Trying again at AG

[panikry83]

Started a corn soak yesterday, 9 lbs cracked corn soaked overnight in 2 gallons of hot water. Tonight I brought 5 more gallons to 200 degrees and am steeping the corn now. Will add 2.5 lbs flaked rye and 2.5 lbs 2 row malted barley, let it sit overnight and see what happens. If I can finally make this work, I'll age it and try and send it to woodsheds get together next year. So far all grain as eluded me hardcore lol so I'm not having high expectations

[greggn]

What exactly has gone wrong in the past ?

[firewater69]

your recipe looks a little light on the malt for a good conversion, unless your adding enzymes.

[goblin]

you need to cook the crap out of the corn, did you grind the corn more?
i did AG last winter, i will not do AG again unless i use enzymes, get ph meter, get mop bucket squeezer.
AG is definitely smoother than sugarhead.
i will crack a cork in a couple months on some oaked 3/1, corn/barley malt.
keep at it until you get your system down.

[panikry83]

I think I finally got a good AG mash. Here was my process:

8# yellow corn meal
1.5# crushed 6 row malted barley
0.5# flaked rye
1 tbsp Amylase
1 tbsp Gypsum
5 gallons water

Brought water to 165F and added gypsum, stirred in corn and rye really well and set the thermo, stirred every 15 mins for 90 minutes, when temp was solid at 152F I added the barley and Amylase, stirred every 15 mins for 90 mins, iodine test looked good, brought temp down to 110F and strained out solids, SG 1.044 - 1.052 with temp convert or 6.6 ABV - really happy with this, made a DADY started while temp dropped to 90F and pitched, 1 hour later yeast are happily bubbling away. I think I finally made this happen. As long as the ferm doesn't mess up I should be distilling this next weekend. Only part that was giant PITA was squeezing the cornmeal - what a mess. Gonna look into one of those mesh papers flatwoods was talking about awhile back. Otherwise, I'm very happy and kinda proud of myself lol.

[MichiganCornhusker]

Very nice, you gonna like!

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Woo-hoo. Great job buddy. Can't wait to see how it turns out

[frunobulax]

Brought water to 165F and added gypsum, stirred in corn and rye really well and set the thermo, stirred every 15 mins for 90 minutes, when temp was solid at 152F I added the barley and Amylase, stirred every 15 mins for 90 mins

Did you bring the corn over 190 degrees to gelatinize it? Even though it's corn meal, it still needs to be cereal mashed.

[panikry83]

UPDATE: it's been 3 days, things look pretty quiet in the fermenter. SpG today is 1.015 or, 4.8% ABV based on the OG-FG calc. I'm gonna let it go a few more days as I don't have room in my carboy but, I think this is probably as good as it'll get? I dunno, first successful all grain, you guys tell me. How did I do?

[goblin]

all grain rarely gets to 1.000, u probably done on this ferment
u did ok
the few i did were around 5%
with the amylase i would think it would do better.

u get what u get.

i have some oaked AG coming up on a year on glass.

[OldBrew75]

Could try some 6 Row next time instead of 2 Row. The 6 Row has more Diastatic Power giving you more starch converting enzymes to work with. Also mash pH play a big part on conversion so you want to keep the mash pH range between 5.2-5.5 for maxim enzyme activity during the mash.