irish whiskey recipe

[randym1988]

Does anyone have a good recipe for an Irish whiskey that i can try?

[corene1]

I am working on a recipe, it is pretty good but not perfect yet. I get a clean 10 gallon igloo water cooler and fill it with 7 gallons of clean dechlorinated water stabilize it at 156 to 158 degrees.. Check the ph, so far I have found that starting at a ph of 6 works well with my water. I put in 10 pounds of milled golden promise malted barley and 4 pounds of milled malted peated barley, this brings my mash to 148 degrees. Then stir like crazy every 15 minuets for at least 90 minuets. I like to keep stirring till it cools to about 125 degrees and I cover my igloo between stirrings and try to keep the temperature as close to 148 as possible for the duration of the 90 minuets. Then I cover it and let it sit till it gets to 84 degrees. by then there should be some clearing on the top and then I take a specific gravity reading. I shoot for 1.050 some times I get a little better, correct the reading for the temperature. Best so far is 1.055. Take the liquid that you tested and put it in a mason jar and sprinkle in 1 to 1- 1/2 tblspn of either bakers yeast or distillers yeast ( NO TURBOS) and set aside till it gets going good. take your mash and put it in your fermentor and aeriate it well then pitch your yeast. I leave my lid loose till I see it is working good and then cap it and put in the air lock.
After it is fermented out do a stripping run. Discard the fores and save everything from the middle heads down to about 30 % ABV. do this twice and save all your feints as I have listed then combine them and do another combined stripping run. Finally I like to keep 1 gallon of mash to combine with the feints of the combined stripping run and do slow spirit run making very careful cuts along the way, it seems to bring a little more of the flavor with it.
After you get that far you can figure out what you want to use for oaking . Ideally it would be used white oak sherry barrels but I haven't found them yet. So I use toasted and charred white oak that I cut from the mountains and cure at home.


P.S. ferment on the grain and strain it before you distill it. I use a pot still for all of it.

[randym1988]

Thanks alot. thats a great starting point for me. I know that alot of Irish whiskeys have about a 1 to 1 ratio of malted and unmalted barley. I have a 15 gallon pot and this is a great starting point. My other question is where are you getting your barley from and are you doing the malting yourself

[corene1]

I have done it both ways. Cooking the barley and then converting with malted barley, but I really like the flavor of the golden promise. My local brew supply only has malted golden promise so I am working with that. When I did it with regular barley I used rolled barley from the feed store and it worked pretty well and save some money too. I simply split the grain bill, 5 pounds malted barley and 5 pounds rolled barley. Then the experimenting comes in . What if I had a little rye to it or maybe some oats or wheat. I am doing little changes to it now to make a whiskey that suits my tastes. That's part of the fun!

[randym1988]

Thanks. Those are great ideas. I'm gonna start with that and build and play until I find the perfect match for me.

[Jimbo]

Corene,

I know you like Kilbeggins. DId you know there was corn in the mash bill? I read this from The Whisky Woman online. Note last line. Makes sense, to give it that touch of sweetness.

Kilbeggin 18yr – this is also extremely limited (4,000 bottles) – After being closed in 1957, the Old Kilbeggan distillery and its whiskey recipes were purchased by Cooley’s founder John Teeling in 1988 and finally reopened for production in 2007. Whiskey using the Kilbeggan recipe (like this phenomenal 18 year old) was being produced at the Cooley distillery in County Louth, between Dublin and Belfast. This is a beauty. Unfortunately for me (& my empty wallet), it was my favorite of the lot! Extremely interesting – I kept taking it inside to smell and analyze away from the fragrant rooftop plants. NOSE: Caramel & cotton candy, sweet corn, salt water taffy. PALATE: Mild and smooth beginning, wave up to tannins and spicy charred oak. I love the influence of the corn in the mash bill.

And from Jamesons website, they use corn too.... And barley, only some of which is malted.

The Ingredients
Believe it or not, the complex creation that is Jameson Irish Whiskey is made from 3 main ingredients: barley, maize and pure Irish water. Our water is sourced from the local Dungourney River, which flows through the grounds of the distillery and is ideal for brewing and fermentation; key to the production of our whiskey.

MALTING
Malting a proportion of the barley is essential to produce the natural enzymes in the grain which will later be used in the brewing process. We malt our barley in 3 steps; Steeping, Germination and Kilning. Steeping involves soaking the barley for a number of days in water. Germination is done by laying out the barley to let it grow and produce the necessary enzymes. We then kiln dry our barley with clean hot air.

[Dan P.]

Jimbo, I think any blended Scotch or Irish whisk(e)y will contain grain spirit made from, in part, maize.

[Durhommer]

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