All Bran Recipe

[rad14701]

If anyone has been keeping up with my Gerber recipe they may also be interested in this recipe. It is almost identical to the Gerber recipe aside from using All Bran breakfast cereal (or Total cereal) instead of the Gerber Barley cereal. Both LWTCS and I have been tinkering with this recipe and have been more than pleased with the overall results. This is a very simple recipe for novices or anyone else who wants an almost fool proof recipe.

Per 4 liters (1 gallon) of water:

Ingredients
* 3.5 cups sugar
* 4 liters water
* 1 cup crushed All Bran cereal
* 2 tbsp active baking yeast

Process
* Simmer equal amounts of water and sugar for 30 minutes or longer to invert sugar.
* Combine boiled components with cold water and cereal to bring up to total volume.
* Let cool to 95F.
* Pitch yeast.
* Aerate for one hour.
* Cap and insert air lock.

Notes
* No lemon juice was used while inverting the sugar. Doing so may or may not be of benefit.
* A full cup of cereal may be more than required for a 4 liter batch. 3/4 cup should be enough.
* With all of the vitamins and minerals present within this cereal it appears that no other ingredients should be required.
* Should fully ferment dry within 7 days.
* The wash should start to clear by the time the ferment is complete so it can be racked directly into the boiler, leaving the solids behind.
* This recipe should provide good results with pot stills or reflux stills.
* Essentially, 1 liter water, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup cereal, 1/2 tablespoon yeast, scaled to desired batch size.

Good Luck... Feedback welcome...

[Ugly]

So... if I make a batch of this and drink some will I be able to shit through the eye of a needle at 40 paces?

I experimented with a few of the cereal washes and I'm not sure what it is, but I get a bit of mucky taste and I do notice the difference when I compare it to a similarly prepared cooked grain recipe. Someone in another thread attributed the taste to some added malt in the cornflakes or other cereal and there were other hypothesis. I don't know personally it might be the preservative added to the packing for all I can tell, the point of experimenting is to try it and see if you like it, there's always another recipe to try...

I'm thinking the more pure the cereal the less likely this will be to occur and all bran may just have more uses than freeing up some stuck plumbing. Does any of the wheat flavour carry over here if I pot still it or is there simply too little of it to make an impact?

[rad14701]

I'll let LWTCS give his reviews as my wash is still waiting to be run... In fact, I just started another batch with some minor modifications for fermentation comparisons... It's bubbling away like a machine gun... For this batch I tried adding the cereal and some lemon juice in while inverting the sugar... Once this batch is dome fermenting I'll be running both batches to see what I get...

I also started another batch of Gerber with the same mod's as this batch of All Bran...

[LWTCS]

So... if I make a batch of this and drink some will I be able to shit through the eye of a needle at 40 paces?

Yes Ugly, you will. Or at least feel like you can.
This is recipe is dead simple.
This recipe ferments with a freakishly aggressive display of,,,,,activity.
This recipe does carry over a delightful wheaty aroma.

During this Bran cereal experiment I did not note at any time a "mucky" quality.

I ran both runs low and slow.

On my first run, I ran a stip run and pulled a 16 oz center cut out to compare to my forthcomming spirit run (because tater and a few others like to do single runs). The remainder I ran well into the tails. I wanted to compare the two after Rad had suggested that he was typically enjoying these cereal/ crumb washes with only one run. He was right. Once is very good ( I am sipping a sample of the center cut with white cranberry now).

On the spirit run I added a 16 oz quantity (per 6 quart batch) of wash to insure that I would carry over the nice aromatic quality.

I prefer the spirit run ( assuming I have limitations with running a small scale set up).

My set up is small so i make my cuts more pre-determined as everything on the run happens kinda fast. For this experiment I was looking to get the heart of the heart so to speak. I wanted to compare center to center ( to a degree).

Having said that, The tail end of the hearts and early tails smells very nice. Some of the more experienced gents can certainly render a more sophisticated drink by incorporating previous generations, oaking and generally following their usual techniques for their quality drinks.

I would say that this is a recipe that any body should have and use as it is cheap, easy and renders (I suspect) a dependable outcome. I am doing this again.

At the very least, this is worth a go. Do it Ugly.

Gotta go. I'm scheduled to shit through the eye of a needle in ten minutes and I gotta go warm up.

[LWTCS]

Also,
I did not rack straight to the still as I fermented a twenty liter batch and was in the process of finishing the Apple Sause Wash distillation.

My rig is small so I have to do these in multiple runs.

So I racked the All Bran to the fridge for a couple of days in glass jugs. Lots of suspended solids settled. This really cleaned up the wash nicely. Not clear, but definitely clean.

Rad and I agreed that the final color of the wash has a butterscotch/Mountain Dew soda pop kinda look.

Pic shows All bran on the left and Apple Sause on the right. Just something to gauge it against.

[rad14701]

Here is a picture of an All Bran wash on the left and a Gerber Barley wash on the right... The right jug is slightly tinted green... Both are bubbling away quite happily...

AllBran_Gerber.jpg (27.7 KiB) Viewed 41987 times

[olddog]

Rad's avitar shows the result of overdoing the bran, use with caution.

[LWTCS]

While I still have a small quantity of All Bran, I started another Graham Cracker today.

I would like to compare the two side by side.

They both have a really nice aromatic quality.
Although the Graham Cracker smells good from the start of the production cycle to the end (strip and spirit run). Where as the All Bran (to me ) smells best after a spirit run.

[rad14701]

Well, today, after making some minor still modifications, I finally ran 7 liters of All Bran wash... The unfortunate part of this is that I forgot I was going to run All Bran instead of Gerber and ran it off as neutral rather than doing a strip run for flavor... It ran off pure as can be with the thermometer reading 172.5 F because my cheap digital unit only does half degree increments... No smell and no flavor... Cut some with water and mixed it with pineapple pop and couldn't even tell it was in there...

Sure wish I'd remembered I was running All Bran because that's all I had... I have enough Gerber for two runs so I'll do one strip for flavor and one neutral from that to compare to this... Grrr...!!! Now I guess I need to put down another batch of All Bran... I'd better hurry because I'm gonna have to take the summer off unless I can find somewhere else to run a still...

[LWTCS]

Man thats too bad. I think you would really enjoy the All Bran with the carry over flavor.

White Cranberry and All Bran (or graham cracker) and I'm happy as a clam.
For me the Gerber may be best as a nuetural. I just finished the Gerber spirit run. We shall see.

I think I'm going to run more of Winoe's recipe as the missus seems to prefer the more nuetural.

[nikkow]

what would you classify this under would it be a whisky if oaked? or is it more like a vodka?

thanks.

[rad14701]

what would you classify this under would it be a whisky if oaked? or is it more like a vodka?

thanks.

Run through a pot still and aged on oak it would be considered "faux" straight Wheat Whiskey... Distilled through a reflux still yields Vodka (neutral spirits)...


Edited to distinguish that this isn't a true grain based whiskey....