you measure 1.077 and 1.000 or did you calculate it?

[Fills Jars Slowly]

28lbs sugar made up to 20gal are according to the parent site calc SG 1.064.

Trying to equate an all grain mash to a sugar wash and then running it through the parent site sugar wash calculator is likely less accurate than my reasoning above. You might get closer with Beersmith or other brewing software. The whole world agrees that an average malt is going to be within a point or two in either direction of 36 ppg total potential and that you can extract some high percentage of that potential into fermentable sugar. If you believe that my mash used 40 pounds of malt like that and contained about 17 gallons of water volume and about 3 gallons of grain volume, the numbers work out fine. In a detailed recipe like this with pictures and real world numbers and everything else, are we really going to niggle about the gravity number? I think using the correct volume of 17 gallons rather than 20 is the answer to the initial surprise of seeing a higher than expected gravity reading.

Here are some listings of potentials for various types of grains:
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-2/wha ... alt-yields" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
http://beersmith.com/Grains/Grains/GrainList.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

The actual malt I use in this recipe is from a local maltster that provides highly modified malt that has higher than average potential of around 38 ppg.

As I was writing this I checked to see if there were other replies before posting, and sure enough, there you are der wo:

And btw, do you think, 3 of the 20gal are solids?

Let's take a deep breath and go over it again. I put 40 pounds of grain in the mash. I put 17 gallons of water in the mash. The total volume was 20 gallons. I said all those things in my original post. This happens to agree with the volumes Beersmith expects for this mash. So, yes, I believe 3 of the 20 gallons are solids. If we want to get anal, yes, the actual fermentable volume is theoretically somewhere between 17 and 20 gallons because some of the solids go into solution. When I took a refractometer reading of 19 Brix (1.077) I thought it made sense in context of the roughly 17 gallons of liquid in the fermenter, and realized that it clearly did not jibe with a volume of 20 gallons which would include all the grain solids.

If I take your assumption of 1 gallon of unfermentable content rather than 3 and rework the numbers I now get 36.6 ppg on malt that has potential of 38. Remember, I am using malt from a maltster I know and that number comes from his lab. Now I am up to 96% efficiency. I don't necessarily buy your unsupported declaration that my malt adds only 1 gallon of unfermentable content to the mash, but if I did, the numbers still work out. When you mash grain that is milled basically to dust for 2 hours+ and do not lauter you can certainly get 95%+ efficiency.

Also, this is my last word on the topic of this recipe's OG, though you can argue with yourself or others if you wish. When you post up a pretty advanced recipe out of pure good will and wanting to share and someone wants to argue about whether you know how to measure gravity or not, it is disheartening. No good deed goes unpunished. Call it 1.064 on 20 gallons. Call it 1.077 on 17. I call it whiskey. BTW, the volumes that come out of the still match an approximate ABV of 10% on 17 gallons, but maybe it is 8.5% on 20 gallons if you like that better.

[der wo]

It's not 17gal. It's 19 or 20gal, depending how you define it.
17gal water plus 40lbs may be 20gal. But 40lbs are 32lbs starch/sugar and water, and 8lbs are protein, fiber, fat... You can only calc out the 8lbs not the whole 40lbs. And only, if you strained out the protein, fibres and fat before measuring...

Either your malt has much more starch than usual or your refractometer is off.
Calculating how much starch you have and using the final volume for the calculation is unbreakable accurate (if you know the nutrition facts of your grain). And the sugar/SG calculator on the parent site is very accurate too.
Why using brewers calc when a distillers calc is much easier? Beer calcs are complicated, because normally beer is off the grain.

I believe you, that you get the maximum possible SG with the fine milling grade. But the maximum SG is lower than you measured.

What was the measured FG?

If you don't want to discuss and get critizism, put it in the shared recipes forum, not in the recipe development forum.

Yes, really great setup you have, the procedure is ok, not very traditional (fine milled on the grain, steam...). I make it different (and have posted it here a few times), but who cares.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

OK, I will break my vow to leave off on this topic in the interest of hopefully clarifying things for any new readers of the thread, and in the interest of playing nicely with others. I thought der wo was just nitpicking for the sake of doing so once I had explained that the gravity reading only appeared to be off due to the volume of the grains in the mash, and maybe he is, but it is important to get things right if we are posting recipes that others may want to duplicate or at least know why they get different results.

Facts:

• The mash contains 40 lbs of grain represented to contain 82.6% extract which equals 38 gravity points per gallon.
• The mash contains 17 gallons of water.
• The mash has a total volume of 20 gallons.
• The actual starting gravity reading taken by refractometer was Brix = 19 which converts to a specific gravity of about 1.077.
• The actual finishing gravity reading taken by refractometer was Brix = 7.2 which converts to a specific gravity of about 0.999.

