Just bottled my first aged whisky

Many like to post about a first successful ferment (or first all grain mash), or first still built/bought or first good run of the still. Tell us about all of these great times here.
Pics are VERY welcome, we drool over pretty copper 8)

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Hexadecimal
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Just bottled my first aged whisky

Post by Hexadecimal »

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.

Image

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!
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Oldvine Zin
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Re: Just bottled my first aged whisky

Post by Oldvine Zin »

Cheers :thumbup: :thumbup:

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SnowJeeper
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Re: Just bottled my first aged whisky

Post by SnowJeeper »

Looks good. I can almost taste it from your photo.
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Grappa-Gringo
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Re: Just bottled my first aged whisky

Post by Grappa-Gringo »

yes...photo makes it look very tasty....
They say, "you are what you eat"... Then I'm fast, easy and cheap!
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