“Oh No!” Single Malt Rye Whiskey
(First Attempt so this may need to be tweaked)
15 lbs of German Weyermann Rye
Fermfast Whiskey Yeast1 (Yeast, glucoamylase enzyme)
1/4 lb of rice hulls
6 gal of water
Strike Temp of 140
Protein Rest for 20 minutes at 125
Heat to 150 and mash 60 minutes
sparged up to 7 gal. (Or two good rinses)
Cool to 89 to pitch yeast
keep room at 70-892 according to the yeast packet
Notes for (1-17-18)
First strike temp was accidentally 145, only drooped to 141 when I added grains.
Way too many grain probably. May not do a ferment on the grains...no room for foaming. Next time I'll stay with a 13 pound grain bill.
I sparged with two liters of 160 water. Seems to be a possible stuck so I decided to pull off about 2/3 of the grains, left to drain while I brought mash to a boil to pasteurize, because at this point I'm Also concerned about contamination. Will drop grain tower back into RoboBrew as soon as it hits 212 to pasteurize grains then use a wort chiller to drop back down to 89 asap. Pitched yeast in 89 water (1.5 cups) to let it temp up before pitching after chilling the mash.
Racked mash off of grains this morning (Monday January 22) still thick with yeast only made 4.5 gal so I probably am going to end up with 4 gal of clear mash if I'm lucky. I'm just gonna leave it in the fermenting bucket till Saturday then try and rack it off.
Current gravity reading = 1.000 or 0 alcohol....
I'm gonna add a ¼ cup of bread yeast and try to rescue it. Since its off the grains I'll just leave it till it clears, still very thick with yeast just not working.
May have had a stuck mash when fixing grains.
Okay, so I'm really rusty! LOL the hydrometer didn't read no alcohol it read no sugar left. This little lightbulb went off after I did the taste test and yes it tasted like a really good dry wine.... So as stated above I racked it off the grains and ordered a packet of super Kleer however I decided, because of time, that I would risk distilling with it cloudy turns out that it had almost completely settled by Saturday, Jan 27, and though it was cloudy there was a good yeast bed to rack off of.
Decided to rename by recipe Oh No! Single malt rye whiskey. I'll have to save a bottle for several years for a special occasion because I'll probably NEVER do it like this again....
But first to run my first distillation. I'm planning on going with a single run in my pot still. I'm looking for flavors rather than pure alcohol but if I mess up, “Oh No!” and I'll try again.
had another Oh No! My brewer kept over heating and shutting off so it took me more time than I wanted to heat up. My temperature at the thermometer is all over the map so I'm not sure I can trust it. I'm going to keep heating/cooling till I get a number of jars and then use the hydrometer/smell test to find my heads and hearts. (FYI by the still thermometer I hit my hearts in the first ½ pint after 150ml foreshot. I also can't now seem to get my Robobrew over 98c even cycling on both burners.
Robobrew did good as long as I kept it 1 degree more than it needed. LOL finished at 102c burner set to 103c
found some burnt sugar on the bottom of the pot so I decided to run a spirit run. It was 8.5 pints after the first run, ran to 208f and the last tail was oily and tasted like wet socks.
Spirit run, Robobrew actually worked again, ended with .8 L of 72% avb. And pretty damn tasty for going the long way around. Oh I proofed it down to 55% put on some wood chips and away we go. After, a few weeks I'll proof it down further to 40%.
BTW, if you're still reading that is....do the feints flavor the next batch significantly? I'm planning a much simpler run of some rum or possibly a brandy and I would keep the feints but not if they're gonna mess with my next batch.
