Matling barley & doing an all-barley malt wash

[Barney Fife]

Fermenters and space I have, but I've only one still , and I don't want any flavors from the rum to get into the whiskey, and vicey versey. I've found that no matter how well i clean the still between runs, when I try something new, the last flavor profile comes through, though lightly.

Stripped the whiskey this afternoon, and pulled over 3 liters from it(tossed the first 300ml, and stopped quite early). Much, much better; I'll run it back through in a couple hours from now ands see what I get.

[Barney Fife]

Well, I'm not only a novice at all-grain mashing, but can't count worth a damn either I had a little over 4 liters from the strip run. I decided that I'd made too many errors to get any decent knowledge from this little batch, so I tossed-in 4-1/2 liters of UJSM feints I had saved up with the 4+ liters of this all-barley run, diluted to 20% ABV, and ran it full tilt. I now have 3 liters of what seems like decent product between 70-55% ABV. As a bonus surprise, the UJSM feints had some of that peated corn flake trial in it, and there's more than a hint of peat to the hearts of this run. This will be interesting to taste in a couple months!

As a side note, I have to say again, that the peated corn flakes experiment might just be the perfect method for sneaking flavors into our products. Not just peat, but I suspect from the way the corn flakes absorbed and held onto the flavors, we may be able to utilize them for many other flavor profiles, both strong and mild.

Back to building by malt dryer!

[absinthe]

funny you should start malting i am just giveing it another go (have had mould take over in the past) can you get some pics of how your doing it?

[Dnderhead]

depending when you had the mold, mold during spouting ---not rinsed enough/contaminated water/lack of air circulation---mold during drying not enough air circulation

[BW Redneck]

I was considering building a malt dryer myself. I would want to build something like a meat smoker that had shelves in it to hold the wet grain above a propane heater like what Uncle Remus has here.

I also want to take advantage of solar energy to some extent, so I had an idea to suck air through some non-perforated black plastic drainage tile that faced the sun with a fan to preheat it before forcing it through all of the beds of grain. I would also put a T on the tile right before it went into the drying cabinet with a choke plate to draw in cool air that could be smoke laden to try to smoke the malt, should I ever want to.

It would definitely be better to do this rather than try to use the oven in the middle of the summer.

[punkin]

Fermenters and space I have, but I've only one still , and I don't want any flavors from the rum to get into the whiskey, and vicey versey. I've found that no matter how well i clean the still between runs, when I try something new, the last flavor profile comes through, though lightly.

Stripped the whiskey this afternoon, and pulled over 3 liters from it(tossed the first 300ml, and stopped quite early). Much, much better; I'll run it back through in a couple hours from now ands see what I get.

So you're saying no matter how well you clean your stainless/copper still you can taste a hint of the last thing you stilled in your ethanol.

Well, I'm not only a novice at all-grain mashing, but can't count worth a damn either I had a little over 4 liters from the strip run. I decided that I'd made too many errors to get any decent knowledge from this little batch, so I tossed-in 4-1/2 liters of UJSM feints I had saved up with the 4+ liters of this all-barley run, diluted to 20% ABV, and ran it full tilt. I now have 3 liters of what seems like decent product between 70-55% ABV. As a bonus surprise, the UJSM feints had some of that peated corn flake trial in it, and there's more than a hint of peat to the hearts of this run. This will be interesting to taste in a couple months!

And you're saying you think it's ok to mix feints from ujsm/smoked corn flakes ect with your all grain strip, run it 'full tilt' and now you have 'decent product'?

Best of luck mate, it might work out to be a beauty, but it'll be hard to replicate. I reckon a bloke with a pallate as sensitive as yours must be to pick up the taint from your still, needs to be more precise with recipes....






JustAnObservationPunkin

[Barney Fife]

Play nice, Pumpkin. And read my whole post: I stated that I'd messed up enough with that one that it wasn't worth trying to learn from it, so I decided to just turn it into product. Sometimes we're careful and go for the education, but sometimes we just toss a bunch of junk into the still and enjoy what comes out. As it is, I tried some yesterday with some cola, and it was delicious; can I ever replicate it? No Sir. But once diluted, I'll have well over a gallon of some very unique whiskey for those times when want something different, and I got it by not wasting anything, including time, since as I stated, I wasn't going to learn anything from that batch. I pity anyone who gets hung up on technicalities and forgets to enjoy the hobby aspect of our hobby.

My boiler is all stainless(12-15 gallon pool filter) and the rest is all copper. And yes, I can taste a hint of rum on the first run, afterward, when going to something else. Perhaps it's my cleansing that needs work, or perhaps it's because when i make rum, I make a good amount of it(usually 5-8 runs/generations), and I make a strong flavored rum.

[punkin]

Play nice, Pumpkin

True.
I sometimes forget. My apologies sir.

[muckanic]

I just picked up an incredibly cheap bag of hulled barley, which I must admit I have never played with before. For some reason, I thought it would look like the pearl barley used in soup, but of course it does not. The supplier advised me that the germination rate may not be too wonderful compared to the hull-on variety - not sure whether he meant because the seed is inferior, or because maltsters like the hulls for the root protection they offer. It has also got me wondering why brewers don't make more use of the hulled stuff, given that they make so much effort to avoid extracting tannins from the mash. I assume sparging may not proceed too well, but there are workarounds for that ...

[punkin]

I've been cooking hulled oats this week. I've found what you say to be true, sparging is no joke with the hulled oats only converted with enzymes. I ended up with 15 litres of sparging water the other day that i had to top my fermenter up with cause it looked to good to waste (1012).
There was STILL porridge left in the grains after that.
Compare that to the brews that contained 1/3rd malt barley and the wash just poured out from under the false bottom like a tap being turned on. I don't know yet whether there was problems with the enzyme conversion that made things worse or it was just the lack of hulls that made problems for me.

[trthskr4]

Could use rice hulls to add in when using hulled grains. Then again what's the point of paying extra for hulled grain and then buying foreign hulls to add back in? Makes more sense to me to just use grain with hulls on and run them through a crusher or grain mill. But what the hell do I know?

[Dnderhead]

Iv used some haled grains for malting with no problems at all ,iv done a bunch of wheat, but I did on the grain fermenting,and no problems with straining