My first real post here, outside of the welcome center!
I used to work at a production brewery and distillery and the owner was extremely cool about letting me play around and experiment. During two brew days on our 10Bbl system, I pulled off 5 gallons that would have gone down the drain due to having collected all the wort we needed for the beer.
I can't remember what the beers were now, but most likely a pale ale and a farmhouse for a total of 10 gallons of unhopped wort in separate 5 gallon carboys. I added some farmhouse style yeast and fermented them down.
To distill them, I poured both carboys into a 15 gallon still and did a quick stripping run. The next day I did a much slower spirit run. In the middle of the heads I started collecting about 100mL of the distillate at a time in mason jars. After tasting each jar to figure out what the best mix would be for my whisky, I proofed it to 120 and ended up with 45oz which I aged on about 8 medium toast american oak cubes from June 2018 until today, December 2020 when I bottled it to get it off the oak.
The nose is an extremely rich vanilla and caramel and the color screams ruby red. If I had proofed it down to 80 or so for bottling, the whisky probably would have taken on a much more mellowed color.
The flavor is lots of oak with caramel. It's still a little rough around the edges and tastes much better watered down in the glass and aerated slightly.
My next ferment and distillation will be 10 gallons of a 94% mix of mild malt and Maris Otter with 6% smoked malt. The goal is to make a very lightly smoked whisky.
cheers!
Just bottled my first aged whisky
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- Oldvine Zin
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Re: Just bottled my first aged whisky
Cheers
Stay safe
OVZ
Stay safe
OVZ
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Re: Just bottled my first aged whisky
Looks good. I can almost taste it from your photo.
- Grappa-Gringo
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Re: Just bottled my first aged whisky
yes...photo makes it look very tasty....
They say, "you are what you eat"... Then I'm fast, easy and cheap!