help with 8kg of peated malt?

[Scribbler]

hi. a local microbrewery owned by the friend of a friend is willing to sell me 8kg of peated malt barley that he imported from scotland a while back. I'm going to take him up on the offer, the price is $5 a kg, I dont really know if that is low or high, but I doubt that I will ever get my hands on something like this in the near future... so I will briefly outline my experience level, and my fears, and then ask for ideas...

experience:
have done 1 series of UJSM... I think I hit the tenth or 12th generation before moving on to something else...
have fermented and stripped one 25 litre run of apples from my backyard tree
have fermented, stripped, and run for spirits one 25 litre run of grapes from my folks vineyard.

goals/fears
am wanting to do a peated scotch type whiskey.

not sure if i should combine the peated malt with regular barley... is easier to cook if i don't right? also the idea of single malt is appealing but not neccessary... if I blend peated malt with reg barley will i lose the peaty goodness?

sparging looks pretty messy and scary. is there a way to avoid sparging? as I understand it the point of this is to rinse all the sugars ito the wash and then discard the grain... why sparge at all? can I just dump the whole mess into my fermenter and give it a good stir kind of like ujsm?


any help is appreciated!!!!!

[Dnderhead]

lets see "raw" grain has to be cooked,, malted does not, just hot water.

you can add grain and all to fermenter ,that is called "on the grain fermenting", best if doing one or so ferments.

[rubber duck]

Sparging your grain is really easy with a few simple tools. What you need is a zapap lauter-turn. Essentially it's two 5-gallon buckets: one bucket has a hole drilled about a inch from the bottom and a hose attaches to the hole and the other has 200 or so small holes drilled in the bottom. They stack into each other to create a false bottom. Once you have that get some r-13 home insulation or some good blankets and wrap your lauter turn to insulate it. Crush your grain and do your mash in the lauter-turn, then batch sparge it. Batch sparging is basically emptying all the liquid through the false bottom and the filling up the bucket again with hot water and draining it again until you get the desired amount of wort. There's also a technique call fly sparging but I would stick with batch sparging its easier.

This is a cheap and easy way to sparge your grain. There are a lot of examples of this system online just look up zapap and batch sparging on any of the beer sites.

As for peated malt the price is ok but i don't know if you can use it alone. I'm not sure if that specialty grain has any enzymes, I don't have much experience with it although I have access to it for cheap, so if it goes well for you let me know and I'll give it a try.

[Dnderhead]

sparging is not that grate when doing wort for distilling one batch.
exampol,,
mash grain- wort is 5%
sparge water is 2%
total combined 3%
you git away with it in beer by boiling and reducing wort and that is not done with beer/wort for distilling.

(I have away to git around this when doing multiple ferments)

[pigroaster]

Make a run using your peated malt on it's own and the make another using only malted barley. Sparge both and then blend to taste in three months after doing the charred oak 63 ABV to 53 ABV to 43 ABV each month. Trust me on this one. Send me an email if you need specifics.

[kiwistiller]

doing the charred oak 63 ABV to 53 ABV to 43 ABV each month

charred? not toasted? (genuinely curious, an AG scotch is on my todo list, right after finishing my thesis and getting a job )

edit - also, whats the rationale on the changing abv? you are diluting, right, not feeding the angels at an accelerated rate?

[CletusDwight]

the price is $5 a kg

That's a good price. in Scotland itself, it's at about £4.15 a kg.
Even given that the pound is seriously low against the dollar making it a relatively cheap buy, that's still about $6.50 US without the shipping costs.

[pigroaster]

kiwidistiller. regarding 63 ABv to 43 ABV. Yes you are cutting down with distilled water each month. This allows the oak to add different taste profiles at different concentrations of alcohol. It will be worth the effort. I also shake, air , deepfreeze and then allow to be at room temperature during the process. The jury is out on weather this helps or not but it duplicates weather over a period of years in an artificial setting in three months. If you wait at l;east 6 months before botttling it will be worth it. The peat taste takes time to set at the correct taste. Time is the secret as well as quality ingredients. Do not over oak. Use time instead. It is in a barrel for a reason at the Scotch distillry. Hope thid helps you. All grain scotch makers are few but info is out there if you look.

