Mash abv?

[Jakey505]

I saw Jimbo’s post about new distillers wanting to push abv’s. He says a mash should produce 6-8%.

As an experienced all grain beer brewer and someone who is new to this hobby and has not distilled anything, I can say that I understand wanting a higher abv mash. I don’t know all there is, so correct me please.

Now let’s face it - if someone is going to make the monetary investment in a still, then purchase ingredients and spend time to create their beverage, then shouldn’t they expect a reasonable output for the investment? What does it cost to get ingredients for a 5 gallon whiskey run - grains and yeast? I’m going to guess $25-$35. Plus the investment to create the mash and run the still.

I would think one would want to do at least a 10% mash. Simple math says 10% of a 5 gallon run is a half gallon. And my understanding is you don’t even get that, because of losses to the cuts.

So if someone is going to spend $25-$35 on ingredients and make the time investment, shouldn’t they end up with more than one bottle of whiskey? Aren’t there plenty of decent whiskeys one can just go buy for $25-$35 a bottle if that’s the case?

As I said, I am new to this and seeking to understand the input, investment, and output.

Thank You

[acfixer69]

Jimbo break the cost down better then I could in this thread.viewtopic.php?f=14&t=39617. Its way cheaper but that's not the only reason we distill our own.

[fizzix]

Jakey, don't fall into the trap of doing everything you can to boost ABV for a better return, either.
Most of us like to keep our mashes and washes at about 8% maximum to prevent stressing the yeast
and imparting off-flavors.

It helps to get the mind set of making quality over quantity. Proper cuts & control will help you
achieve a top-shelf product. We're not just making rot-gut here... well, not on purpose anyway!

[kpex72]

As an AG beer brewer myself, I understand your concern. Now, distilling is simply adding one extra step (and omitting the hops). That extra step plays a major role in flavor development. Unlike beer that you can hop and/or dry hop to mask certain flavors while complimenting others, we don't get that option in distilling (unless you run a gin basket). If you bump up the ABV, you start losing the grain flavor profile and your product begins to taste like, well, actual alcohol. If you run a sugar wash with a turbo yeast and go 18% in your beer/wash, your distillate product will taste just like rubbing alcohol. You basically made ethanol or fuel alcohol. It'll get the job done, but taste quite harsh.

Chances are using an AG recipe you will be hard pressed to go over 10% anyway, and that's when people cheat and add sugar to bump up the OG to get a little bit more end product. The more you do that, the more extra "bite" you get with your product. There is a balance.

On here you will find purists that think adding any sugar is the work of the devil, many moderates who have recipes that add extra malt/sugar to make up for unfermentable sugars to aid in the flavor of an ingredient that simply won't convert - or they choose not to take the extra steps to convert it. Then you find people that just don't care and will try anything to say they make their own - no rules as long as it tastes good; and taste is quite subjective.

Remember you are in it for the hobby. You can go to your local liqueur store and get some micro brew that can rival your home brew (and it costs more), but with distilling, if you get the right recipe, follow the craft and not take shortcuts, you can make your own spirits that rival $100+/bottle of whisky. And that is why we brew our own beer and make our own spirits. We can make very high quality product at a much more affordable price. In the end, it's mainly what you prefer. Start simple, but don't be afraid to follow some of the recommendations that may sound unorthodox. They are sharing experience, and that's hard to buy!

To put it in perspective, if you are fine drinking Busch Light beer, you probably don't need to be brewing you own. If you are fine drinking $25/bottle of whisky, you probably shouldn't be distilling either.....unless you just want to be bad at your hobby.

You will find all sorts of advice here; it's the internet. Take it all in and research and experiment. Try running a 12% mash, then compare it to a 6% mash, and you can make your own opinion on how you wish to proceed.

Best of luck to you, and enjoy making your own; no matter what your recipe is.

[jonnys_spirit]

Hi,

When we talk about output volume we're talking about a particular volume at a particular ABV and it could be a white-cut or a barrel cut (and some of both) and there's feints too which can be re-incorporated into the next run in some cases if you want.