Opinions:

• The refractometer reading is wrong.
• The gravity reading indicates over 100% conversion.
• There aren't enough solids in the mash to explain the gravity reading.
• There are brewing calculations used that are complicated.

The calculations are stated in the form that they are to use the same units, specific gravity, throughout. They are not brewing calculations or distilling calculations, they are specific gravity calculations. So that we are all on the same page; A solution of water and sugar with one pound of sugar and a total volume of one gallon measures 46 gravity points (SG = 1.046). It can be said that sugar has a ppg (points per pound per gallon) of 46. A pound of grain contains a somewhat lower concentration of sugar, in the case of my malt coming in at 38 ppg. Stating it this way instead of stating it as 40lbs * 82.6% extract = 33.04 lbs total extract makes it less intuitive to run through the sugar wash calculator, but more intuitive to compare to the gravity readings, quantities, and volumes and do some simple arithmetic to find the answers.

Since I know there are 38 * 40 = 1520 gravity points in the mash in total, I can now better determine whether my gravity reading of 1.077 was reasonable or not. Working from the two extremes, 77 points times 17 gallons = 1309, or 86% of the total. That percentage seems reasonable enough, but as der wo persistently points out, there has to be more volume than that since some of the grain is made up of sugar! That was the imprecise thumb in the wind kludge that I originally used and that set off der wo on his mission to bring truth to the matter. OK, let's take it to the other extreme: 77 points times 20 gallons = 1540 points. Ha! proof that FJS is full of it! He gets 101.3% efficiency! That dork! Well, OK, maybe not. There is no way that every last drop of all 20 gallons is fermentable extract solution. There has to be some solid content in there.

What we actually see is that if we believe there are practically any solids in the wash at all our gravity reading implies conversion of less than 100%. With the grains very finely milled, the pH accurately managed, and with a long mash time sweeping across the 140-149F temp range, very high efficiency might be expected. der wo's original assertion was that 1 gallon of the mash was solids. If we use that, then 77 * 19 = 1463 which is 96.25% efficiency. That does not sound far fetched to me. Given the fine milling and mash protocol we shouldn't get too much lower efficiency than the lab that performed the FG/CG test that determined the extract in the first place. That is, we should probably be pushing 100% efficiency. In the hypothetical case that we actually achieved 100% efficiency, our 1.077 gravity reading would indicate a total extract solution volume of 19.74 gallons with solids making up the remaining .26 gallons. That is proof that we don't need more grain or less volume to validate the gravity reading. The reading probably just indicates that we got very good efficiency, but less than 100%.

In all, if you are using grain with a more typical 36 ppg potential and you get a perhaps more typical 85% efficiency, you might get an SG less than I did and you might get less product. I got what I got, and if you use high potential grain and follow the same protocol that I did and explained here, I bet you get that too.

[*Edit* Here is an interesting answer to the question that uses the sugar wash calculator der wo style. Above, I calculated that the mash had 33.04 lbs of extract by multiplying the weight of the grain by its extract potential of 82.6%. When you plug 33.04 pounds of sugar to make a 20 gallon wash in the calculator, it tells you that the wash will be 1.076 and contain 17.56 gallons of water. However, we used 40 pounds of grain, which has 7 pounds of unfermentable solids more than in the sugar calculator. Those 7 pounds take up space. But look, the calculator says we need 17.56 gallons of water, while my mash only used 17. The difference of .56 gallons might just be the volume of the 7 extra pounds of grain solids. That leaves a "true" mash volume of 19.44 gallons. If we imagine that our 1.077 gravity reading was on 19.44 gallons we get 1497 total gravity points for an efficiency of about 98.5%. I think that might be the most accurately we can reason it down to within the bounds of measurement error and grain variation. der wo is correct to point out that the grain solids take up much less volume than the whole 3 gallons, and I think the gravity measurement was accurate to within a point or two and indicated 98%+ conversion.]

[der wo]

Cuginosgrizzo made his comment, so I got interested, calculated it and were his opinion after that.
That's all. No niggling, not nice playing, nitpicking. I don't see, why you are complaining.

You don't want to deal with my calculation, that's ok.

