Home Distiller

I too have nothing more to add, as it would be considered off topic. i've been successfully stifled, curbed from making any comment that could be considered not precisely directly completely related to topic. I respect the rules of the forum and will abide by the regulations and restrictions set forth by the administration.
But, Thanks for sharing.

I will attempt the Booner's all corn soon and will report back with my methods and results. I'll be using cracked feed corn. I'm sure this is a solid recipe and procedure, as evidence by the experiences posted by many folks in this thread. All the good reviews speak volumes about the potential quality, and sounds like no one has had any complaints about the results achieved from feed corn, as is the case with every other recipe. I look forward to following it and the results i'll obtain.

Good day

I just did a trial of this with grits. Wanted to start with honey bear for my first All Grain mashing but I decided on this with use of enzymes. Everything went well after adding my HT emzyme at 180°. Waited till it dropped to 145° did iodine test was black added my second emzyme. Forgot to test pH. Tested pH and was at 6. Little high. Gonna ride it out and see what happens in morning. Tasted it and was slightly sweet. Trial and error. Didn't want to screw this up when I do a 56 pound/28 gallon batch. Loving this emyzme.
Thanks.

GL denatures above 5.5

you may want to give a second dose, the ph drops a bit as it works. a wee bit of acid would help, even some lemon juice...just not vinegar.

How much lemon juice per gallon?

rollmeown wrote:How much lemon juice per gallon?

Whatever it takes to get to a good pH.
Something in the neighborhood of a half cup per 5 gallons, but you need to add, rest a bit, and check pH as you do it.
Enzymes are your friend but you do need to make them happy!

Okay last night I threw in some lemon juice and brought the pH level down to 4.5. added a second dose of enzyme the temp was at 130 degrees. This morning's results did iodine test was Brown. pH was at 3.5. And my SG was at 1.062 that to me was a successful conversion ABV 8.14 percent. So note to self be mindful of the pH as I read many times in this thread but skip my mind during trial run. This was only A 1 gallon / 2 lb grits. So my question is now when I go to 56 pounds for 28 gallons what's a good pH balancer / decreaser that I can use without having to buy bottles and bottles of lemon juice? Citric acid? Maybe this 5.2 pH stabilizer? Of everything I went through to do this All Grain I never thought pH would be my hang up. Thanks for helping me out on this Trial Run.

I drop the pH with a gallon or two of backset before the 2nd addition of enzymes.

I should have saved some from last year. Any other options?

rollmeown wrote:I should have saved some from last year. Any other options?

Lactic or phosphoric or citric acid. All at the homebrew shop.

I don't even measure it. At 2lbs to the gallon, I still get at least 1.06, good enough for me. Maybe I'll look at it next time, but my conversion always passes. I use long cook and mash times, though.

ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:I don't even measure it. At 2lbs to the gallon, I still get at least 1.06, good enough for me. Maybe I'll look at it next time, but my conversion always passes. I use long cook and mash times, though.

This is what I do as well. Shorter cook times was a constant disappointment.

I still take a step to adjust for it but I don't measure it.

Shine On, are you using the Steep method for your long cook times and mashing?

If I milled C.O.B., how would this compare? Would off flavors present themselves due to initial high rest temps?
My first attempt at this relatively failed. I milled 19 pounds cracked corn, boiled 8 gallons tap water and threw it in my home Depot 10 gallon cooler with high temp alpha. Waited till next morning, pitched the gluco when temps hit below 140 per instructions, after adding 1.5 gallon Backset.

Gravity at 120 F was 6% even. I added another 6 gallons of water and read 3% at 100. So I added a bunch of sugar and threw in a combo of dady plus bakers yeast.

I'm wondering but I would assume I should have gotten significantly higher production. This is now basically UJ recipe. Tasted wonderful but was hoping to go no sugar

Honest_Liberty wrote:If I milled C.O.B., how would this compare? Would off flavors present themselves due to initial high rest temps?
My first attempt at this relatively failed. I milled 19 pounds cracked corn, boiled 8 gallons tap water and threw it in my home Depot 10 gallon cooler with high temp alpha. Waited till next morning, pitched the gluco when temps hit below 140 per instructions, after adding 1.5 gallon Backset.

Gravity at 120 F was 6% even. I added another 6 gallons of water and read 3% at 100. So I added a bunch of sugar and threw in a combo of dady plus bakers yeast.

I'm wondering but I would assume I should have gotten significantly higher production. This is now basically UJ recipe. Tasted wonderful but was hoping to go no sugar

Cook it longer....liberate that starch!

