Home Distiller

The tails can often be difficult to differentiate from the late hearts. I say from roughly 62% to 56% is where your transition will occur. How sharp the transition is or exactly where it is, are impossible to say, as there are too many factors involved. I say try samples from the 62 and 56 jars and ...

Hey BG: I find that most scotches tend to be lightly or not peated at all. I know quite a few distilleries dry their malt without peat smoke. Popular scotches like Glenlivet 12 and Glenfiddich 12 have little to no peat flavour, at least not to my palate. In fact, Glenlivet has a lot of apple/pear no...

If you really like the lighter Irish whiskeys, then by all means you should triple distill. Irish whiskeys tend to be lighter on grain flavour and heavier on caramel sweetness, things that I, personally, am not crazy about, although I do still like Irish whiskeys. I tend to make 100% barley scotch-s...

Hey Musektear! My amber/pale malt whisky is done! It's been on oak for just a few days but it came off the still real nice! It was 50/50 amber malt and pale malt extract by weight. Flavour came through strong even in the middle of the hearts. I really recommend trying mixed malt whisky, but be VERY ...

Update: I ran this batch earlier this weekend. The results were very interesting. I stripped down my first run till about 27% overall, and then did my spirit run. Unfortunately, I should have collected the heads in smaller jars because one of my jars has 2/3 hearts, 1/3 heads. I've got that jar airi...

Agree with Mikey-moo! I think it's time for another update

I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere but I wasn't able to find any information on it... I'm going to attempt an Islay-style single malt and wanted to know the best way to add some peatiness to my whisky. I heard buying sphagnum moss and burning it underneath the oak to be used for ageing was a...

Good to know, Jimbo. I agree that keeping some tails is definitely good, but I think a lot of the final flavour is determined by the shape and design of the still. Less efficient stills probably smear the cuts a bit more and end up with more flavourful "pure hearts". I tend to keep very li...

For those of you making flavoured spirits (i.e. rum and whisky primarily), what are your yields like after cuts? I do 16 L runs in my small 19 L pot still starting at ~8% ABV and I get about 1.3 L of final, good quality whisky at ~43% ABV. This means it's about 8.1% yield. They say for a lot of whis...

Michigan, I have a thread on the Novice Distiller's board, where I'll post updates, so as not hijack poor Musketear's thread

I've got a 50% amber malt and 50% pale malt mix fermenting right now. Should be done this weekend which is when I hope to run it. Very excited!

Yeah I figured it would but I would have thought boiling chips would help with surface tension. Anyway... Wheat malt and chocolate malt would be interesting. Wheat malt makes a very light whisky and it would be well-complemented by chocolate malt. Glenmorangie's Signet is made with 20% chocolate mal...

Thanks for the feedback. I did a chocolate malt + sugar wash experiment one time. After oaking, was still undrinkable neat, but still interesting and definitely mixable with coke, though not my preferred method of consumption. From what I read, there are amber malt extracts which are almost as ferme...

I started the batch yesterday with 50% amber malt extract and 50% pale malt. When I was googling the internet to find information about the fermentability of different malts, I found tons of amber malts which contain quantities of pale, crystal and munich malt and are 80% fermentable. Obviously I as...

Interesting. I don't have access to Corsair spirits where I live unfortunately but sounds like a good idea. Not a huge fan of rye unfortunately. 25% chocolate rye is still a smaller percentage. I want to do 100% amber malt!

So far, my scotch made from pale malt extract has been excellent. To try something new, I was thinking of using some specialty malts like amber malt for example. Has anyone made a whisky from pure amber malt? I'm assuming it should be perfectly drinkable and have more intense notes of toffee and car...

I'm totally with you on that. I wish I had massive quantities of whisky to age! My still is only 5 gallons and its a bit of a pain to run it several times due to flour paste sealing. But I have oak sticks in a bottle with whisky and I throw it in the freezer and then in the furnace room and it makes...

Hmm...Dimroth is the most efficient?? If I had had to guess, I would have guessed the Graham for sure. The Dimroth seems very similar to a cold finger to me and I would think that the film of condensate/distillate that forms on the cooling coil would limit heat transfer. But maybe the incoming hot v...

I recently built a 2' Liebig (1/2" - 3/4") for my crockpot still which works pretty well and I'm thinking of scaling up to a beer keg size soon. I wanted to get your opinions on condensers to use. I was thinking either another 3' long Liebig or maybe even a Graham condenser? I am assuming ...

Nope, no cloudiness, crystal clear. I had it and its rather nice actually. If I could redo it, I would double-distill the whole batch because I believe that one jar which had strong blueberry flavour was the pure heart of the second run while the "heart" of the first run that I set aside w...

I ran my blueberry wine yesterday. Very nice blueberry aromas coming through on the first run and as is expected, the heads and tails were smeared all through the hearts on the stripping run. I set aside a small portion of the exact middle of the run (to maximize pure hearts quantity with minimal he...

I actually used pale malt extract (liquid). And I used Safale S-04 or S-05...whichever one is lower attenuating.

ShineonCrazyDiamond is right. I was referring to the colour/flavour and not the addition of caramel colouring. What I meant was that the richness and fullness in flavour is different from the bourbon richness, as bourbon uses fresh, charred wood which imparts a significantly stronger caramel underto...

One of my freezers is extra cold (-20˚C)! Jar it with the oak and throw it in there for a while. Its amazing how thick/viscous/syrupy high-proof alcohol can become at that temperature. I think the large density changes at those extremes really helps to force the liquor in and out of the wood dependi...

I made a great batch of single malt a while ago and set it aside to age. I had nothing to drink so I took some off the oak quickly to enjoy while the remainder continued to age. Now over 2 months have passed where I've used a minimal amount of oak (just 1 stick of used oak per litre) and exposed the...

Agreed. Whisky low wines are not palatable at all and I wouldn't be surprised if brandy low wines weren't either. I'll go with the double pot-stilling then. Isn't the quantity of berries per volume of wine that really determines how much flavour your end product will have? I used a LOT of berries an...

Hey guys, Finished building my copper Liebig recently. Planning to do a run quite soon but what I'm not sure of at the moment is how to connect a water supply from my standard kitchen tap to the hose barbs on my Liebig. Can you guys provide pictures or let me know what the easiest way is? I have cle...

Thanks for that Paulinka. One question; how do you feel about a single-distilled brandy? If I get a 40% ABV single-distilled spirit, I'm assuming it would really have a great blueberry flavour. Or do you think it might have too much flavour? I even considered 2 runs on 2/3 of the batch and doing jus...

Hey all, Going to run my first blueberry brandy (and first brandy) this weekend. Can anyone give me advice on cuts? I'm experienced on scotch whisky cuts but have no idea about fruit spirits. What do brandy tails smell/taste like? I'm told that a lot of the apple flavour in apple brandy is in the he...

So I took the advice and built an all-copper Liebig. My inner pipe is 1/2" and outer is 3/4" copper. I essentially soldered two 3/4"-1/2" reducers onto each end of the 3/4" pipe, drilled a small hole on each reducer/pipe joint, and soldered brass hose barbs into each hole on...