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How much water did you use? About a foot to 16" down from the top of a 55 gallon olive barrel It was reading an estimated 11% That seems like a lot of sugar for that volume of water. Most here seem to agree that 1#/gal is a good rule of thumb. That’s pretty much about how it works out for grai...

I have 40KG of sugar I am going to mash for a vodka today using Shady's recipe, for the most part. I have a half bag of malted oats on hand and was thinking I would mash about 5 or 10lbs of it and throw it in with the sugar (grains and all) to see if it makes for a smoother sugar shine. I figure it...

Chucker wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 10:18 am How much water did you use?

About a foot to 16" down from the top of a 55 gallon olive barrel
It was reading an estimated 11%

I ended up adding 2.5lbs of Vienna along with the enzymes just to be sure
That barrel is making heat today and fermenting like crazy!
I think I will hoist out the grain bag after a week or so.
I will let you all know how the vodka tastes once I get it run off.

Good point!
I thought they had diastatic power but I see they dont so enzymes it is!
Thanks for the tip!

I was planning on mashing it first to convert the starches.
Get out all the sugar I can
I weighed out 5lbs
Looking forward to tasting!

I am going to try 5lbs I guess
My plan is to do a BIAB mash on the stove and then instead of sparging I will hang the bag in the fermenter with the oyster shells
Sound like a plan?

I have 40KG of sugar I am going to mash for a vodka today using Shady's recipe, for the most part. I have a half bag of malted oats on hand and was thinking I would mash about 5 or 10lbs of it and throw it in with the sugar (grains and all) to see if it makes for a smoother sugar shine. I figure it ...

I am looking to upgrade my 2" column to a 4" with some plates I see there are beautiful looking copper and stainless tee bubble plates and glass columns of plates, is there any difference besides price? Can you just remove a plate in the glass column type or do you have to leave the plate ...

oh no!
RIP, Ben

Well batch number 2 to fill the barrel went well. I did 2 50# batches in my new tun. I made a 3500W inline heater setup and the only buckets I had to handle was the sparge water. I pumped it out of the tun through a plate chiller right into the fermenter, very slick. I used some simpson brown, rye a...

I ended up with 15L proofed to 60% so I half filed the barrel yesterday, yay! This whiskey might be too smooth though, I am thinking I should spice up the next mash that should top off the barrel. I have some Simpsons brown malt which I love, how much should I put in for a full bag of 2 row, 5lbs or...

I started a strip of it now.
Lookout! Very foamy!
That sight glass just paid for itself lol

Cool. That yeast was already finished by Monday morning! A guy in my beer club just gave me a 30 gallon mash tun so the next mash should much quicker! I am thinking I will just add the next mash on top of the yeast cake once I get this batch out. I have done that with beer in the past and found that...

still_stirrin wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 9:09 am

JHeron wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 7:54 am What does "solera" mean?
Cheers,
Jon

https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/Solera_Aging

Aha!
Brilliant.

Well I got the first ~52 gallons or so of beer made. It was a fair amount of work, I did 4 mashes with about 24 lbs of grain in each. I sparged with about 8 gallons of water for each mash and I think it was a bit much as it came in at 1.042. If I was to do this again I would likely only sparge with ...

I used 5 gallons (25KG) of fancy molasses in 65l of water. The fancy was only 20 bucks more then blackstrap so why not eh? I would add about 70 litres next time to get 2 decent stripping runs with about a gallon or 2 left for the spirit run. It finished up in about 10 days. I prefer fancy over blac...

Thought is was vitamin b, turns out it was plan b.

I hate that.

Ha!

Well this was my 3rd run of rum, I loosely followed your recipe in the previous 2 and followed it mostly to a T on this one so I thought I would post my results. The vitamin B my wife assured me she had turned out to be something else lol So no B vitamin. I added a jar of yeast cake to the dunder bo...

howie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 11:31 pm

when you get insulation, you can put a cheap digital thermometer probe in between the insulation and column, just below the RC.
[/quote]

Good stuff, thanks!
I am sure you are referring to the dephleg when you say 'RC' but what does RC stand for?
Cheers!

Thank you gentlemen. I am beginning to catch on. What is the indication of when it is stacked and balanced to start cutting the water to the dephleg? I only have a thermometer on the still head but I also have an infrared temperature gun I could use on the stack. I still need to get it insulated too...

Barrel Mill makes a good barrel, but them pricks had me on a wait list for one to become available. Called me up, and left a message at 4PM PST while I was working, returned their call, and left a message after hours, called again the next morning at 8AM PST, and they already moved on to the next p...

I got the Badmo made from a used bourbon barrel, I filled it with the grain whiskey I made back in December. I must of messed up my cuts as I can catch a hint of tails in it now. Is there any chance that this will age out in the badmo or am I just wasting time and oak putting it in there? I love Ir...

I like the idea of a needle valve on the output, I will keep my eyes open for a decent one.
When you folks are rufluxing do you run the still about the same temp as a pot still run or do you drive it hotter?

Nah, the line sagged when I was running it as a pot still doing stripping runs with it not in use. The water in the dephleg turned to steam and the line sagged due to gravity and heat, there is no sign of suction, you would see water drawing up from the drain if it was. As someone who has designed a...

I am not sure your grain bill would fit the traditional Irish style. Normally Irish is around 75% raw and 25% malted barley (old tradition would be a darkened malt, think Munich or brown malt level). Wheat isn't traditional in Irish whiskey. Wheat is really an American thing. Pilsner malt is fine, ...

I am going to ferment off the grain and sparge the grain bag same as I do for beer. I am just using what I have on hand so perhaps I should say 'thoughts of an Irish style whiskey'. I saw some diagrams of the Irish triple distil method somewhere on here, not sure I am going to get that complicated o...

I picked up a 6 gallon used once bourbon barrel that I would like to fill up with an Irish style whisky. I have a bottle of sherry ageing in the barrel now for some added flavour. I have a 55 gallon olive barrel to ferment in. I have 2 10 gallon Igloo mash tons with bags and a keggle with a gas burn...

Yes the exit hose did collapse a bit but not enough to cut off the flow.
Cheers,
Jon

greggn wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:20 pm

JHeron wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 3:44 pm
I got mine here https://thecountycooperage.ca/collectio ... -once-used

They have a good deal on used staves ... 20 staves for $20 CAD. I'd do that in a heartbeat if I lived up there.

Yup I got a box of them with my barrel.