Corn flake/cracked corn combo development

[distiller_dresden]

Mash in was as follows, ingredients:

4.25 gal water
2.5 tblsp lime juice to lower PH to 5.5

2 gal backset from prior cook (see above)
2.5 tblsp potassium bicarbonate to raise PH to 5.5 **read a couple studies that cold/room temp PH of mash water is ideally 5.5 for ideal malt enzyme performance, so thus-

Boiled all liquid, then placed into fermenter/mash container, stirred in:
4 lbs cracked corn - had run this through my coffee grinder
1 lbs honey malt - coffee grinder
1 lbs rolled oats

When temp had reached 170 I added:
18 oz corn flakes
6 lbs flaked maize - this stuff is neat, it's been starched already, supposed to add when add malted grains, but I didn't want to lose my temp/temp range, so I added here.

As expected the temp dropped about 8-10* almost immediately. A bit of stirring and I was ready to add:
2.5 lbs 2 row malted barley - again, coffee grinder

Once temp had dropped to 125 there's a lot of sugars suspended in there, kind of looks like molasses wash after it's finished actually... Anyways, I added:
1 lbs Lyle's Golden Syrup
1.5 lbs golden light DME
1.5 lbs ultra light LME
1 servomyces capsule
6.5 g Fermaid K

Letting all that cool now, until pitch temp of 70* for the yeast strain:
Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale

I'll be fermenting at 74*, just a degree shy of the top for this strain, as higher temps are supposed to encourage more esters. It's also supposed to be a strain which preserves and encourages the flavors of malts, as it's used for (duh, name) Scotch Ales (love me some hop-free malty ales, Belhaven anyone??). Updating when I do cuts on the distillation that airing now, and pics of the mash tomorrow!

[distiller_dresden]

Well went to get a pic and check the ferment, my new heater malfunctioned, or sucks, and there's barely anything going on... Check temp first, it's all 71.5, but hot spot in the middle is 88, so I check the heater and even though I set to 72 at first, in case the ferment raises temps, it's maxed at 94. Son of a bitch. Good thing I got two packs of yeast. So I sterilize my old heater, it is standard set to 75 no option, and we'll go with that for now, the problem with it was it never was strong enough for the whole fermenter. So it'll shut off when it's 75, and around it the temp will drop but raise itself from ferment, and hopefully there will be a happy medium.

It's that this yeast's max temp is at the edge at 75F. If I just pull the heater if would do fine and room temp would be around 66-68, and raise naturally to whatever it will from fermentation. But I want to encourage the high temp ester formations the yeast is supposed to form. I guess I'm lucky as there was some fermentation from the first pitch, and like a hole in the middle over the damn heater where the yeast died from being fucking (sorry, but damnit I'm pissed at this brand new heater) cooked to death.

So I will try again, just pitched my second pack; which I guess let's count blessings, because now my last, 4th generation of corn, on 3rd now, I will just harvest yeast cake and make a quick dirty starter from that. I can't just ferment on top of what's left in the fermenter because there's no way to do that, since I have to boil corn, then malt in at 154F. I guess if I had a 7 or 8 gallon pot and could cook everything and then cool it before I added it back to the fermenter at 70F that would be possible, but I don't, so moot point.

:sigh: Hey, oh well, first real pain in the ass cock up since I started shining, it's a milestone!

[distiller_dresden]

I'll post a pic tomorrow morning, the ferment of gen 3 has taken off like MAD and the new/old heater and 2nd pitch of same yeast was what I needed; it smells WONDERFUL like a corn vanilla malt, I want to bathe in it... Not really, but man, it smells SOOOOO good.