Here's some practical #'s and volumes from my notes:

I do my mashes in 20gallon brutes.

On a recent HBB run (multiple mash/ferment/strip/spirit cycles) I mashed about 26lbs of the HBB grains in about 12 gallons of water/backset mixture. That fermented out and cleared and I claimed about 10-11 gallons of cleared mash to strip. I stripped four cleared fermented mashes and added feints and backset from the last run which gave me about 15 gallons of low wines to charge the still with for the spirit run. After cuts the spirit run produced about 3/4gallon of my white cut @ about 160proof and 3.50-3.5 gallons of my barrel cut @ 125proof. I blended the barrel cut a little wider on this one that I have in the past in order to have more complexity in the aged barrel cut.

For that run I used kroger corn meal (4x 5lbs bags per run), kroger oatmeal, and the other grains that I purchased from a homebrew shop. Not sure exactly how much it all cost but the kroger cornmeal was about 3.50/bag so estimating 20-25 total per mash maybe and four mashes in my run is about $100 but somehow think I spent $200... That was over the course of about 2 months on that schedule.

If I break it down to $/bottle of 80proof whiskey and estimate five gallons or 25 fifths of 80 proof in that sized run I come up with maybe $8/bottle and since I'm trying to be more frugal and grind my own corn now probably under $5/bottle for sure in that same scenario...

I don't worry too much about my mash abv but check with the brewers hydro to confirm ferment is complete or still in progress. It's somewhere between 7-9% abv. I'll fudge the quantities added to each mash a little and it gets averaged out over the run anyway...

I can get corn for $6/50lbs so that makes it way cheaper to do a 100lbs run where kroger cornmeal would cost $70 and the feed store corn costs $12.

Cheers!
-jonny

[Jakey505]

To put it in perspective, if you are fine drinking Busch Light beer, you probably don't need to be brewing you own. If you are fine drinking $25/bottle of whisky, you probably shouldn't be distilling either.....unless you just want to be bad at your hobby.

Best of luck to you, and enjoy making your own; no matter what your recipe is.

I tend to gravitate toward Beam products. I like most of what they make and the quality at that price. Devil’s Cut, Jim Beam Black, etc. I can find most of those here for around $26. Old Grandad 100 proof and Old Forrester are theirs too and in that same price range. I had the Repeal batch and am a huge fan. That one again is about $17 here. The Bonded was $29. Their Double Oak is on sale here everywhere for $16.99. For every day drinking, I buy the Heaven Hill green and white label for $17 for the handle. Prices may be going up I guess, Beam just had a fire thats on the news now and they lost 45,000 barrels. What are they, 60 gallon barrels? Figure thats millions of bottles.

I haven’t had many very expensive bourbons.

[kpex72]

You might be surprised at what you can make. Also, it's fun and its a hobby. Relax and enjoy!

Welcome to the forum!

[brat]

I've been brewing for more than 10 years now. I don't think I've ever spent $35.00 bucks on at 5 gallon batch. I buy bulk grains it cost me $35.00 to buy a 55lbs bag of pilsner malt. Yeast is 7 bucks and if you bank your own yeast ( like I do ) you can stretch that to last a good while. So if you are spending $35.00 on a gallon batch of brew it's way too much.

[NZChris]

If you want more yield for your efforts, buy bulk and do large ferments. When I was working out what equipment I needed, I soon realised that distilling one ferment at a time would be hard work for little reward and that it would be almost impossible to put away a decent amount for ageing. My first fermenter held up to four still charges worth of mash/wash to provide sufficient low wines for a spirit run from each ferment and is still my most used fermenter thirty years later.

[Jakey505]

If you want more yield for your efforts, buy bulk and do large ferments. When I was working out what equipment I needed, I soon realised that distilling one ferment at a time would be hard work for little reward and that it would be almost impossible to put away a decent amount for ageing. My first fermenter held up to four still charges worth of mash/wash to provide sufficient low wines for a spirit run from each ferment and is still my most used fermenter thirty years later.

