Home Distiller

I just finished my 3rd generation of sweetfeed about a month ago. I aged it on dark Hungarian oak chips at 90 proof and just cut it to 50 proof and it's excellent. Originally i was going to age it at 65 and cut to 45, but somehow that didnt happen. I can't believe how much it mellowed over time. At ...

Best thing ever!

Thanks for the link Big R, I actually read your post multiple times when working on another thread: http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=28523 . NcHooch also suggested a similar mash schedule with 130-165-200 with 3O min rest intervals. My goal is to use no sugar and no amylase......

I just ended up with 1.030 after boiling 8 lbs of corn (with 1.5lbs malted barley) then brought it down to 154 and added 4.5 lbs malted barley in 6 gallons. I thought the additional barley would have brought it up at least 23 points above the 30 points from the corn. For some reason I didn't get con...

Pretty cool links...it would be great to exchange any new ideas from a different perspective. I'm not French, but from New Orleans...Laissez le Bon temp rouler (Let the good times roll).

I'm trying to calculate what is needed for my recipe using feed store cracked corn, oats and barley (that I malted). I see on the parent site the following point/pound/gallon at 85% efficiency: Flaked Corn = 33 PPG Flaked Oatmeal = 28 PPG Malted 2-row = 32 PPG I'm trying to figure out the PPG of cra...

Alright, I have 6 lbs of malted barley that I want to use in a mash with Corn and Oats. I'm going to hold off on the dried molasses for now. Any suggestions for my new ratio? I have enough space to mash in a half barrel keg and ferment in two 6 gallon buckets. I'm still going to use NcHooch's 130-16...

Here is a picture from this morning. The trays were left out of the water overnight. I now transfered them to a pillow case this morning and it is sitting on a wire shelving rack. This will help air dry them from both sides. The pillow case is now 3-4 inches thick. Also, I started out with 2lbs of d...

NcHooch, now that I'll have some malted barley handy, when do you suggest I add it to your 130, 165, 200 method? Also I should probably bump up the barley to 20% of the grain bill, right? I will try the same method with and without the malted barley to compare results.

Thanks

IMG_5216.JPG Here is what it looks like this morning. You can see the chits now. I think this is 3 days worth of in/out of soaking. Before I left for work I put them back in the water. Now, do I remove them from the water and keep them damp to finish germination until the sprouts are the length of ...

Agreed...this is my guilty pleasure and has seriously affected my productivity at work!

Yes, the cracked corn did get REALLY thick! I will definitely add the enzymes to the cracked corn during the boil. Last time I added it to the bucket when all the ingredients were mixed together and at 154 degrees. This clearly didn't give it enought time to work. On a side note, I decided to malt s...

boil the cracked corn, barley, oats and molasses what is your suggested corn to barley/oats/molasses ratio...4:1? without leaning on the molasses ;) some pre-malting to thin it out during the cook Can you explain this, pls...Is this traditional malting of the barley, which I am trying to avoid? I w...

It's already cracked, but could possible malt the barley...but, I'd rather not go down that road just yet. I also read to not attempt to malt the oats (or rye, if I had any). I was thinking maybe my problem was that it wasn't all mashed together (with the corn) in the pot, but the temp did hold when...

So, I've got a few sugar washes and molasses washes under my belt and want to try all grain only, non sugar wash. I have the following ingredients from a feed store: cracked corn, whole oats, whole barley and dried molasses. I was going to make my own version of sweetfeed, but need help with the the...

I came across this page today and thought I would pass this along. http://www.woodinvillewhiskeyco.com/barrels/ . Is this a good deal? I am not affiliated with Woodinville Whiskey Co. and have never been there, but it looks like a place I would like to visit! I wonder what they are paying for them, ...

The heads were on fire when I mixed all three together and i could taste the tails, too! I've had it on dark Hungarian oak (all that was available at brew shop) and it taste fantastic. Patience....a true lesson learned. I wish I had gone more into the heads and maybe even tails as everything mellow...

This is my first run at sweet feed and my 3 run as a noob. I started with approx. 12 gallons of wash. here is what I collected in mason jars (about 12oz in a 16oz sized jar). The temperature was 68 degrees when i measured the proofs. 1. 114 proof 2. 112 3. 110 4. 110 5. 109 6. 106 7. 104 8. 98 9. 10...

Another update. So, I originally fermented two buckets that yielded a total of 6 gallons after pulling it off the grain. I did another two bucket fermentation a few weeks later. My milk can was able to fit the first two consolidated buckets and an additional bucket from the second batch when I did m...

I'll be looking forward to this thread! Bookmarked...

I left out everything except three jars. All the others totaled a little over a gallon. I'm starting to wonder if I should have collected in 8oz jars instead of 12oz. That spirit run was really long b/c of the cycling hot plate. And, it was my first run...so I will probably do better next time.

Update...I finished the spirit run a few weekends ago. It was a torture because my hotplate (pre-mod) kept cycling. It was a very slow collection. In fact it took 12 hours to get down to 60% then I gave up. I ended up with (15) 12oz mason jars that I aired out over a few days. My first time experime...

Here is an update...I ended up not having the time to break out my all-grain setup to mash like I had hoped. I ended up putting in 4" of sweetfeed in the bucket and filled halfway with water to reach 150 degrees. I was out of time, so it cooled overnight. In the morning I added 5lbs of sugar an...

Good questions! I forgot to add that I needed to start a new fermentation and was out of buckets.

I started (2) 5 gallon bucket fermentations which started at 1.070. I racked both buckets at 1.020 off the spent yeast into my 13 gallon milk can. My question is, once fermentation is finished can I just heat it up in place or do I need to rack it off the new spent yeast? Will scorching occur? Thanks!

Looking good...do you have any pics from fabrication?

Interesting...so wash the grain with water and hopefully rinse off the acid and boil that, then put that back in?

I was trying to mill the barley. It didn't look like all of them were cracked open enough. I'll see if this bag of sweet feed actually ferments. It's my first bag and it had propionic acid in it. Moving forward, I'll probably make my own grain bill like you suggested. I should actually start off wil...

If I bypass the thermostat then I will have to add a heatsink right? I'll pop it open tonight to see if I can distinguish between the thermostat and the temperature control and offer this as a possible mod if I can figure it out. The new temp controller (without thermostat) that I ordered was less t...