My First All Grain (Apple-Rye 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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mudflap
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My First All Grain (Apple-Rye Whisky)

Post by mudflap »

After my apple brandy run, I wanted to do something with the leftover hot slops. I followed this advice from another apple rye thread;
goose eye wrote: Thu Mar 15, 2018 4:46 am Use your cider hot slops an pour right out of the kettle on your rye. Mash it in after that if that your druther.

So I'm tole
From memory, I borrowed the technique / steps from Benstick's Oat Wheat Rye recipe. Due to poor note-keeping I'm not certain which thread I got the grain bill from, entirely possible I just used the ingredients I had on hand - but I don't want to not give credit where credit is due so feel free to correct me.

Ingredients;

6KG Rye, non-malted
3KG Malt Rye
1KG Malt Wheat
Alpha-amalylase
Glucoamylase
Hot Slops (20L total)
Water (30L total)
Nottingham Ale Yeast

Mash;

Firstly, I brought the 20L of hot slops and 10L of water to a boil. While this was boiling, I milled the grains, and added the 6KG of non-malted rye to my mash tun. When the 25L was boiling, I poured it into my mash tun onto the rye, and stirred intensely with a metal mash paddle.

I continued stirring until the mixture reached 80C, then added a few squirts of alpha-amylase. I then mixed this semi-regularly, until reaching 65C, when I added a few squirts of glucoamylase and the malted rye and wheat. I wrapped the tun in blankets and left overnight.

Fermentation;

Come morning, I added the remaining 20L of water to the mash tun, and got a Starting Gravity of 1.059 - happy days. I then divided the liquid into two 25L fermenters (only reason being my fermentation chamber fits 25L fermenters) and pitched the yeast. To be honest I did not check these religiously, from memory they hit a gravity of 1 in about two weeks, slowing toward the end. Due to life, left for another two weeks before the stripping run.

Stripping Run;

My still is a 25L electronic boiler, with a 2" stainless modular pot still w shotgun condenser. Now for some reason, I had it in my head that because my elements are not exposed, I could distill on-grain. This was not the case, and I scorched the bottom of my boiler, shorting something out. I quickly ordered another 25L boiler from ebay (I would have gone to local homebrew bro, but lockdown 6 was happening :crazy: ). While waiting for said replacement boiler, I started fiddling with my "broken" boiler. Long story short, I took the bottom apart and realised there was a little safety switch protruding from the bottom, I'm guessing to turn off in case the thing falls over. So anyhoo, I cleaned the scorched bottom and reset the switch, and she fired up again. Forgive that rant - just something I wish I had known before buying a second boiler.

Once I had strained out the rest of the grain, I had a fairly uneventful stripping run, which left me with about 6L of low wine.

Spirit Run;

After about 100ml of fores, the run started at about 80% ABV, and only started dipping into the 70's after about 1L had come out of the pipe. The heads seemed fairly distinctive to me, so I took 200ml cuts. When I thought I had reached hearts, I took 300ml cuts until I started getting into the tails, then worked down to 100ml cuts so I could learn more about the smells and tastes that come through the tail end of the run.

Cuts;

I'm amateur at best when it comes to cuts / blending, but still I was really impressed and surprised at how well this turned out, straight of the pipe. The smell of the hot apple slops came through first on the nose, then the beautiful spice of the rye. I recycled maybe half of the heads jars and a couple of the tails jars I didn't like, and ended up with about 3L of white dog.

Ageing;

I didn't want to lose any of those baked apple notes, so I was conservative with the wood. I toasted two chips of French Oak very lightly, and added them to the demijohn. I thought the white dog was good sippin', but after three months this is beautiful. As to be expected, the jagginess has smoothed out, the apple notes haven't gone anywhere. I'm going to let it age another three months and hopefully share it with the family at Christmas. Good times.
Sporacle
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Re: My First All Grain (Apple-Rye Whisky)

Post by Sporacle »

:clap: Well done Muddy, sounds like a great drop.
" you can pick your nose and you can pick your friends; but you can't always wipe your friends off on your saddle" sage advice from Kinky Friedman
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