Odin wrote:Interesting! You actually mashing & fermenting thos acorns? Wow.
If it doesn't work out, you could always go for the walnut brandy approach where you just soak the acorns in likker ...
But this approach is far more interesting.
Odin.
Friend Sir Odin, I was hoping you would chime in... thought about you the other day while I picked some juniper berries. They were much more ripe and much easier to pick than the ones I sent you. I plan on picking more this afternoon while waiting on my daughter in dance class. I'll be sending you some more to see if these turn out better...
You research lots of stuff related to our hobby, and of course oaks grow over there. Have you heard anything about making a mash outta acorns???
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
Nope! Never! I do have some references of "brandewijn" (brandy) being made with or out of acorns. But it is stories for children where it is stated the devils make acorn brandy. Nothing like a recipe.
But an acorn is a nut. So the walnut brandy method I did must be applicable to acorns as well. That would mean: pluck them early, still green? And macerate in 55% abv. Sumtin' like that.
But your method of actually mashing ... impressive. I hope it works out. I think the oily parts may be a pain. And I dunno about % of fermentable sugars. Tanins might be high, so maybe a lot of ageing. Just thoughts.
Thanx for picking more juniper berries! Which reminds me Wacabi, ... I have some pretty impressive "Korenwijn" style geneva ready. Well, at least I am happy with it! I will take some of the wood this weekend and ship you a small bottle. Could you pm me your address? It is the bottle Mr. P gave to Big R and Big R send to me. So there is an obligation that comes with it. That - after finishing my geneva - you will fill this small bottle up with some of your finest and ship it off to another member of HD. With a post about it, off course!
Odin.
"Great art is created only through diligent and painstaking effort to perfect and polish oneself." by Buddhist filosofer Daisaku Ikeda.
It's definitely the best acorn to try with ....you can tell that by the wildlife that I see under mine this time of year. You're in uncharted territory tho Wacabi , no tellin what the DP is of a malted acorn.
I'd think you might have better luck crushing 'em, pick the flesh out, leave the hulls behind, then cook to gelatinize, and mash w/ some 2-row malt.
Best pick out a good name for this drink too.
I'd give it a go, but I'm too old to fight off all the squirrels n deer (for the acorns) out back.
NChooch
Practice safe distillin and keep your hobby under your hat.
Sir Odin, the devil makes acorn brandy? Hmmm, here he lives in a fiddle. That's why kids shouldn't be messing with a fiddle. We'll have him figured out soon too!!!
"Korenwijn" sounds awesome! I'm sure its a great drink if you like it. I would be most honored to receive such a gift though I don't think I could refill it with the same quality that has been in it... but I'll certainly do my best...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
Hooch, it was the combination of your ol post about acorns and my past experience picking them that brought me to this point. If it works, I'll let YOU name it!!! Ifn it does work, I'll send you a sample, you'll have to taste it to name it... I'll send it to ya along with something good in "The Bottle"...
Yea when the time comes, I want to have enzymes on hand just in case. Shelling and leaching will be important...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
Wow, I am very impressed with the level of ground breaking going on here. From my time in the South, I've heard a lot about eating acorns and have even drank acorn coffee but I never would have brewed them.
BTW, roasted acorn meat ground into a powder then percolated makes something that isn't coffee but will serve in an emergency. The flavor is hard to describe beyond bitter as all hell, but it will wake you up on a cold morning.
Pot stiller, 15.5 gal and 7.5 gal, in hardcore research mode for future projects, rum lover
You know David I was talking to a buddy the other day leaning up against his truck, I picked out a ripe brown acorn out of the back cracked it and ate it. It was rather pleasant tasting. Not like the ones we tried to eat as a kid that were extremely bitter. It would make an interesting coffee I bet. In brewing it I bet you would get some really oily tails. But the early ones would probably taste like a nutty goodness
Spent all day cracking and peeling the acorns. Man, I thought purple hull pees were bad. Not much progress, not quite a half of a 5gal bucket full for all my effort... still more ta go. They are getting the tannins soaked out now...
Several had worms in them, those will be fed to the pigs. I'm sure they won't mind. I noticed that some of them that had gone bad/turned black, had a mustard like smell. Mustard whisky don't sound too good ta me. "I like mustard on my biscuit"... not in my whisky...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
To anyone who was watching this thread,.. it was a failure.
But, more work is needed to be conclusive...
Malting the acorns was easy, no problem. It was the pealing that effected my efforts. I work allot and was pealing them as I got time, (mostly between changing jars). I had some pealed and added to it each time I made a run. Well, the process of cleaning them is very tedious/ time consuming. I noticed after a few attempts to fill a 5gal bucket, that they had a fungus growing all.over them. Fungus Threads filled the bucket... so I dumped them into the hog trough...
Next fall I'll try again, quick processing will be important...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
Working on an acorn mash right now. I found that the mashing was much more complicated than expected. I use european oak, Quercus robur, and it contains a huge lot of tannins, these inhibit the amylase convertion severely. Am now working with methodes to get rid of these tannins before mashing. Experementing with both boiling and cold water leech, and I am happy for every good advise. I am using concentrated alfa-beta amylase from aspergillus. Maybe it would be better using barley for convertion in this case?
the only solution is to use more alpha amylase than average. Tannins work by denaturing small amounts of amylase, doing a google scholar search will yield many documents about this in humans. If you use extra enzymes and give it time (in an airtight place) you may still be able to do this
good luck.
