A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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LordL
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A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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Hi!

Writing this as a project diary where i'm going through what we do in larger terms.

The boiler (15l )we have is not one of the finest but it is what we have to work with and that is kind of fun. It sets some boundaries to work within and makes us find ways to make it work in a small non optimal way.

We are at mashing in this weekend. Recepie as follows:

10,5kg Of Peated Barley 35ppm
2,5kg Of Peated Barley 50ppm
1kg of Enzyme malt, just using it "in case"

Mashing is constricted to 35 litres, but that is kind of ok. We will heat up around 20 litres of water to about 75C and then swiftly pour the malt into the mash tun. When the iodine gives us the green light, we tap out the mashwater, and do two separate batch sparges. With two sparges, you get out almost all of the fermentables.
It's an old and simple trick used in many situations where you dont need that much water either. It's practised in your dishwasher and laundry machine for example. (Napkin math: 10 kgs of water still bound in malt with 50% concentration of sugar, add 5kg of pure water to dilute down sugar content to 33%, tap out, press, refill and what's left after a third sparge and a bit of a press is maybe 7 liters of 20%. Still much sugars, but gets most of the sugar out for the goal of 30 liters of ferment..)
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Ben
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

Post by Ben »

You wont need the enzyme, peated barley is a minimum of 60loB. Batch sparging should work fine, just make sure your sparge water temp is correct. I bet this will smell awesome!

That is going to be an awfully thick mash. You are going to really struggle to get it stirred well and sparged. You really want to mash with double that water amount.
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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Ben wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:18 am You wont need the enzyme, peated barley is a minimum of 60loB. Batch sparging should work fine, just make sure your sparge water temp is correct. I bet this will smell awesome!

That is going to be an awfully thick mash. You are going to really struggle to get it stirred well and sparged. You really want to mash with double that water amount.
I know! :| It's not optimal, but we have a similar early bourbon recepie which started out as porridge, but as time passed and starches became sugar, that mash wasn't porridge anymore. We try to push a wee bit to get as much sugar as possible at around 30l. But yes, kind of sweaty work, and not something to recommend to the faint of heart... :ebiggrin:

Enzyme malt is good to have if we over shoot the temp by alot, just a precaution to add a bit when we have reached strike temp. Less to worry about, more happy brewing.
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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Ok, so after alot of hard work and some sweat and agony. It's done. Two buckets, one around 30l, the other measuring up to around 15 l. We are gonna have a stripping run from hell. I believe we got most of the sugars out of there and landed on an OG of 1.080 for right around 80% BH efficiency. Now, we are going to let it sit for 4 weeks before we are able to cram in a weekend of hard labour. I suspect we will need up to 4 strip runs, maybe we'll manage to top up the low wines with the last of the mash but I'm not counting on it and I'm tired.. need sleep!
Ps. Oh. Cobra whisky yeast, extra enzymes to break the last non fermentables.
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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One week before showtime. We measured FG and hot diggity! 0,98! Tasted smoky and sour, not vinegar sour, but definitely a taste of the acetic acid, as well as dissolved CO2. No sugars could be detected what so ever. That efficiency clocks in at around 89% and around 13,2 vol% of alcohol!

Way more than we aimed for. 5,94 litres of theoretical pure alcohol. If we get to take 50% of that in cuts, we're satisfied. It seems we could fill our ~5l barrel to the plug almost. Aiming to cask at around 63,5 vol% as the big guys.

That should also amount to 0,396 liters of pure alcohol per kg malt, Lagavulin reaches higher still, at approximately 0,405 liters /kg. Still, quite good work extracting the sugars!
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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That's very good efficiency for such a thick mash, well done!
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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Ben wrote: Mon Nov 15, 2021 7:44 am That's very good efficiency for such a thick mash, well done!
Thanks! Hadn't hoped for quite that much ourselves. But the theory regarding double mashing/ mash sparging seemed to have done quite well, that and the Scottish yeast! :)
I think we would never have fermented that dry on an ordinary beer yeast.
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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All jarrs collected. 4 stripping runs and 1 spirit, I think we got around 13 l of low wines at around 40% give or take. Half of the stripping runs were driven to 0.1%-0%. As for the rest, we had to stop around 10-20% just to get things done in time.

Spirit run went slow and easy. We have not yet made the cuts, will have to do that any day now.. Quite exited! I believe there was quite plenty smoke in there!
One copper scrub on each strip run, not an ounce of sulfur-smell. The spirit run was just empty pipings and a boiler with a concave top.
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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4,02 liters at 63.5% in our Gallon cask. A bit less than we count on, as always! : )

The taste of the white dog (3,5 liters, 73% undiluted) is not something we would drink pure, but we saved a small volume for taste reference. To see what tastes will disappear, which tastes will be added, and so on.

Did we find any smoky notes? We might. But it's definitely not in the ballpark of the reference Laphroaigh quarter cask. Not even close. So if it isn't hiding under some other notes and flavours, it's just going to get even less smoky over time.

I don't think we have the patience to collect feints for three more rounds to push the right phenols out towards the heart either. The tails got very distinct, very fast. Vomit -juice perhaps. Not anything that got better with dilution either, not even down to 5%. Still very strong and pungent "wet dog". So we took cuts pretty high up because of ageing in an american used bourbon cask (Leaky as hell, we lost up to a liter to the angels ageing the bourbon for 12 weeks..):

We took the cuts at 78%-60%, saw nothing else of value. The heads higher up started to taste almost rubbery and the tails-jars after the 60% mark tasted pungent wet dog, no smoke that hit you in the face to hide it to be found either.

Reflection: If doing a more flavourful spirit, we might need to invest in a wider pot still. Maybe the T500 with the copper dome or something in that fashion. We'll see how it goes...
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Re: A new try on a Scotch Single malt

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Hmmm, after washing ~20 jars in the dishwasher, the machine smelled a lot of peat-smoke. Somewhere it were hiding in the jars after all. Must have been in the late tails. Hmm. Well, curious to how the cask will end up!
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