The booners recipe claims to be no cook though. I'll have to go back and re read. I figured the home Depot cooler would hold temp long enough. I suppose next time I'll cook in my brew kettle and just follow pintoshine's instructions. However, I'm not sure if my stove top can actually keep the heat up to 180 at that gallonage. Also, I would be stirring with a steel paddle

Ok cook is the wrong word. Heat... heat it.

Wrap it in refletix... that stuff is amazing.

what are people aging this on? white oak?

I have a gallon of ncoochs carolina bourbon on white oak and also wondered how the flavour profile of an all corn mash differs..

Has anyone ran this pot vs reflux for flavor comparison? I have an 8 gallon clawhammer with reflux but I'm considering running this without anything in the column. However since it's only a 5 gallon wash at 6% abv I'm worried I won't get high enough to even oak it. Anyone smarter than me have some thoughts on this?

smee- make a few batches to have enough low wines and then spirit with a copper scrubber?

Honest_Liberty wrote:smee- make a few batches to have enough low wines and then spirit with a copper scrubber?

Yeah, I think I need to get more used to the idea that I'll need to do larger or multiple batches of things.

I already feel I've outgrown my 16 gallon still but in reality I'm being greedy with my time, and I don't have my garage set up perfect yet so it's not convenient enough to do other things while running it. Mid November I should be set up with everything just right. I need to figure a better way to recycle condenser water, because tight now I'm filling up a 120 quart cooler and cycling with a pump, checking temps when it gets to 80 and dumping in the back yard. Too much hassle.

But saving enough strips to do a good spirit is totally worth it and I've only done that once

Honest_Liberty wrote:If I milled C.O.B., how would this compare? Would off flavors present themselves due to initial high rest temps?
My first attempt at this relatively failed. I milled 19 pounds cracked corn, boiled 8 gallons tap water and threw it in my home Depot 10 gallon cooler with high temp alpha. Waited till next morning, pitched the gluco when temps hit below 140 per instructions, after adding 1.5 gallon Backset.

Gravity at 120 F was 6% even. I added another 6 gallons of water and read 3% at 100. So I added a bunch of sugar and threw in a combo of dady plus bakers yeast.

I'm wondering but I would assume I should have gotten significantly higher production. This is now basically UJ recipe. Tasted wonderful but was hoping to go no sugar

If the gravity was already so low - why did you add more water??

OVZ

This just flat out works. I'm an experienced AG beer brewer so here is how I did it.

I used organic whole corn. Cost $22 per 50 lbs. Ground it to a better than standard crack with a Victory mill using a bolt in place of the handle and running it with a drill.

16 Lbs corn. 8 gal water. I put the corn and water into a 20 gal pot and started to heat it all slowly. Stirred every couple of minutes but no burning as the flame was real low. After about 90 minutes it's boiling. I let it boil for 15 minutes and transferred to my mash tun ( 48 qrt Coleman cooler with a wire hose drain system) and let it cool with the top open for about an hour. At was as thick as creamed corn and even the larger kernels were soft enough to chew. At 180 f pitched 2.5 tsp of the alpha and in 15 minutes it's getting watery. With the lid closed it held about 180 f for a couple of hours so at that point I opened the cooler and stirred till I got the temperature under 150 f. That took a while as the cooler and the corn just did not want to give up that heat. Checked the ph with strips and it looked to be about 5. Hard to tell with strips you know. I added 2 tbs of phosphoric acid (88% food grade) and let it sit for 15 minutes. Checked again and the ph was below or at 4 (that's the lowest my strips will measure so it could have been much lower than 4. I just don't know). Pitched 2.5 tsp of the glyco, shut the cooler and waited till the next morning. In the morning the temp was still in the 130's f so I stirred and left the lid open till I got just below 90 f. Check the OG - 1.10. wow! That measure could be a little off since I checked it at such a warm temp. It's close though. I drained the cooler and then used a paint strainer bag to squeeze all the moisture out of the corn. I thought about fermenting on the grain but then I thought it would be easier to strain now without the yeast trub to deal with. I came out with about 7 gallons of wort. Not bad. I split that into two fermenting buckets and pitched with Red Star DADY. It's on the third day now and still working. I'm curious as to how the low ph will effect the fermentation. When it stops I'll measure and post the FG.

First time with corn and it is very different than any other grain I've worked with. I'm wondering how I could use the liquid enzymes to improve efficiency in grains that might have less than optimal diastatic power. it's whole new world.

Those enzymes are magic, surfanarchist.
Even when I calculate a sufficient >30L° diastatic power, I still toss in a little enzymes to help things along.

