I have been wanting to try my hand at this process for some time now... I worked on acquiring everything I needed over a few years... including an agave that would be suitable to use. Well, it all finally came together when someone emailed me about taking an agave out of their front yard. Here is how it went down...
I dug out the plant till I could pull it out with my truck. It did not go easily. Once it came loose, I knocked all the dirt loose off the rootball and we loaded up.
a sawzall makes trimming easy.
I cut the heart and base of the leaves into quarters and wrapped them in foil and put on my smoker for 4 days. It was low and slow most of the time.
It came out looking like this.
It went from smelling green and fresh to smelling smokey and like a roasted vegetable. It actually smells pretty good. I can understand the comparison to sweet potatoes.
So, its been cooked, now to cut it up...
I think a lot of it could be cooked more, but at this point my wife is wondering why the smoker has been going for 4 days and I have yet to pull any food out of it... time to move on...
To crush it I just put it into a keg Bop and started mashing. The juice showed 8 brix.... thats low. Tequila producers typically see 14 brix at this point. Its ok, the agave is mostly going to be contributing flavor. I will boost the alcohol content with a couple of gallons of agave syrup that I have had for about 4 years.
The agave syrup got started in a keg with the valve removed. I boiled a little water in the keg to sanitize it, added the syrup, yeast hulls, dap and adjusted ph with acid blend. Topped it off to 12 gallons and pitched Super start distillers yeast. I did this a couple of days before I even knew I was getting the agave plant. I was tired of looking at those bottles of syrup on the shelf and thought they might make a nice rum... Turns out it made an excellent yeast starter and source of alcohol for this real agave plant. This ferment had been going for a little over a week and was almost done itself when I poured the whole batch into the big fermenter with the crushed agave.
It fermented about a week... I drained the liquid off and pressed the fibrous remains in a grape press.
Did a stripping run with a good bit of fiber and solids in the boiler. The low wines are rich and oily and smokey and smell exactly like what I was hoping for. I'm doing the spirit run as I type. judging by the smells, its a very successful effort. It is going to be aged for a while with new charred american oak. Not a lot of oak, but enough... I'll keep this updated on the taste as it develops.
And thanks to Ian Chadwicks excellent site on tequila. Required reading if you are going to go down the agave road!
http://www.ianchadwick.com/tequila/defined.htm