This is exactly what I’m thinking. However, space considerations and taking everything into account, I’m thinking about buying nothing larger than 8 gallons, in which I could realistically run 5 or 6 gallons. I have to be able to get more than one bottle per run to make it worthwhile. And yes, barreling/aging is a whole ‘nother topic.

[Jakey505]

These are 2 I’m looking at

Williams Brewing

Digiboil Pot Still:
https://www.williamsbrewing.com/Digiboi ... P4709.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Digiboil Reflex Still:
https://www.williamsbrewing.com/Digiboi ... P4710.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I couldn’t handle anything larger. I think I would like to make whiskey and rum. My wife and I do drink
ALOT of gin, but I don’t think I’m ready to make gin yet. However, having the reflex still would leave that open. This one above has a ring that could be removed for whiskey.

[NZChris]

The footprint of my 24 gallon fermenter isn't hugely bigger than that of a 6 gallon bucket, but it means that on stripping day, I can make enough low wines for a spirit run, usually spending a weekend hard out distilling and making a substantial amount of finished product even though the still is just over 8 gallons.

[kakashi]

I have that setup with the reflux still head. I actually just posted about my first triple batch (3x fermenters) stripping run followed by a spirit run on that setup which you can read here.

For that run it took roughly 16kg white sugar, 210g yeast, 900g tomato paste, and insignificant amounts of epsom salts and lemon juice. That puts the costs at roughly $30AUD (Australian) - probably a little bit less. It made 90 litres of wash at 10.5% - higher than most would recommend. I'm still trying to dial in the right amount of sugar

I pulled about 8L of liquor off from the still, sending about 40% of that to the feints bin (which will get re-distilled later). I plan to mix a fair amount of this with the Still Spirits flavour packets, so I have some wiggle room on the flavour or what I let into the drinking jar. Total haul was roughly 6.2L at (guessing now) 85% or so...I didn't bother to get a final ABV after it was all mixed.

That's about 13.175 litres at 40% strength - or 18.82 bottles (700ml). If you can get a bottle of anything around here for $2.27AUD then I wouldn't recommend you drink it, it's clearly rat poison. Average price for a bottle is about $38, so you're not only getting a 94% discount off retail, you're getting a better quality of drink at the same time.

I won't need to fire up the still again for two months or more at my usual drinking rate - but I will, oh yes, I will. There's rum and bourbon recipes I want to have a stab at soon.

In short, a sugar wash for a vodka / neutral spirit will cost you a fraction of the price of any store bought grog around here. Things get even cheaper if you're willing to use stock feed supply shops for some of your needs.

[Saltbush Bill]

Suggest you think carefully before buying either of those stills....look at what other options there are. Both look like expencive toys to me for what you get for your money.

[Swedish Pride]

you must have a very expensive grain bill in mind.
I get a sack of base malt for 26€ to my door, I throw all of it in to a 110l fermanter and add some bread yeast.
i get about 4.5l of 60% after all said and done,that is with wide cuts and shit mash protocol, and experienced homebrewer like yourself should get more our of their grain than i do.
even if you throw cost of electricity and water at it it's less than 5€ per bottle of 40%.

[CuWhistle]

Not sure which $ the OP is talking about but grain bill out here for 5 gallon / 20 litre brewers quality grain could get up to $20, possibly more, depending on where you buy it, cracked or not, which particular grain, bulk or small bag etc. Of course you can get cheaper grain at the stock feeds. Micronised barley and maize but it isn't malted so you'd need at least some malted brewers grain or some enzymes. If you buy specialty yeast instead of Bakers than it would add further to this cost. I can see $25 - $30 as a total expenditure on a high quality AG mash over here.

[kakashi]

Suggest you think carefully before buying either of those stills....look at what other options there are. Both look like expencive toys to me for what you get for your money.

