Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

All styles of whiskey. This is for all-grain mashes.

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MtRainier
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Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

I did a Booner's casual all corn mash today with enzymes. I used his proportions and the Bloody Butcher corn I got recently. I lowered pH for the gluco with some backset from a previous run of Honey Bear Bourbon, so I guess it's not technically all corn anymore.

It really is red. I'm used to using cornmeal from the restaurant supply store, not this stuff with all the germ and husks in it. I had my first mash boilover. The cornmeal behaves and never boils over, but not this stuff. 8)
red red corn whiskey
red red corn whiskey
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

Red corn at night, masher’s delight...
Now that’s a beautiful thing, good luck!
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by acfixer69 »

Got to say you got a new twist running here. Looks delish
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

It's bubbling along this morning.

Unlike the last few all-grain batches I've done I didn't overpitch this one with yeast. I used the recommended 1 gram per gallon and used a small welding bottle of oxygen to oxygenate the mash with the agitator on after dropping the temp to 80F and pitching the yeast.

I'm keeping an eye on it to make sure the ferment doesn't foam up and plug my blowoff hose. That would be an impressive mess. I add some Fermcap right before pitching, so I think I'm good.
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by Truckinbutch »

Interesting , to say the least .
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by fizzix »

Can't believe how difficult it is to find bloody butcher here in St. Peters (St. Louis) area.
Only source is shipping which far exceeds the cost of the corn.

You go, MtRanier. This is way cool.
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

Now to hope I don't ruin it with bad cuts. 8)

I have another barrel coming from Gibbs to hold it for a while. It's at about a bubble per second this morning and is now dropping in temp from where it had been holding at 80F for a couple of days. I assume it will be ready to run this weekend. I'll do a pot strip and spirit.
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

fizzix wrote:Can't believe how difficult it is to find bloody butcher here in St. Peters (St. Louis) area.
Only source is shipping which far exceeds the cost of the corn.

You go, MtRanier. This is way cool.
Fizzix,

Robert at Dancing Seed was charging about $20 per 50lb bag and I think shipping is around $15. He puts the bag in a cardboard box, and it would probably make it there fine. $35 is a lot for 50 pounds of corn, but less than malt.

I'm trying to use it quickly since he said the shelf life is realistically a month or two once it's ground into meal before it starts to get stale, so keep that in mind for ordering quantities. heh
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

Stripping today. I guess I took it easy on the gravity on this one, so it's coming off a bit lower ABV than I've had for like HBB. OG was about 1.055.

Either that or I'm just used to the fine grind cornmeal from the restaurant store giving me more sugar than the coarser BB. Bet that's it. I'll have to compensate for the coarser grain in future mashes. It sure does smell good.

I ended up with about a 20 gallon ferment. I'll strip to collect about 5 gallons and from the calculator on the parent site I should end up right around 35% ABV for the whole 5g, which is about right.
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DetroitDIY
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by DetroitDIY »

Hey Rainier,

I picked up 3 bags of Blood Butcher from Dancing Star in person about a month ago. Unground it's $15/50 lb. Ground is $20/50 lb.

I had e-mailed him before and he said shipping was $35/bag, possibly a cost break with multiple bags, but I understood it as $35 in addition to the cost of the corn, so may be more like $50-55 for those getting it shipped.

He told me the same on shelf life, 6 weeks ground, 6 months unground. I've decided to invest in a mill setup and get more self life.

You're mash color looks amazing! Hope that I'll be looking at the same in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to hear what you think of the spirit vs. your regular cornmeal.
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

It's hard to tell from the stripped low wines. They're pretty rough. I ended up with 4.5 gallons at 35% ABV out of the stripping runs. It was a bit less than I estimated, but I had to shut it down about 20 minutes earlier than I would have liked to make an appointment. 4.5 gallons in about 2.5 hours isn't bad, though. It's about as much as my shotgun condenser can handle.

About midway through the strip I tasted some and it was nice. It was noticeably more bland than the HBB or other bourbons I've done because those had malted barley and wheat in them, but I think that's to be expected with an all corn run. I've never done pure corn with the restaurant store corn, but I should save some of the spirit run of this to compare.

I plan to use this as half of a rye whiskey, where I'd maybe do a 100% rye run and then combine the strips for a spirit run with 51% rye and 49% corn, but I think I'd rather do the spirit run on this, then do a ferment/strip/spirit on the rye and combine after. That'll give me three different things to taste instead of just one.
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

Cleaned out the still this morning since it had cooled to about 140F.

Whole grain corn leaves a lot more material than the corn-flour-size, degermed, dehusked, restaurant-supply cornmeal. I dumped it in my compost with old maple leaves I stockpile in the corner and grass clippings. Should get it cooking pretty well.

Also, the little red pieces of husk stick to everything, and it didn't help that I had a boilover during the mash that stayed in there through the ferment and the distillation. I learned some things that I'll do differently next time.

Spirit run tonight. The negative about doing everything in the same vessel is that each step is dependent on cleaning up from the last step. The nice thing about doing the mash and strip and spirit in the same vessel is that I'm pretty sure the spirit run will sanitize everything. :D
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by MtRainier »

I did cuts tonight. About 48 hours airing out with coffee filters on the jars. It was around a 75 liter batch (including the volume of the grain).

I tossed the first 500 as fores and early heads.

Then I started collecting in numbered jars and held about 600ml in each quart jar. I am going to age it in oak for a bunch of months, so I wanted to keep some tails for flavor and a little heads for some burn. I ended up blending jars 2-9 (4800ml) and added a little of jar 1 and some late tails from jar 13 that are really sweet and corn flavored (and only 20% alcohol).

The result was about 70% ABV, so I diluted down to around 62% in prep for the barrel.

I diluted some of the result down to 40% for drinking white too. It's pretty nice. Not a lot of burn. Lots of sweetness. It's kind of a vegetal corn flavor. I'm not sure why, but it tastes a little peppery and minty. I'm afraid I don't have enough experience with white whiskey to really say how different it is from restaurant supply corn. It does have a lot of flavor, and none of it bad.

I'll blend this diluted 62% stuff with the next batch I have fermenting which is 100% rye to make a more traditional rye whiskey with about half rye and half corn. We'll see what comes out of that in 6 months from the barrel.
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Re: Bloody Butcher corn whiskey

Post by fizzix »

MtRanier and Detroit~ thanks for the bloody butcher lead at Dancing Star Farms.

'Ranier~ the pepper is a common trait for bloody butcher whiskey. Haven't read about the minty taste though.
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