I don't know how low the pH will go. I use crushed oyster shells in a brew sock to buffer the pH and keep it from crashing.
They use the oyster shells in poultry feed, so they're readily available on Amazon.

If you decide ever to ferment on the grain, consider a wringer mop bucket with a BIAB:

I scorched a lot of cracked corn up to the point that started the Booner's Casual. I simply could not get that stuff right.
After a Booner's I gumball the sparge, then Uncle Jesse the gumball leftovers a couple of times.
Do another Booner's rinse and repeat.

fizzix wrote:Those enzymes are magic, surfanarchist.
Even when I calculate a sufficient >30L° diastatic power, I still toss in a little enzymes to help things along.

I don't know how low the pH will go. I use crushed oyster shells in a brew sock to buffer the pH and keep it from crashing.
They use the oyster shells in poultry feed, so they're readily available on Amazon.

If you decide ever to ferment on the grain, consider a wringer mop bucket with a BIAB:

wringer2.jpg

The mop bucket is genius.

Day 4 and wort is still working so ph must not have crashed. I think I'll adopt the oyster shell trick on my next batch. Probably cut back on the phosphoric acid a bit as well.

As far as scorching all I can recommend is low heat and take your time. I also have a 20 gal pot and a large metal stirring paddle that really moves all the grain off the pot bottom. I stirred at least once every 10 minutes and even where I could not get at the corn (under the drain spout) I had no burn.

I'll add my voice to the magic enzyme camp.

I decided to try this with Indian Head cornmeal from the grocery store in a 5 gallon bucket just to see if I could handle the porridge and get liquid out. Got what I think is great conversion at 1.065. It was so thick my thinset stirrer on the drill wouldn't mix it all and then 10ml of alpha amylase turned it back from gel to liquid in about 10 seconds. After that it was just cooling to 135 to add gluco amylase and then later cooling to 80 before running through a 400 micron bucket sieve. It wasn't that hard to get nearly all through, just scraped the sieve clean occasionally for about 5 minutes. I want to rig it up to a shaker like MichiganCornhusker posted on a different thread or get a mop bucket like fizzix uses above, but that will have to be a future project.

Pitched Fermpro 921, and it's bubbling this morning.

I'm on my 4th round of this protocol and am one of the folks who seem to be having a harder time at it.

Currently using 20lb corn and 4lb rye malt for a 10G final product. I have been using my 26 gallon electric boiler as a hot liquor tank heating to boiling, pouring over corn and following all other instructions exactly(other than adding my malt at below 160 just before sebstar). I consistently ended up with a 5% abv mash and have failed my final starch tests always still getting a black/blue result even after the night's rest.

My corn comes well ground but I have also ground it down further with no real noticeable impact.

I am working on better insulation of my mash tun to see if that has any impact and will also try to cook the corn for my next batch using a propane. I really wanted to get this steeping method working which you can walk away from rather than gas that really requires my full attention.

Hi Bodihan

Just a quick note are you making sure your pH is in the right range for your second enzyme it makes a massive difference. If you filter a bit of your mash through coffee filter before iodine test as any solids will make it turn black.

Hope this helps

Can I just say Thanks to woodshed for a great thread it makes all grain so much easier

Lee

Bodhidan wrote:I'm on my 4th round of this protocol and am one of the folks who seem to be having a harder time at it.

Currently using 20lb corn and 4lb rye malt for a 10G final product. I have been using my 26 gallon electric boiler as a hot liquor tank heating to boiling, pouring over corn and following all other instructions exactly(other than adding my malt at below 160 just before sebstar). I consistently ended up with a 5% abv mash and have failed my final starch tests always still getting a black/blue result even after the night's rest.

My corn comes well ground but I have also ground it down further with no real noticeable impact.

I am working on better insulation of my mash tun to see if that has any impact and will also try to cook the corn for my next batch using a propane. I really wanted to get this steeping method working which you can walk away from rather than gas that really requires my full attention.

Bodihan,

Seems to me that cooking the corn liberates more starch for conversion. I don't think it has an impact on the actual conversion process, so it wouldn't help with the starch test. I'd look to your conversion process with the enzymes to be sure you're using them right. Manc's suggestion on pH is sensible.

One thing I noticed is that you mentioned using Sebstar at 160F, which is typically what people call the High-Temp enzyme used around boiling temperature that breaks apart the starches, but you didn't mention Sebamyl, which is the low temp gluco-amylase enzyme that actually makes the fermentable sugars. Maybe you meant to say Sebamyl or are just using Sebstar as a generic term?