It's pretty good advice. The column is fairly small compared to home built stills I've seen here and on YouTube. It would be good if you can figure out in advance how large a setup you want / need...and I warn you, you will probably want something bigger as you get into the hobby. That said...here's why I went with it.

At $150AUD for the still column and $14.95 for the pot lid - I'm not sure I'd call it expensive. Compared to the size of still you can build if you scavenge some materials and have soldering skills and time - then yes, it's expensive. If you're time poor and your wife has specific opinions on how big your bloody still can be - then maybe it's a good fit. I'm using it in a pretty confined space, so for now, it suits me well.

Now, I'm only quoting the price for the still column and lid because I'm assuming if you're a home brewer then you can make good use of the boiler that pairs up with the still. If you already have a compatible boiler or were looking at getting one, then it's not too bad a price proposition. And hell, you can always replace it later with a massive home built column on top of that boiler. Just order another lid, use a Dremmel to drill it out to 3 inches, and get one of those sink plumbing thingies for that size. You might want to think about the 65L boiler though instead if you plan to scale up later. I'm already wondering if life would be better with 200L fermentation drums (for 100L batches that foam a bunch) and a 65L boiler with a CCVM / Boka column. That's all due to reading stuff here

I'm just getting started with stilling, and at the same time stepping up my game by brewing beers using all grain methods. I was going to get the boiler system with the recirculating pump / arm, mash tube, etc in any case. So for me, I only added $164.95AUD to the total cost to also be able to reflux still products. I'm already loving that ability. And if I'm truthful, it's already easily paid back what I put into it. With the cost of alcohol over here, it pays back FAST.

One thing you might want to consider is the amount of time it takes to complete a distillation run. This is where the "toy" comment might come into play. It's not a toy when it comes to the quality of the liquor, it's easily giving me 94-96% pure alcohol. I think @saltbush Bill is mainly talking about how fast it can distil. You can check out the thread I posted earlier and see the timings I provided for a 3 x stripping run + spirit run. It took a pretty damn long time. I expect others can do the same in half or even a third of the time mine took. Hopefully others will comment on that.

If I have a criticism then it's this - you only have temperature control over the heating elements. You can't control the amount of energy being input directly. It would be far better if this came with a PWM controller that allowed you to turn down the elements to allow better control of the boil. It's something I'm looking into to see if there's a work-around.

In conclusion, you will save a ton of money by distilling your own and you can make better product as well. Try and think about what sort of gear you want upfront and if you would be willing to build something rather than buy a ready made product. My buy-in cost for that still head was cheap enough that if I threw it out now it would still have paid for itself - and I now know I like making moonshine The boiler, etc, I will be using for quite some time to come. If I replace it, it will probably be for a Frankenstein home made one using a Raspberry Pi / Arduino setup with control over the power going into the boiling elements. I'm a programmer, so I could actually knock that together given enough study on how to control the electric circuits. In fact, every time I look at my boiler I imagine it with a phone based control app and a Raspberry Pi / Arduino measuring and controlling the gubbins.

[DetroitDIY]

Jakey, I agree with what has been said here about capacity. I think everyone who starts and sticks with it for 6+ months wants to upscale their capacity. If you did it with brewing, then you'll do it with distilling. I started with 6.5 and 9 gallon fermenting buckets, and am now fermenting in 55 gallon drums. Fortunately I built my own and started with a 15.5 gallon boiler. It's good, but I have thought about upgrading to a 30 gallon rig to make my time spent more efficient. And I bumped from a 2" pot sill to a 4" flute for the same reason... time.

I got some concerns from my wife as Kakashi, but while she thinks it's excessive, it's fortunately not in her space. Ironically she does ask me from time to time if I could use it commercially.

