Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Prairiepiss »

Even those that use the best protection available. Still can get an infection. And yes I'm talking about fermenting. But it still holds true in other areas too. LOL
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

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Fills Jars Slowly wrote:Hi Brendan. I am trying to get a handle on the important process control points in getting a whiskey mash to ferment without infection. Sounds like you have a good routine for success, having never had an infection. That I can recall, everything that came in contact with my mash was soaked in Star-San, so there must be some other difference. My working theory is that I didn't infect the mash with dirty paddles, etc. after heating the corn, but rather the time between the corn cooling below 150 or so and the yeast getting a good start was too long, allowing organisms already present to get a foothold early and compete with the yeast with some success. My mash went somewhere around 12 hours between cooling to barley/wheat conversion temps (mid140s) and pitching the yeast. My hunch (and Jimbo's too, I think) is that in addition to being anal about sanitation so as not to introduce bugs that are not already there, it is important to cool down the mash and pitch the yeast some bit quicker than I did to outflank the bugs that were on the barley and wheat or that fell in from the air at some point. Can you confirm how much time elapses for you between mashing in the barley and wheat and pitching the yeast? I am not sure if the time the corn spends above 170 or so is important at all. Most bugs are dead or dying at those temps, not reproducing. Also, Jimbo mentions rinsing the corn with warm water to clean it up a bit before cooking it. I didn't do that. Do you?
Hey FJS, don't want to hijack Jimbo's recipe thread here, so i'll keep it quick. Stick with anything Jimbo says, he knows what he's doing :ewink:

I still do leave my conversions overnight, although as Jimbo mentioned, it really is a gamble. Although I leave them overnight, I gelatinise the corn early in the evening, and add my malt in last thing before going to bed. Then first thing when I get up in the morning, I get the immersion chiller in with chilled water (not tap temp) running through it to crash the temp down quickly. My conversion is usually left for 8 hours, but I also have a very well insulated keg mash tun with multiple layers of commercial insulation stuff cut to size all fitted (not just wrapped in blankets or whatever). At the end of the 8 hour period, my temp is usually at 140F (i'm converting on google for you guys here :crazy: ), which I am comfortable with. My time lapse from opening the mash tun in the morning at 140F (where I instantly take a conversion sample, dilute it with water to 86F and get a yeast starter going on the stir plate so that they are kicking when they go into the mash), to when I pitch my yeast, is probably about 90 - 120 mins. I haven't done any rinsing of the corn prior to mashing, but I do combine the corn with 208F water at mash in, which sits at 185F for several hours.

Jimbo wrote:
Brendan wrote: Have I ever had an infection? Not a single one :ebiggrin:
Tempting fate there sir. Youre guarenteed to have one now LOL :mrgreen: Im anal about sterilzation too, even have buckets of double strength starsan sitting around when Im brewing, for whatever. But still have infections occasionally. Had a rash of em early winter. Decided it was some Dingemans Belgian wheat malt I was using in my bourbon. When it comes from your malt, not much you can do about it. No boiling after mashing in this playground. Washing feed grade grains now too, even tho those are pasteurized during gelatinization.

There's always gonna be bacteria around, and in your hooch. Its about controlling the levels and ensuring yeast always win the race. I read a interesting report about bacteria load in distilleries. How they colonize all the piping and equipement, and not much you can do. The trick is keeping it as low as possible and not setting up environments for them to get all giddy and fired up. Like 100+ temps for hours and hours. I no longer let mashes sit overnight now either. Wort chiller and a large yeast starter. Gotta give them the advantage :)
That's very true. If there's bugs in your malt, you're pretty screwed and nothing you can do about it.

I find the yeast starter is good for 'winning the race' or tipping the scales in the yeasts favour. Just to have it hydrated and firing away already on a lower SG starter so that there is limited lag time on pitching.

I have also read a lot of what you refer to with the piping and equipment in commercial distilleries Jimbo; amazing the lengths that they have to go to.Then again, a wasted 10,000L (2,641 gal :wink: ) mash is far more costly than my 50L (13.2 gal) :esurprised:
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Fills Jars Slowly »

Thanks to all for the suggestions and help here. I bet if I keep to good sanitary practice otherwise, that cooling the mash quickly and pitching the yeast hours sooner than I did on this last batch will make the difference. For what it's worth. The whiskey seems fine (as new make anyway, I have no idea how it will stack up when properly aged on oak, which is happening now). The cuts I kept from this run taste very much like some white dog I had not too long ago on a distillery tour.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by jarohooch »

Firstly, thanks for the recipe Jimbo. Did my first mash of this last night with a few variants. To substitute for backset I soured the corn through a lacto ferment (as described by pintoshine) then mashed in following your grain bill (substituting rye for the wheat). I soaked the corn for 5+ hours starting at 190F and finishing around 150F. I then added the malted barley and wrapped it up, heating when necessary to maintain 145F. After 3 hours the conversion had stalled around 1.057 so I cooled it down with an immersion chiller to 80F and pitched my yeast (US-05). This morning it was bubbling happy at 70F.

