Home Distiller

to eat cheese

High temp enzymes make it much easier for sure. For me, the cooking feels like more work than dealing with cornmeal. I think everyone dials eventually into whatever process feels like some combination of least effort and highest yield, depending on space, time and available equipment. I also have a ...

rusty and fragmented

My significant other gave me a hammer mill for the holidays, one like this only red: https://www.desertcart.us/products/594942300 I must say other than being noisy and slow, it grinds corn into a relatively fine meal with very little effort. As the bin is sealed, it also is very usable indoors witho...

Glad you are here. Sounds like a bunch of interests, and many of them are certainly complimentary to the craft.

Time to read till your eyes bleed.

I think people do this in different ways, and it's more of figuring out what works for you than a single procedure. However, in theory if you have eight jars and are considering adding one, to figure the matching ratio for tasting this way, you could use a dropper. In your case there are eight keepe...

I would expect a wooden thumper to soak in some flavor from hot liquids or steam, and contribute some amount of that to future runs if used this way.

So much of this is the inevitable pendulum swinging back. Other producers and advertisers coupled with the public's changing interests and that next 'new thing'. I agree with the comment that tequila has become the new frontier for many. In the beer world, we had a big swing towards flavored sugar w...

Welcome! Glad you found the forum.

There's so much good information here it's well worth the effort.

I agree Shady, the shift over time from some of the curmudgeons who were downright hostile to the new folks to the truly helpful and friendly folks who are around here today has been a good one for the health of the forum, and for all of us as well. Learning by example is what it's all about!

blistered and sunny

buckets of dunder

and the beauty

I've done both, fermenting on the grain and after lautering, and I am not at all sure whether there's a significant flavor difference. Several other things definitely do differ. One is stickiness. Corn is really hard to lauter at the end of a mash without other grain husks, patience, and a solid pro...

Latex. The future. Etc. Interestingly, as there are "oils" in the topic name, old oils which sit around long enough and get heated repetitively will polymerize and one of the resultant aromas which results is that of latex paint. I discovered this a couple decades back when I was running a...

Sounds like either you have been brewing a long time, or are up in years. Either way you'll fit in. Welcome. Read some more. Your homebrewing experience will help a lot, but there are definitely things about mashing and fermenting for distillation that will be counter-intuitive. Sanitization rituals...

in a galaxy

which was lost

Famous last words

rusty lift kit

Welcome. It sounds like you are well on your way.

It's a pass. No starch - in the liquid.

As Howie says, this doesn't mean all starches have been gelatinized in grains, or that all the starches in the grains which might be converted are in that liquid.

Happy Holidays! We're heading to Ohio to see family. Back for New Year.

Agreed. I once danced the same dance and ended up wasting a 50 pound sack of malt in the process. After much experimentation, I dumped it all. It's remarkable how much effort it takes to capture some desired flavors into the final product, and at the same time how something like this just won't go a...

Mooseman, I used some second use oak which I had previously used on a corn based whiskey for aging, which I then let sit in some oxidized Merlot for the time it took to ferment and still the malt whiskey. I did not take the extra step of cooking anything related, as my thinking is it would more clos...

Welcome!

An 8 gallon is a functional size. I typically do the same, and it works well with my simple power controller. If you have the space and power, you'll never regret something bigger though.

Read till your eyes bleed; Have fun, be safe.

cornflakes and potato flakes are both pre-cooked. Are you planning on making a neutral from this? When you say 'brewers yeast', do you literally mean brewers yeast from a grocery store? That is generally a nutritional supplement and not active yeast. If you mean a brewing yeast from a homebrew store...

I've had good luck with this technique finishing an all malt whiskey as well.

Hi Stevo and welcome!

Read all the links in the 'Required Reading' section below to get started. Then you'll have enough understanding to start asking the right questions!

This is new to me, but perhaps familiar to others. https://fermentis.com/en/product/safbrew-dw%e2%80%9117/ It's a yeast and enzyme combo they've introduced relatively recently. Not your all-in-one Yellow Angel Yeast, but rather it contains glucoamylase to dry out the final product during fermentatio...