I did cuts tonight, it's been about 54 hours and it was long enough, I wanted to taste gen 2. It came out lovely; I was aggressive with the hearts and setting aside heads and tails, I still got 59oz of 120 proof white corn liquor that smells like vanilla first, that never went away and I've no idea where it came from, so it must have been the yeast. Then it smells of cereal/cornflakes, and malt. Flavor notes are just 'sweet' up front, which again is just weird, then corn/cornflakes, then vanilla/vanilla malt. I could drink this white, but I set aside a glass of it white and the rest is going into a big glass gallon barrel to age on medium Hungarian oak cubes, a few light French oak cubes, an inch of medium American oak spiral, and 4-5 hand-picked large JD chips that have a lot of char on them, plus 2" of split Madagascar vanilla bean.

[distiller_dresden]

Been about 24 hours, maybe 30, since the pitch of the second pack of yeast and the switch out of the heater now. It smells delicious still; like a malted cornshake hehe. Gen 3 is on its way, it's a very dense mash cap it has going that's for certain, much more than the last two generations.

[distiller_dresden]

Here's a gallon of cornflake/cracked corn whisky, aged on wood. This is actually gen1 and gen2 because they had different things that I felt would complement each other, 1 was a bit oaky, but had a lot of complexity due to the various woods I used, Hungarian, French, American, and a piece of vanilla bean. Gen2 was sweet and vanilla-y from the worm, and the hearts stayed that way so my cuts were severe and precise, I got a little less. But it turned out a little less oaky, and I'd used a combination of some new port barrel chips I got that some I toasted for a half hour at 400F in the oven. It actually kind of caramelized the port in the wood, so I got almost a caramelized/natural caramel with sugar and water in rum flavor from those. Then I used some straight ones, non-toast, and they imparted an actual port sweetness, which complemented the sweetness of the already sweet/vanilla/cornflake cereal notes of gen2.

But each together felt incomplete, missing something, hard to explain, but like taking sips, pleasant, but something wasn't right, not bad -- but missing something I didn't know what, but a gut feeling. So I tried mixing in a sample jar about 'close' to what a full mix portion of each would be, like a comparison mix in the jar. It was almost full bodied like a wine, but corn whisky. So dump! And I have a teetering full gallon glass barrel jar. Now just to leave the top loose and let it age off and get better, let the two mingle better, and get to know each other, to fall in love.

Gen3 gets stilled this weekend! Can't wait, the top fell and it's clearing up nicely. I think I may strain out the grain and bigger stuff at the bottom Wednesday, then let it settle again before I draw off the wash. I'm going to save some yeast cake too, and reuse it once I develop a culture; a messy culture, sure, but it won't be sitting around in the fridge long after I produce a pitch jar.


OH! I've actually been saving ALL the wood cubes, chips, chunks, spirals, etc. that I've used since I started in January for everything that are going to come in WONDERFUL handy when I age off my apple brandy, supposed to use aged, used, old barrels. Closest I can come is the old used woods that have sat in liquor for weeks and some months, a few even been nuclear aged in high proof liquor. All have great, serious smells to them. A bouquet!

[fizzix]

Beautiful color and good job with the blending. You work really paid off and I wish I had a short glass of it.

[distiller_dresden]

I wish I could share a glass of it; but why a shotty? The proper way to enjoy a fine spirit is several fat fingers in a nice crystal double old-fashioned glass!

What I'm really happy about is when I toasted the port wood chips for a half hour at 400, and then it caramelized the sugar in the port in the wood, I wasn't sure of that. At first I just used a tiny, tiny jar with 3oz in it and did a nuke test. When it cooled I tested it, and interestingly I learned the sugar had cooked and caramelized and the flavor transferred, but it was something between smokiness and a very strong caramel flavor, it wasn't a burnt flavor. It was pleasant, and complimented the flavors of oak, vanilla. It also cancelled the port, so I had to do separate batches when I decided on doing it full-on, using the basic port chips, and another with the toasted port chips. I would REALLY recommend the port chips to anyone they really give an amazing character to whisky and I can't wait to experiment with them in other spirits, like brandy. The toast experiment went good, too. AND they gave my whisky that AWESOME mysterious beautiful ruby color.

Oh, and thanks for the compliment fizzix!