Your last post and calulation is simply tl;dr

[Fills Jars Slowly]

Not complaining, not wanting to "not deal with your calculation". I did a bunch of thinking and figuring and writing based on your input. Did you read what I wrote? You helped get to the bottom of things and get what is probably an accurate answer. Here is the short summary: 40 lbs of malt yielded a total of 33.04 lbs of total potential sugar extract plus about 7 lbs of unfermentable solids. Out of that about 98.5% of the extract was liberated from the grain and made available for fermentation. The gravity reading was 1.077 on 19.44 gallons. You were right, there was a lot less volume of solids than 3 gallons. Be happy, and thank you for your help

The only place you got hung up is apparently not believing my malt had the potential that it did, even though from my very first word on the subject I listed it as 38 ppg and indicated that number came directly from the maltster. High conversion on malt that had higher than average potential was the answer. Note that the numbers above, 33.04 pounds of potential sugar and 7 pounds of unfermentable solids are very close to what you originally hypothesized. You were arguing that the solid content was less than I assumed, and as it turns out it was even less than you assumed.

Your last post and calulation is simply tl;dr

I don't know what that means.

[der wo]

I don't like the ppg calcs, because I live in the metric world. So I don't use it normally. But of course I know this way of calculating.
Like you wrote, the crucial point of your calc is the number of your malt, 38ppg.

Pure sugar is 46ppg, so your 38ppg malt must contain 38 : 46 = 83% starch/sugar. But even plain white refined wheat flour has only 71% starch. (Wholemeal much less of course). So your malt is purer and therefore more tasteless even than white flour? This would be very strange. And corn starch has 86% starch (plus mainly water, and a bit protein and fibers). Absolute tasteless and not much difference to your 83%. Yes I know, malt is dryer than flour or unmalted grain. So a normal barley with 65% starch will have around 70% after malting and drying. And 70% x 46 = 32ppg, the normal number for malted barley.
So 83%/38ppg either is almost pure starch without taste, or it is much dryer than normal malt.

For example this calculation for distillers with on the grain mashes converted with added enzymes (complete conversion guaranteed) uses the number 32ppg, not 38ppg for barley malt:
https://enzymash.biz/index.php?route=in ... ation_id=9" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Note that the numbers above, 33.04 pounds of potential sugar and 7 pounds of unfermentable solids are very close to what you originally hypothesized.

I hypothesized 40lbs malt is 32lbs starch/sugar/water and 8lbs unconvertable solids. 32lbs minus the water is around 29lbs starch/sugar. And 29 or 33.04 is not close.


How does it work, that your malt has 38ppm? More than refined wheat flour, almost like refined corn starch. This is the question I cannot answer.
I have the feeling, the reason is the lautering. 38ppm is the number you would get, if you would strain out 100% of the fibers and proteins perhaps, but also get all the sugar in the mash. So 38ppm is a theoretical 100% efficiency number for lautered mashes perhaps?

[der wo]

May I ask you one semi-off-topic question?

Because your Brix numbers, 19 and 7.2:

This calc...
https://www.petedrinks.com/abv-calculat ... ydrometer/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
...says OG 1.075 and FG 1.007 with your numbers.

This calc...
https://www.northernbrewer.com/learn/re ... alculator/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
...says th FG is 0.998

A FG of 0.998 is excellent for AG, 1.007 is much worse.

I always use hydrometers, so I think somewhere I do a mistake. But don't find it.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

I don't like the ppg calcs, because I live in the metric world.

Perfectly understandable.

How does it work, that your malt has 38ppm? More than refined wheat flour, almost like refined corn starch. This is the question I cannot answer.

You have inaccurate information. 38 ppg (82.6% extract potential) is a common figure for 2 row pale ale malt like I used. It is only above average in the sense that many other common malts people use have about 35-37 ppg potential. It is not above average in the sense that I don't have access to any special hard to find type of malt, just a good pale ale malt that has a small FG/CG difference, meaning it is highly modified and relatively easy to get good conversion from. In my first reply to you in this topic I listed two links. Here is a screenshot of the first few rows of the table at the top of the first link:

So your malt is purer and therefore more tasteless even than white flour?

Of course not. It is 2 row pale ale malt that makes great beer and whiskey. There is nothing about containing a bit more sugar than some other malts that would make it tasteless. Comparing it to white flour is disingenuous. White flour isn't bland because of its starch content. It is bland because it has been processed to remove the flavor containing stuff that was in the raw wheat. Malt is never processed like that.

So a normal barley with 65% starch will have around 70% after malting and drying. And 70% x 46 = 32ppg, the normal number for malted barley.

