Very, very high ester whiskey?
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Very, very high ester whiskey?
I'm towards the end of the Cousin's process for high ester rum, there's a thread about it in rum. It involves concentrating esters and releasing them in the thumper to supercharge the spirit with hundreds of times more esters than a normal run. It's not too complicated, you just need lime and sulfuric acid. It seems like it should work with anything, so why not whiskey? Has anyone played around with making a way higher than normal ester whiskey? Or used sulfuric to generate ester production in whiskey? I might do it later on, just curious!
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- SassyFrass
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Re: Very, very high ester whiskey?
Never done that, nor even thought about it. But I hope you post the people ess and results if you experiment with additional esters in whiskey.
Simple Lil' Pot Still, no temp guage, no carbon, no scrubbers, nuthin' fancy. Sometimes use a thumper, sometimes don't.
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Re: Very, very high ester whiskey?
Yes. I haven't used the Cousins process as I don't have a thumper. I would love to some day. I use seasoned dunder, heavy ester producing yeasts, long ferment times, and bacteria to get high ester counts.
One thing to think about with the Cousins process is that it only captures the organic acid side of the equation. It doesn't change the types of alcohol that are involved in the production of esters. If you look at the chart of esters (https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/index.ph ... smells.jpg) you're going to make mostly Ethyl (two carbon) alcohol esters. Ethyl Acetate, the ester they measure most commonly for rum is ethyl ethanoate on that chart (GLUE!). It's also the most common bourbon one too. It's a ester of a 2 carbon alcohol with and a 2 carbon carboxylic acid.
So how to increase the alcohol side diversity: stress the fermentation. It's the only thing I've seen that can create higher alcohols. Some higher alcohols will occur naturally, but it's not a lot if you are nice to the yeast. That's one of the reasons that the rum folk will heat their fermentations up to 90-100f. I use a stepped temperature protocol - I increase it 1 degree a day until I reach my max temp. By the time the yeast get low on sugar the heat causes them even greater stress and they produce higher alcohols. My process is probably stupid and I probably should just keep it at a higher temp but whatever. I also ferment for longer periods of time like the rum folk - 2-4 weeks. This helps non-yeast fungi and bacteria time to grow. They will add more diverse organic acids.
One thing that grains have over cane - diverse proteins. Proteins themselves don't do much, but there are two processes that change the proteins into something useful. Malting and mashing (protein rests -> proteolysis) http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/how ... dification Malting and mashing break down the proteins to amino acids. Amino acids are also carboxylic acids. They add to the chemical diversity and create more flavor. As distillers head retention doesn't mean anything to us. We want to maximize the breakdown of proteins into their constituent amino acids. This helps the acid side of the equation, though not the alcohol side.
One thing to think about with the Cousins process is that it only captures the organic acid side of the equation. It doesn't change the types of alcohol that are involved in the production of esters. If you look at the chart of esters (https://homedistiller.org/wiki/index.php/index.ph ... smells.jpg) you're going to make mostly Ethyl (two carbon) alcohol esters. Ethyl Acetate, the ester they measure most commonly for rum is ethyl ethanoate on that chart (GLUE!). It's also the most common bourbon one too. It's a ester of a 2 carbon alcohol with and a 2 carbon carboxylic acid.
So how to increase the alcohol side diversity: stress the fermentation. It's the only thing I've seen that can create higher alcohols. Some higher alcohols will occur naturally, but it's not a lot if you are nice to the yeast. That's one of the reasons that the rum folk will heat their fermentations up to 90-100f. I use a stepped temperature protocol - I increase it 1 degree a day until I reach my max temp. By the time the yeast get low on sugar the heat causes them even greater stress and they produce higher alcohols. My process is probably stupid and I probably should just keep it at a higher temp but whatever. I also ferment for longer periods of time like the rum folk - 2-4 weeks. This helps non-yeast fungi and bacteria time to grow. They will add more diverse organic acids.
One thing that grains have over cane - diverse proteins. Proteins themselves don't do much, but there are two processes that change the proteins into something useful. Malting and mashing (protein rests -> proteolysis) http://howtobrew.com/book/section-3/how ... dification Malting and mashing break down the proteins to amino acids. Amino acids are also carboxylic acids. They add to the chemical diversity and create more flavor. As distillers head retention doesn't mean anything to us. We want to maximize the breakdown of proteins into their constituent amino acids. This helps the acid side of the equation, though not the alcohol side.
Re: Very, very high ester whiskey?
I do have a still charge worth of feints I could experiment with. It's sitting on oak until I get around to it. I could have started with the spirit run, but I totally forgot about it
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Re: Very, very high ester whiskey?
I was just wondering about this after reading your cousins rum thread.
After this current run is done I'm going to have a few pounds of this, a few pounds of that left over and a bunch of corn, was thinking about trying to make a "Heavy Jamaican Style Korn Likker" as an experiment.
I need to pick up a ph meter, lime, acid... might be fun!
After this current run is done I'm going to have a few pounds of this, a few pounds of that left over and a bunch of corn, was thinking about trying to make a "Heavy Jamaican Style Korn Likker" as an experiment.
I need to pick up a ph meter, lime, acid... might be fun!
Re: Very, very high ester whiskey?
The accuracy of the pH isn't all that important. If you already have pH strips, they will get you near enough to what you want.
- jonnys_spirit
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Re: Very, very high ester whiskey?
I'll sometimes use cultured and infected "aged" backset added into a whiskey spirit run with a bump of some H2SO4 a couple days before the run. Need to read up on the cousins process to see how I can fine-tune or expand on this process.
Cheers!
-jonny
Cheers!
-jonny
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i prefer my mash shaken, not stirred
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i prefer my mash shaken, not stirred
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