[distiller_dresden]

Question:

Is there any reason I shouldn't use a sterilized colander to scoop and strain out the solids in my fermenter and then allow the wash to settle a couple days before then pulling off my cleared wash to distill?

It's been fermenting for 9.5 days tomorrow morning, and it's done. The top fell, it's almost clear and settled, and there are no bubbles - it's done. I was wanting to try this in order to make getting the most out of my wash to distill easier, and also so that I can better access the yeast cake at the bottom without all the corny husks and barley matter at the bottom. So, ask y'all, the question above, any reason why I shouldn't do that?

[distiller_dresden]

Running off gen 3 today. Boy, may be the last time I use flaked maize. The bottom was just a fucking MESS. Cracked corn is MUCH easier to deal with the remnants, the yeast and some excess starches combined seemed to make a HUGE damn mess of sludge at the bottom of my fermenting tub. It took up about a gallon to a 1.5 of my liquid and filtering was, oh man, filtering was SUCH a pain in the total UTTER total TOTAL pain in the arse. I still have 6 lbs of flaked maize left too. :sigh:

I think I'll take a break, gen 4 won't be mashed in today/tomorrow, I'm going to use some backset from gen 3 to run my first batch of deathwish wheat germ using invert sugar, a can or two of black treacle (for character), and mostly dry malt extract. I'll post recipe I use and progress notes for that else where, but continue to update cuts and aging on gen 3 here, and when I do gen 4 will be back here just the same!

Watch out for flaked maize kids!

[distiller_dresden]

Made cuts tonight and I can tell that in the past I wasn't getting anything like conversion from my cracked corn because I wasn't cooking it for hours or I wasn't coffee grinding it like I did gen3. I can taste a difference from the honey malt too, but a definite difference in corn is just incredibly pronounced from using the flaked maize, which doesn't need cooking as it's already starched, and the other 4 lbs which I ground. SO much more corn, and it is much more delicious for it. I have 60 oz of white 120 proof, which is pretty normal for me but I made a little looser cuts, and had about 10-12 oz less to work with because of the amount of muck in the bottom cutting back how much wash I had in the pot.

I think the excess trub was from the heater issue/first pitch kill I had, plus some of the corn not fully converted; I need to do my homework before gen4 and use the math problem for converting grains and malt to overall grain bill. Lessons learned. Anyhow, happy with the 60 oz I have here from gen3, wondering what to age on, I may use some Japanese maple I got from a kindly wonderful donation, an angel mailed to me. I have no earthly idea what flavors that will impart, and I may need to toast the wood, as it's seasoned and dry, but 'raw' right now, so I have some research to do.

[distiller_dresden]

I just dipped a spoon in tonight to the gen3 aging on the Japanese maple domino I toasted and dropped in, of course nothing is really happening but some just barely color, but I wanted to drop a comment that I can't believe the difference the oats make in the mouth feel. It's crazy how much silkier the spirit is than anything else I've had, and since I've never used oats, it's a new experience for me. Can't wait to see what it's like with wood in it. Oats are going to go in any grain spirit I do from now on...

[distiller_dresden]

Tasted a wee dram this evening and gotta shout out to Cranky for the Japanese maple dominoes; just 1, toasted for 2 hours at 375 dropped in after I soaked it in water, to gen3 aging for a week now. The color is light amber, looking as if there's room to go, and when I water it to drinking proof from 120, it's barely any color at all. But SO SWEET. Almost too sweet, that maple is less oak/wood, which duh, but I didn't know, I've never used anything but. It is also SO SWEET. The wood that is there though; it's wonderful tasting, and like there is more wood than should be there given the color diluted or not, and it's all delicious wood flavor, not tannin. It's not 'maple' sweet though, more just... Like you took the sweet of your favorite bourbon or whisky and cranked it up about 3x, it's delicious. This gen3 is really something, and so is Japanese maple; it's going to be the perfect thing to age my apple brandy on. I'm so excited to have some; thanks Cranky, you're a really great pal man!