Research the actual starch content of various kinds of barley. You will find there is a large range with a relatively small amount of starch in certain highly kilned malts that are usually added for flavor in dark beers to about 83% (38 pgg) for 2 row pale ale malt. It is pretty common for "standard" base malts to be in the 78% range (36 ppg). Your figure of 70% (32 ppg) is definitely on the low side. You may want to recalibrate "normal". You may be confusing extract potential for typical yield. Your numbers sound very in line with what you end up with after performing an actual mash at 85% efficiency or so.

I hypothesized 40lbs malt is 32lbs starch/sugar/water and 8lbs unconvertable solids. 32lbs minus the water is around 29lbs starch/sugar. And 29 or 33.04 is not close.

Based on the information I have your hypothesis is false. The potential of malt is expressed on an "as-is" basis not on a "dry" basis (those are the terms the malting industry uses). Brewers like to figure based on the weight of the actual malt they are working with and not the weight if the malt were completely desiccated. The 4-5% water content that my particular malt has is not part of the 82.6% extract figure. It is part of the "other than sugar" content of the malt. It is not germane here, but your figures also give a water content of 7.5%, which is quite a bit more than my malt has. An accurate way of restating your hypothesis is that 40 pounds of my malt contains 33.04 pounds of potential sugar extract and about 7 pounds of other material. 33.04 minus nothing is 33.04, and 33.04 and 33.04 are close.

I have the feeling, the reason is the lautering. 38ppm is the number you would get, if you would strain out 100% of the fibers and proteins perhaps, but also get all the sugar in the mash. So 38ppm is a theoretical 100% efficiency number for lautered mashes perhaps?

Lautering is not pertinent. The way that the lab determines the potential extract in a given batch of malt is to perform a congress mash, which is a mash performed to laboratory standards of accuracy and control with two samples of malt, one ground as finely as possible and the other with a courser grind. They then measure the gravity of each sample and compare the two. The closer the course grind extraction is to the fine grind, the easier it is to extract starch and convert it to sugar. Malt is referred to as highly modified when these two numbers are very close, indicating the malt does a good job of giving up its sugar to solution even with a courser grind. Lautering is simply a way to attempt to remove the sugars from the particulate matter as completely as possible. It doesn't increase efficiency, it can only reduce the amount of available sugar by leaving some of it behind in the spent grain. When we measure the gravity of a grain in mash, the difference between the potential extract and our reading represents starch not converted to sugar and sugar trapped physically inside grain particles that is not able to get into solution. When we measure the gravity of a lautered wort, we have one more source of lost sugar; what converted from starch and got into solution but was not effectively separated from the grain bed or was left in the bottom of the mash tun. Theoretically, you could sparge with a large enough amount of water that all the sugar was rinsed from the grain bed. If you did that you would retain all the same sugars that were in the mash to begin with, not more, but they would be dissolved in a large volume of dilute sugar solution.

To be clear 38 ppg (86.2% extract potential) is the amount of sugar that a lab actually got when they performed a congress mash, and it is represented as sort of the maximum a "perfect mash" could achieve. Whether they removed those 38 ppg from the spent grain via lautering or left the sugar solution in the grain is not a factor. What they actually do is filter the wort from the grain using lab filtering techniques rather than the standard sparging procedure used in brewing. Ultimately, they are just trying to find the total amount of sugar that is present in the malt when conversion of starch is 100%. That is then used as a benchmark number for determining the individual brewer's efficiency in both converting starches to sugar and getting them into solution once converted. It can also be used to express post mash efficiency losses, like those in lautering, fermentation, racking, etc.

Unsurprisingly, when I ground my malt very finely, adjusted pH to optimal, provided calcium to the mash, managed temperatures carefully through a range of conversion temperatures for a long period, and basically mimicked the congress mash procedure as well as I could, I got about 98% of the way there. I don't understand why that is so hard to believe, but I do thank you for helping me look closer at the different facets of measuring gravity for grain-in mashes. It is good to know the "true" mash volume, and it is good to correct my assumption that I was getting about 86% efficiency, when the reality is I was getting about 98% efficiency. It hadn't mattered to me previously because I was happy with the results, and my faulty assumption about volume being 17 gallons led me to complacently believe I was getting a normal type efficiency number in the mid-eighties. Complacency is now banished.

[der wo]

But do we agree, that your 38ppg malt must have 38/46 = 83% starch/sugar for this result?

Then it has with spelt much less other substances than corn, rye wheat without spelt.

Normal barley has according to a German data sheet:
64% starch and sugars
11% water
25% other substances
So the ratio between other substances and starch is 25/64 = 0.39

Your malt has:
83% starch
5% water
12% other substances
Here the ratio is 12/83 = 0.14

So per starch the normal barley has 0.39/0.14 = 2.8 times more other substances, which are for sure partially responsible for taste.