Is an OG of ~1.060 what I should be seeing? This is my first time mashing corn so I am not sure what to really expect as far as conversion efficiency...

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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

jarohooch,

Sounds great. If you got 1.057 with that grain bill thats good. Lately I been bumping this to 3 lbs total grain (incl malt) per gallon since the cracked corn I get is a very rough grind, and I dont want to bother grinding it finer. Since its so cheap at $10 a bag I just add more. So with my crappy rough grind cracked corn, and 3lbs total (incl malt) Im getting 1.060 +/- consistently. If your grind is better, or you used flaked corn or corn meal etc youre efficiency will be better.

There's no hard fast rules here. But 1.060 is a good target you should zoom in on, with your process, gear and corn after you do a few. 1.060 is about 8% and a nice gravity for these whiskey mashes. Less is ok, just lower yield. More is discouraged to avoid stressing yeasts.

Cheers.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by jarohooch »

I started with whole kernel corn and ground it myself with my crappy victory/corona grain mill hooked up to an electric drill (what a mess). I am paying ~$13 for 50# bag of corn so next time around I might buy cracked and bump up my grain bill like you are doing. My only concern would be my mash was already a thick mess at my current ratio. I am used to AG beer brewing using a RIMS where my wort comes out crystal clear!
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

jarohooch wrote:I started with whole kernel corn and ground it myself with my crappy victory/corona grain mill hooked up to an electric drill (what a mess). I am paying ~$13 for 50# bag of corn so next time around I might buy cracked and bump up my grain bill like you are doing. My only concern would be my mash was already a thick mess at my current ratio. I am used to AG beer brewing using a RIMS where my wort comes out crystal clear!
Ya this definitely isint clear beer wort we're making here. If its thick thats a sign you gelatinized properly. Its where most people go wrong. No worries, It thins out quick when you mash in.

Nice work!
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Fills Jars Slowly »

I am posting the notes from today's mashing session, in which I attempt to solve the infection problem I had last time by being diligent about sanitation and shortening the time when the mash is in the "danger zone" prior to pitching the yeast. I will post how it turns out in a few days.
Gelatinized corn by mixing into near-boiling water, insulating and leaving it for about 4.5 hours, at which time it was still about 185F. The mixture was then cooled with an immersion chiller and drill driven paint stirrer to about 150, and crushed barley and wheat malt were added and stirred in along with a bit of amylase enzyme formula powder. This was mashed from 142-146 for 2.5 hours, again wrapped in insulating blankets to hold the temp. The mash was then cooled to 80F over about 1 hour and yeast was pitched. Aerated with oxygen and mixed the whole thing up with the paint stirrer to homogonize, and then split it evenly between 3 fermentor buckets (about 5.75 gallons in each).

Original gravity of 17+ gallon wash is 1.066.( 14.5 gallons of liquid + 36.5 lbs of grain is the mash composition)
This was exactly my process from last time only "time compressed". Instead of letting the mixture cool passively from the gelatinization temps to mash temp and from mash temp to pitching temp, I used an immersion chiller and paint stirrer to speed up the process. I also shortened both the gelatinization and mash steps. Sanitation was a top priority with nothing touching the wash prior to being soaked in 1.5X strength Star-San. The paint stirrer was a big help to both mix the wash and to facilitate cooling.

It was about 9 hours from when the corn hit the hot water to when the yeast was pitched, and it was about 4.5 hours from when the mash went below 180F to pitching yeast. The yeast is starting to bubble in the fermentor within 1 hour of pitching.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Perfect. Nice work FJS!

The drill mounted paint stirrer has become my best friend. Especially since I snapped my nice hand crafted flamed maple mash paddle in half stirring a thick bucket of gooey grain a while back. DOH! I glued it and hung it on the wall for art, long live power tools!
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

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Jimbo wrote:The drill mounted paint stirrer has become my best friend.
I'm hearing you Jimbo.

I owe my all grain Bourbon to my paint mixer on the drill; the sole most important piece that I use (considering the other pieces are a keg with elements, and a keg with no lid :lol: ).