[Dnderhead]

if you want to make scotch as a "staple" then I suggest you buy malt by the sack, as you will need it*. buy light base malt and peat from a garden store.
(make sure it is peat) then do your own smoking, that will save 1/2 the price. scotch/Irish both have other variables that other whiskey does not.
that is what makes them different.I make both scotch and Irish.(mainly Irish.) some of the differences are water ,filtering, and aging witch is
a big part.
* one sack=50lb (23kg)= 25gal (94.5l)of 5-6% mash=2.5 gallons( 9.5 L)of 50/60%) after aging dilute to 80pr=about 3- gallon (11-15L)
50lb. is 40$us in a brew store so ,,that is about 3$ US a quart/litre. you can double that if you use peated from a store or buy malt by the pound/kg.

[kiwistiller]

cheers pigroaster, will play around with that.

[CletusDwight]

sparging is not that grate when doing wort for distilling one batch.

I agree with that wholeheartedly.

I found a way round it by accident though. I haven't got a decent mash tun so I cook and mash in a stockpot, which gives me about 8 litres of wort.
I realised I could save the grains till next day and then sparge them, using the sparge water to start the next cook/mash. That way I get to keep the sugars from the sparge without diluting the mash.
I do 6 mashes to fill two 25L fermenters.
Obviously, the first of the 6 is slightly weaker and the final batch gets thrown away unsparged but at the end I'm getting 10%abv, which I'm quite pleased with.
Downside is that it's a bit slow - takes me a week to go through a cycle. But I've got the time

[Dnderhead]

I do similar,, but use the amount of water for the sparg, as I want to cook the next batch with.

[absinthe]

the price is $5 a kg

That's a good price. in Scotland itself, it's at about £4.15 a kg.
Even given that the pound is seriously low against the dollar making it a relatively cheap buy, that's still about $6.50 US without the shipping costs.

its not that cheap i can get peat smoked malt for AUS$4.80 a kg (about £2 a kg?)

[Slow & Steady]

Scribbler, I ferment my Scotch mash on the grains. Many of the Scotch distilleries in Scotland ferment on the grains, however, some do not. Fermenting on the grains helps recover as much of the Peated phenol flavors as possible. I use a stainless Steel Cider press to recover all the liquid from the fermented grains. For the most part the grains exported from Scotland are light to medium peated. So if you are looking to produce an Islay style Scotch you are going to have to get more phenols than what the peated malt can offer. Getting an Islay style distillate is a totally different topic. The Peated Barley exported from Scotland just can't impart that level of phenols. I guess you would have to place a special order to obtain that level of peat.

If your taste goes to the Highland Style Scotch you can get good results from the medium level Peated Malt but you may need to use pure Peated Malt to get the level of flavor you want. I would make a pure batch the first time and blend it with a none peated malt whisky if it seems to strong to your taste after aging on oak.

If you have a lot of scrubbers in your still you may want to remove them to help get as much flavor across as possible. Most of the Scotch Distilleries low wines are around 20% ABV so you can see that they run their setups really hard and fast during stripping. When making your cuts in your spirit run you will need to run into the tails to get the peat flavor across

Good luck to you

S&S

[talon]

I do this for beer, not sure if it helps with distilling, but when I sparg, I run the sparged liquid back through the grain bed until it is clear, it still has color, but all the milky sediment is trapped by the grain, filtering it out. I think it really makes a difference in beer, just thought I'd throw it out. I haven't done any distilling yet still reading up, fermenting on the grain would be a new experence to me.

[Slow & Steady]

I do this for beer, not sure if it helps with distilling, but when I sparg, I run the sparged liquid back through the grain bed until it is clear, it still has color, but all the milky sediment is trapped by the grain, filtering it out. I think it really makes a difference in beer, just thought I'd throw it out. I haven't done any distilling yet still reading up, fermenting on the grain would be a new experence to me.

Yeah, the important thing about beer is the extraction technique. Fermenting on the grains would ruin a beer because tannin levels would be to high. Same problem if you ran the grains through an extraction press to get all the moisture and dissolved sugars into your wort... way to much tannin for a good beer experience. Tannins don't transfer during distillation so the bitter flavor that you get in the mash stays in the set back. Pressing the fermented grains releases more phenols, and they do cross over to your spirit. Hmmmm... Smokey goodness.