Where is my mistake? Is it possible to produce a malt with more starch than refined white flour, but normal taste quality?
If not, ppg doesn't refer to starch content. But what's ppg then?

[Fills Jars Slowly]

But do we agree, that your 38ppg malt must have 38/46 = 83% starch/sugar for this result?

Completely and totally.

Normal barley has according to a German data sheet:...

There are lots of barleys out there with lots of specifications. You keep saying "normal" barley and then referring to a nameless barley that has less starch and more water than commonly available malts like Briess 2-row, Briess Pale Ale, Bairds Maris Otter,Thomas Fawcett Golden Promise, Weyermann Bohemian Pilsner, and the list goes on and on. All of those and many others have moisture content in the 3%-5% range and extract potential in the high 70% to low 80% range. None of those are known for being bland due to high sugar content.

I gave you data showing that 2 row pale ale malt is listed in a table along with other malts and it is shown as having extract potential in the low 80%s. I didn't use some "turbo grain" with too much starch and no flavor. I used plain old 2 row pale ale malt with a spec sheet indicating 82.6% extract potential.

But what's ppg then?

Simply put, it is the gravity reading you get if you mash one pound of grain/sugar in water to make one gallon of solution. Sugar has a ppg of 46. That means you get a gravity reading of 1.046 if you take pound of sugar and add enough water to come up to one gallon. You had it correct earlier when you made the connection that 46 points = 100% potential and you could divide other ppgs by 46 to get the percentage of fermentable sugars in grains. 32/46 = 70% sugar, 38/46 = 83% sugar, and so on. It doesn't measure starch, it measures the sugar the starch is converted into. My malt (and many other common ones as listed) has a total sugar content in the low 80%s and my mash procedure extracted almost all of them. I don't see what is not normal about that.

Where is my mistake?

The mistake is thinking that malts with the amount of sugar in the one I used are strange or rare. The popular malts used for making scotch whisky (Golden Promise and a few others) have specs not much different than my pale ale malt.

[der wo]

Yes, probably the much higher starch content than of other grains is the explanation.

I also mill grains very fine, at least for Bourbon and Rye. So I get "complete conversion". But the main ingredient corn has only 65-70% starch. So I need more grain for such a high SG.
And for Malt Whisky I only crush it and ferment off the grain, so calculations are always imprecise, because of the water and sugar, which remains in the draff.

At least for me it was an interesting discussion. When you have time, please answer the question about the refractometer calcs I posted above.

[Fills Jars Slowly]

When you have time, please answer the question about the refractometer calcs I posted above.

OK, that one snuck past me. I don't know exactly how those two calculators work. The one I use is in Beersmith brewing software. It takes calibration using distilled water and comparison to a known good hydrometer reading on a wort sample to come up with a correction factor. I have checked it many times versus a hydrometer and once I got it calibrated correctly I have been satisfied with the accuracy. The refractometer is great for taking gravity readings with small particulate filled samples that give problems to hydrometers. I really enjoy mine. There may be online calculators that let you calibrate the reading like Beersmith does rather than just typing in a correction factor. I am not sure.

I too have found our discussion enlightening, and I learned something new about estimating the "true" volume of a grain-in mash using the extract potential of the grain to find the amount left over that is not sugar.

For grins, here is a list I printed from Beersmith of all the malts in its internal database that have potential of 38 ppg versus those that have 32 ppg. Mine is on the first list. I wonder if yours is on the other one? Note that the 32 ppg malts are typically darker and include the crystal and caramel malts. Oops, just noticed oats and wheat made it on the second list. Those aren't malted barley.

[BrewinNStilling]

Well done!

I'm going to try using mesquite wood to dry out some corn malt for a corn whiskey run one of these days.

[Fart Vader]

Nice setup you got there FJS!

I've been wanting to smoke my home malt but never thought of cold smoking it.
Hmm, if the temperature gets above -15C this weekend I think I'm going to cold smoke my wheat malt.

[Bushman]

Yesterday I cold smoked some kosher salt, garlic powder, and dried onions. I think I am now ready to do some grains. As mentioned in the smoking thread I bought the A-maze-N tube for cold smoking. It is very easy to use, nothing to build and can be used in a smoker or a BBQ if you don't have a smoker.

[VLAGAVULVIN]

I had faced this thread few months ago. And it was one of the reasons to register.

Absolutely logical malting and mashing, I've nuthin to add. I do the same way. And what a pity, I have no flute like that. Your garage seems to be lucky with it, congrats.