I've had a few mashes where the corn wasn't mixed properly...yield suffered severely as a result.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

I rigged up a rube goldberg fixture that holds the drill and whirls the mash in a vortex around teh cooling coil at whatever speed i want,. Works beautifully to aerate and drop to pitch temp likety split. That might be my second favorite contraption. Not a fan of standing there stirring whether its manual or with power tools.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Fills Jars Slowly »

I rigged up a rube goldberg fixture that holds the drill and whirls the mash in a vortex around teh cooling coil at whatever speed i want
I certainly pondered this myself as I stood over the mash tun with the drill for 45 minutes. Always room for another small project like this on the shop calendar...
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Brendan »

Why 45 mins FJS? Just to get the temp down?

At most, I think I'm mixing for a minute at a time to make sure there are no clumps and let the water do the rest...
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Brendan wrote:Any pictures of this contraption? :ebiggrin:
um.... in the interest of keepin y'all safe and alive I will not post this one, but I do have plans for a proper one when I get some shop time thats not geared around mashing something :crazy: Use your imagination on this one, and then make it 2-3 steps less safe, and you'll probably be pretty close.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Fills Jars Slowly »

Why 45 mins FJS? Just to get the temp down?
Yep. It took about that long to bring my +-18 gallon mash from 140F or so to 80F using an immersion chiller while keeping the mash moving with the paint stirrer. I use a plate chiller to cool beer wort at the rate of about 1 gallon per minute, but I can't use it to chill a mash. It won't work with thick stuff.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Fills Jars Slowly wrote:
Why 45 mins FJS? Just to get the temp down?
Yep. It took about that long to bring my +-18 gallon mash from 140F or so to 80F using an immersion chiller while keeping the mash moving with the paint stirrer. I use a plate chiller to cool beer wort at the rate of about 1 gallon per minute, but I can't use it to chill a mash. It won't work with thick stuff.
haha, pain in the ass huh. One of my least favorite parts. I strapped on another 25 feet section of 3/8's to my wort chiller, and made this holder dealio we been talkin about. Now I throw on the ear muffs (my drill is loud and damned annoying since I almost burned it up grinding 50lbs of corn in a victoria corona mill, had it smokin, and its never been the same since) and let er go while Im chattin on here. haha
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Brendan »

Oh I see...you guys are stirring for the entire cooling time to pitching temp.

I tend to only mix it for a minute, every 10 minutes or so. The best thing I have found is that I use a small pump and recirculate the cooling water from my boiler (because it has a drain valve), through the immersion coil. As I have a spare large fridge for yeasts and backset and the like, I fill heaps of bottles with water a day or two before and fill my boiler with about 45L of fridge-cold water...far more effective than the mains water supply out of the tap :thumbup:

Then I find, I just let the chiller do its thing, and give t a quick stir every 10mins or so to keep it moving...
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by DukeBoxer »

Hey Jimbo, I've been keeping an eye on this thread for a while and I'm going to try out my first AG soon. I wanted to ask about the grains themselves and more specifically the roast. I went to a local homebrew shop and bought some wheat and barley but I got the dark roast stuff. Here's the list...Weyerman Oak Smoked Wheat, Briess red wheat malt and briess midnight wheat malt and then Dingemans Chocolate malt and German Cara Aroma. Do you think that was a good idea to mix up the flavors a bit and look for something a little more toasty or should I just have stuck with plain ol' malt with no roast?
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Yowza! Thats gonna be a punch in the gob. Sounds delicious, but it will be far from ordinary. Normally I would suggest making a straight up bourbon here first, then experimenting so you have a baseline. But what the hell, life is short. Mix it up and see what happens, and if its too strong, go the other way next time

Remember toasted and dark malts lose their diastatic power (DP), ability to convert starch to sugar, in the roasted process. So make sure you have enough straight malted wheat and malted barley to get conversion. You need an avg DP of 30. malted wheat is 190, malted barley 140. Simple math to see what your avg is for the lot, ie 1 lb wheat malt (190) + 1 lb barley malt (140) + 8 lbs dark stuff and corn (0) = 330/10 = 33. Fine.
Last edited by Jimbo on Tue Mar 04, 2014 12:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Edit to make equation reflect a bourbon (thread topic)
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by DukeBoxer »

Oh now you tell me, ha! Like I said it's my first time. I've been a sugarhead since I started. Still got some reading to do on the whole AG thing but since you made it sound so easy I figured I'd give it a go. I'm going to do a ~5 gallon wash so I'll do 10 pounds corn plus those guys. Only 2 of them are dark roast so here's my math 2x wheat malt is 380 plus 1 barley at 140 + 12 pounds of corn/dark roast / 10 is 52 if my math is correct so I think I should be OK...we'll see when it all comes together. Thanks again. Next time I'll keep it simple.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Cool. It will work out great. Bring all the water to a boil and put it over the corn only, to cook for 3 hours. Then at 152 or so stir in the milled malts and wrap it up tight for 90 minutes. Youl be golden.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Dude youre math is jacked. "2x wheat malt is 380 plus 1 barley at 140 + 12 pounds of corn/dark roast / 10 is 52"

why you dividing by 10 if you have 15 lbs total? Its 520/15

luckily your DP is still ok at 34. haha

cheers.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by DukeBoxer »

