Getting into Spirits from All Grain Brewing

[texasspur21]

I am an all grain beer brewer getting into distilling. For my beer setup, I have a 15gal stainless mash tun with RIMS, 10 gal boil kettle, stir plate for starters and controlled fermentation. I just got my 20L copper pot still with onion head and did my initial clean running a 50/50 water vinegar mix through it. I would say I can brew a pretty good beer and hoping those skills can lend into distilling.

I am hoping to experiment making some whiskeys, vodkas and tequilas. I had a failure today making my first bourbon whiskey wash. Having not worked with corn before, I went heavy on the corn(20 lbs) along with 5lbs Rye malt and 2.5 lbs 2-Row(Out of stock on 6-row). I left behind a lot of starches in the mash tun, I couldn't keep sparging because my pre boil volume would have been well over 10 gals. I collected about 9 gallons and boiled down to 6. My OG was 1.046. \

Ive been reading around on here and it sounds like I need to boil the corn until thickened to extract corn sugars and then bring down to 145-155 to convert the malts. I am going to do a small test batch on my stove to experiment with this first before making a full batch again.

Ill be fermenting with White labs 050 Tennessee Whiskey at 75F and then running through the still.
Any tips on the distillation? Speed, temps, etc.

Thank you in advance for having me and hopefully Ill be talking with everyone soon.

[bluefish_dist]

You are correct on the boiling corn. The other two options are to buy flaked corn, then it's simply like doing beer, no need for boiling or use a high temp amyl then you only get to about 180.
Also you don't have to boil after the mash tun, just pitch and go. Let the enzymes keep working. You are not trying to have sugar left. Ferment it dry.
I just ran a porter and it finished at 1.003. Won't be doing a hopped beer again, made a mess of the heating elements.

[texasspur21]

Whats happening that you need to boil the corn? How long do you boil?

You leave all of your grains to ferment? I have a false bottom and recirculate my mash so trying to get the grains into the fermenter would be tough.

How to add hops to your boil is subjective in the brewing world. I use a flame so its not so bad. I put my hops in a muslin bag to boil. You can get a hop spider and hops will not touch your element.

[nuntius01]

welcome, toss up a pic

[texasspur21]

A picture of a beer brew day, the wash I just made and still.

[Dantuss]

Welcome to the forums!

[acfixer69]

texasspur21 This is going off topic with the pics and all. Please answer interesting question with a new thread. This is a welcome thread.

AC

[NcHooch]

Welcome Texas,
Corn can be a pain to work with. you definitely have to cook cracked corn to release the starch, this is not the case if you use flaked corn from the brewing store.
...maybe try doing some simple all-barley beers for a while while you get your stillin' legs under you ...then start exploring with recipe development. You can make some good likker with a (no-boil, no-hop) pale ale, or brown ale recipe .