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
Favnesbane, thankyou for continueing the effort...
Tanic acid may be the problem, lime may be the solution...
Cows love to eat acorns. Too many acorns can kill a cow. Farmers around here will feed lime this time a year to counteract the acidic effects of acorns... Too high PH...
I should be working on it like i said i would, but time has me blocked right now...p
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin
Do you think it would concentrate enough for a good deer likker? Like get em hooked on the stuff and move in just before 5:00 pm for the big boy to come belly up!
GA Flatwoods
The hardest item to add to a bottle of shine is patience!
I am still kicking.
Ga Flatwoods
Tater wrote:remember old fokes talking about makin acorn bread . they put shelled acorns in weighted sack and placed in creek to leech them.
Yeah, even the native people here in the northwest made flour out of Garry Oak acorns. I sometimes wonder why such a widely used food staple is now mostly unknown to people.
The still is not a liar. Mash and ferment quality is 99.9% of your performance.
At my first attempt I used at least ten times as much amylase as normally needed and still no coversion. I found an article testing tannin effect on amylase shoving that if the tannin level is above a certain level the enzyme converion is zero (depending on the type of tannin), and I guess that was the case in my first attempt. I tried boiling out the tannins by boiling whole acorns and change the water 8 times. I blended them to porridge and used lime to put the ph down to around 5, and after ca. 2 hours of mashing I managed to convert enough starch to give potentially around 5 % alc. in the mash.
I am afraid that the boiling also takes away all the taste of the acorns, so now I am trying cold leech by running the acorns in the blender and putting the blended mash in cold water, changing the water once in a while for a few days. It looks promising already, wondering if I can use some kind of protein powder in the mash to make the rest of the tannins bind to those proteins before I put in the amylase. Anyone know if protein addition can have some unwanted effects on the mash?
It also looks like acorn starch need quite a lot of boiling to gelatinize, at least more than most grains and potatoes.
This is most of all an experiment I want to find out both a good method and the true taste of acorn spirit, Im not gonna make huge amounts of this and I just cant pretend. Now I have figured out that Im gonna buy a pressure cooker. Then I can cook the acorns at higher temperature, and that will probably help both the tannin removal and the galatinization. Ill come back with the results in a while.
I have finally made a small batch of acorn spirit. In order to leech them I boiled the whole acorns whith the shells on, changing the water about five times, it was maybe around 3 hours of total boiling. This process also gelatinized them. Then I mashed them in a meat grinder into porridge. When the temperature was 65 C, I added amylase. I used a lot of amylase adding it several times. After processing this way for about one and a half hour, the mash was sweet enough even thoug the iodine showed that starch was still present. I used ca 5 kg acorns and added ca 2 liters of water. It fermented well whith distillers yeast, and I guess some conversion kept going on because the fermentation kept going for two weeks. I got ca. 1,5 liter 50 % spirit out of it. Distilling in a bain marie. The taste is great, acornish and different, but some test tasters did not like it. Closer to a grain spirit than potatoe, but the oils and flavor from the acorns give a bitter and nutty taste as well. I also tried an acorn fake mash, just boiling the acorns in the pressure boiler for an hour to gelatinize, and added spraymalt to reach 7 %. The taste of this was similar, but not as rich and complex as the proper one.
Next step I am going to try is to make a kind of acorn sake-mash. Aspergillus fungus that provides the amylase for starch conversion in sake, will also make tannase if tannine is present when the mold is growing. Tannase is an enzyme that brakes down tannine. I have bought koji spores to make kome-koji and have made a first try of ordinary sake of rice with great success. Im going to make a koji whith a mix of rice and acorn, and use this for a slow low-temperature conversion going on together whith the fermentatoin, in the same way as sake is made. I will update whith the results of further experiments.
favnesbane wrote:I have finally made a small batch of acorn spirit. In order to leech them I boiled the whole acorns whith the shells on, changing the water about five times, it was maybe around 3 hours of total boiling. This process also gelatinized them. Then I mashed them in a meat grinder into porridge. When the temperature was 65 C, I added amylase. I used a lot of amylase adding it several times. After processing this way for about one and a half hour, the mash was sweet enough even thoug the iodine showed that starch was still present. I used ca 5 kg acorns and added ca 2 liters of water. It fermented well whith distillers yeast, and I guess some conversion kept going on because the fermentation kept going for two weeks. I got ca. 1,5 liter 50 % spirit out of it. Distilling in a bain marie. The taste is great, acornish and different, but some test tasters did not like it. Closer to a grain spirit than potatoe, but the oils and flavor from the acorns give a bitter and nutty taste as well. I also tried an acorn fake mash, just boiling the acorns in the pressure boiler for an hour to gelatinize, and added spraymalt to reach 7 %. The taste of this was similar, but not as rich and complex as the proper one.
Next step I am going to try is to make a kind of acorn sake-mash. Aspergillus fungus that provides the amylase for starch conversion in sake, will also make tannase if tannine is present when the mold is growing. Tannase is an enzyme that brakes down tannine. I have bought koji spores to make kome-koji and have made a first try of ordinary sake of rice with great success. Im going to make a koji whith a mix of rice and acorn, and use this for a slow low-temperature conversion going on together whith the fermentatoin, in the same way as sake is made. I will update whith the results of further experiments.
I hate to revive a dead thread but would love an update on how well this works and what the process is like. This is super interesting!
You're in uncharted territory tho Wacabi , no tellin what the DP is of a malted acorn.