Oops. Didn't even dawn on me that you were dividing by total grain weight. Luckily I just learned from a friend that there is a hombrew shop a lot closer to home than the one I usually go to. Maybe I'll grab another pound of malt just to be sure. Thanks for that heads up!
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by azza10 »

Jimbo, do you have any indicators for the cuts on the all grain run? Tastes or temps to be watching out for?
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

Azza, never use temp or proof to make cuts. Its interesting to keep track of both in your notes tho, to compare yeasts and recipes, and also so when you make the identical recipe you know roughly where to focus.

Theres some real good guides to making cuts here on HD, this post links to a few http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 6#p6816001

We're all different, and our taste preference are different. IN general tho, whiskey needs some late heads and early tales for complexity, we're not making vodka. How much you like needs to be done by experiment. For me, I generally keep about 65% of my spirit run. Thats me tho. Might not work for you.

Edit: I just noticed thats your first post. Please pop over to the welcome center and tell us a little about yoruself. Are you stillin yet or still researching, what kind of equipment do you have, what kind of drinks are you after making etc.
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Brendan »

And the deeper you go into those heads/tails, the longer you need to let it age for those harsh notes to mellow, balance, and become 'complex' :thumbup:
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Jimbo »

but don't go too deep or you'll make a commercial grade shite drink
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

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and don't go too shallow or you'll make an insipid lack luster shite drink with no character
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Re: Jimbo's easy 1/2barrel Wheated Bourbon and Gumballhead

Post by Fills Jars Slowly »

OK, I am following up on my previous post:
Fills Jars Slowly wrote:I am posting the notes from today's mashing session, in which I attempt to solve the infection problem I had last time by being diligent about sanitation and shortening the time when the mash is in the "danger zone" prior to pitching the yeast. I will post how it turns out in a few days.
Gelatinized corn by mixing into near-boiling water, insulating and leaving it for about 4.5 hours, at which time it was still about 185F. The mixture was then cooled with an immersion chiller and drill driven paint stirrer to about 150, and crushed barley and wheat malt were added and stirred in along with a bit of amylase enzyme formula powder. This was mashed from 142-146 for 2.5 hours, again wrapped in insulating blankets to hold the temp. The mash was then cooled to 80F over about 1 hour and yeast was pitched. Aerated with oxygen and mixed the whole thing up with the paint stirrer to homogonize, and then split it evenly between 3 fermentor buckets (about 5.75 gallons in each).

Original gravity of 17+ gallon wash is 1.066.( 14.5 gallons of liquid + 36.5 lbs of grain is the mash composition)
This was exactly my process from last time only "time compressed". Instead of letting the mixture cool passively from the gelatinization temps to mash temp and from mash temp to pitching temp, I used an immersion chiller and paint stirrer to speed up the process. I also shortened both the gelatinization and mash steps. Sanitation was a top priority with nothing touching the wash prior to being soaked in 1.5X strength Star-San. The paint stirrer was a big help to both mix the wash and to facilitate cooling.

It was about 9 hours from when the corn hit the hot water to when the yeast was pitched, and it was about 4.5 hours from when the mash went below 180F to pitching yeast. The yeast is starting to bubble in the fermentor within 1 hour of pitching.
I just checked the gravity and smell and taste tested the wash about 60 hours after pitching the yeast. The gravity is down from 1.066 to .999. There is no puke smell. There is an aroma I can't quite describe accurately that I also smell in the raw corn as it goes in the mash. I can only describe it as a little medicinal, almost like band-aids or something in a way, or maybe like a Belgian beer with some medicinal funk to it. I guess phenolic would be the taste descriptor. This is supposedly just corn with no additives or anything (Producer's Pride from Tractor Supply), s I don't think it is the smell of an additive, but something that the corn has on its own. As for the taste, it is slightly sour and dry, as the gravity reading would indicate, but I can definitely see it going more sour and getting pukey after too much longer, but what do I know?

What next? Leave it a while to get some more complexity (and possibly get pukey) or run it now at 8.8% abv, or separate the grains and rack to settle out yeast? I ran cloudy wash last time, and that drop is tasting damn fine after only about a week on oak. Not sure what to do this time. I don't think I can really screw it up at this point, but not sure what's best.
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