Regarding not stressing the yeast, there seems pretty common opinions among the experience folks not to go above 10% ABV. But people do it in beers and I do it in meads. You'll find a lot of disparity about how to treat your yeast on this forum. There are plenty who want to ferment pretty warm (especially if you're doing a rum), not much talk of airation, lately I see more talk of proper re-hydration, use of GoFerm, step feeding. I've started doing step feeding and step nutrients (when needed). So, the point of 6-8% ABV to not stress your yeast, and a great variety of practices in other respects to yeast care seems a bit odd to me. But that said, I have never tried to distill something that's over ~9-10%. I like what kpex suggested... try it low and high and see if you notice the difference.

DetroitDIY

[Pikey]

I saw Jimbo’s post about new distillers wanting to push abv’s. He says a mash should produce 6-8%.

As an experienced all grain beer brewer and someone who is new to this hobby and has not distilled anything, I can say that I understand wanting a higher abv mash. I don’t know all there is, so correct me please.

Now let’s face it - if someone is going to make the monetary investment in a still, then purchase ingredients and spend time to create their beverage, then shouldn’t they expect a reasonable output for the investment? What does it cost to get ingredients for a 5 gallon whiskey run - grains and yeast? I’m going to guess $25-$35. Plus the investment to create the mash and run the still.

I would think one would want to do at least a 10% mash. Simple math says 10% of a 5 gallon run is a half gallon. And my understanding is you don’t even get that, because of losses to the cuts.

So if someone is going to spend $25-$35 on ingredients and make the time investment, shouldn’t they end up with more than one bottle of whiskey? Aren’t there plenty of decent whiskeys one can just go buy for $25-$35 a bottle if that’s the case?

As I said, I am new to this and seeking to understand the input, investment, and output.

Thank You

We keep coming back here because there are 1000 ways to do a Wash/mash and a hundred plus ways of cooking it !

Just try it in all the ways that you feel you want to experiment with. The output will put you on the right track - FOR YOU !

[Jakey505]

Thanks everybody for your input. I was looking at those small stills due to a) ready availability b) affordable price c) being electric, so any risk of vapor explosion is reduced and d) as kakashi mentioned, we do have limited space and storage, the wife does indeed have restrictions.

Thinking about this more - we're in a populated city area and I don't have woods behind my house or anything. We're wide open - no real privacy in any outside spaces around the home. If I were going to do this, I would probably need to do whatever I do inside my garage, in order to have any privacy. I could MAYBE have the garage door halfway open or a little less than halfway open. I could not even work outside in a driveway or patio, etc, as this is obviously not something we want neighbors to be seeing and calling the police, etc. You know there's always that "one" neighbor.

Not sure what I am going to do at this point, if anything really.

[kakashi]

If you can take over a corner of the kitchen for the day, that's a good option. I basically do mine in a hallway with a sink nearby. I can't use that hallway for that period of time, but I have a couple of ways to scoot around it. I have a corner in my kitchenette that seems like it's a good choice. I'll do it there next time.

Otherwise, just crack open the garage door a foot or so and setup in the back. Short of sticking their heads under the door no-one will see what you're up to and any smells should just waft away on the wind. They should be used to some cooking smells if you home brew, tell em you're making a tomato flavoured beer

[greggn]

> we do have limited space and storage, the wife does indeed have restrictions.

Heating with electric, I distill in a bathroom using the bathtub as a water reservoir. Given that my home has 2.5 bathrooms the wife does not mind that I use one. Fortunately, it's on the second floor so even guests can't see/know what's going on upstairs. Unfortunately, that also means having to carry my still charges up a flight of stairs. No trips or spills yet ... but it's bound to happen one day.

[Jimbo]

I saw Jimbo’s post about new distillers wanting to push abv’s. He says a mash should produce 6-8%.

Ive since modified my opinion on this. I do 10% mashes now for bourbons as Ive found with a clean yeast, and a slow (cool) ferment and healthy mash the result is the same as 6-8% mashes. I would recommend new folks keep it 8% first couple runs until you get the hang of creating a healthy mash and ferment. Sorry for any contradictions across my threads and recipes.

[Chauncey]

Good to know Jim. I always aim for about ten and it does me well