Isley style scotch

[surfanarchist]

Real simple recipe. Mash bill is 50/50. 2/1 water ratio (2 lbs to each 1 gal water)
13# Bairds Heavy Peated Malt (Phenol 35-45)
13# 2 row

I mill the grain pretty fine with a MM3 mill. Finer than what my local HBS does but still plenty of husks and such. I have a Coleman 48 qrt cooler configured as a mash tun. I use the wire braided hose technique for draining but you could use any vessel that will hold heat.
Put your grain in the cooler. Heat your 13 gal of water to about 167F and then pour over the grain aiming for about 150 mash temp. Cover and hold for 90 minutes. Do iodine test but there should be no issue with conversion. It's always just nice to see it.
Open cooler and stir or whatever you need to do to get down to where you can deal with the wort. I drain the cooler and then take the grain and put it in paint strainer bags and squeeze all the liquid out. I recovered about all the original 13 gals and got a OG of 1.056. I divided the wort into three fermenting buckets with just over 4 gal per bucket. Cool to below 90F. Stir a bunch to aerate and pitch 1 tbsp of DADY or bakers yeast per bucket.
Strip it. I throw out the first cup and the run it down to 20%
Run it again making cuts. I earned about 4 qrts after cutting it to 115 p and that's where I oak it. You can really taste and smell the peat. Makes a good imitation of a Laphroaig style scotch but the test will come with some age.

[OtisT]

Nothing like the smell of peated grains being distilled. . To me, it smells like I’m cooking bacon.

I’m curious how are you oaking your batch?

I’m also a fan of the island whiskies and I made a similar batch of peated whiskey a few months back, 50% heavy peat and 50% malted barley. Been in the barrel only a few months so we both have quite a while to wait. Right now it smells strongly of smoke, peat, and a bit of new make smell. I can’t smell much else in there due to the strong smoke/peat.

I was concerned with the strength of my 50% peated batch, so I also made a small batch of straight wheat/barley whiskey that I put on oak. If it’s needed I will use this basic whiskey for blending with my peated batch once they both mature. This is definitely a long game.

Otis

[surfanarchist]

I picked up an old JD cask (Lowes flower planter) that was falling apart so it came cheap. I took the staves and cut them to fit a qrt mason jar, about 5 inches, and then split them so they're about 3/4 inch sides. I use a circular sander to take the wood down to white and then char one side with a torch. My thinking is that scotch is wooded on used casks so less char than a bourbon barrel, for instance, is ok. I'm new at this so my standards are not that high but in fact I find it very drinkable. If I compare it directly to a 10 YO Laphroaig yea it has a long way to go.

One thing, and this is part of my newness to this game, is that on my spirit run I was actually pulling, after my for shots, with my 5' long boca, a lot of liquid at about 170 proof. I upped the amperage to run it a little faster but it hung strong at that proof for around half a gallon of my 1 + gallon take. That stripped some of the peat. It's actually not as peaty as I want but still has that unique smell and flavor.

[bilgriss]

I smell more ash than bacon on new peated whiskey. Given some time to age, other flavors develop and things come together. Sounds like you've got something good going on!

[Swedish Pride]

if you run a boka i reckon it may be hard to get it as peaty as you want.
This is based on what other have reported of course, I've never ran a boka.

[Monero Mustang]

Sounds like a real primo whiskey! I do so love the peat-smoked barley in just about everything.

[NEGaxSEGa]

I wonder if you'd get closer to an Islay if, instead of charring your oak, you toasted it and soaked it in a bit of port or sherry, to mimic the used barrels traditionally used by scotch makers.

[rolling]

This looked intriguing enough for me to give it a try. Thanks! I have a Boka head, and a pot head w/leibig, not sure which one I'll use. I have good heat control so could run the Boka in pot still mode easily.

[surfanarchist]

I do think soaking the oak in port or sherry would be closer to the real thing. Since I'm using old whiskey barrel staves I don't think it needs toasting. As I wrote I'm not charring the whole oak piece so I'm getting less color than I would on a full charred stave like I do with bourbon or American (AG) whiskey. I have to say though that since I made this three weeks ago it has improved, as one would expect. Age is key. I read somewhere that flavor in distilled spirits runs like this; 10% from yeast, 20% from distilling, 20% from grains, and 50% from oak and age. I'm sure there's a lot of room around those numbers but as guidelines I think they're OK.

[just sayin]

Sounds good, keep in mind peat diminishes with age.

[nsgibson]

I'm really interested in running something like this bill. I'm curious, I have the peated malt but for the other 2-row are you using a distillers malt or a brewers malt?

[bluefish_dist]

The best one I have made so far is 100% plated barley. All medium peat, mix of golden promise and Simpson’s. I would throw a little bairds heavy peat in just for good measure.