All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

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Honest_Liberty
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All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

My recipe followed a hybrid of Booner's:

42 lbs feed corn
30 pounds feed oats
9lbs malted rye

Split grains into two 10 gallon HD coolers.
Added 8 gallons 200°F water at 6.85 pH
Added high temp alpha. Once cooled I put in gluco and my grains. All said and done, iodine was good, topped off and added yeast. Took off vigorously with big oat cap. Knocked out down, mixed, all that. Fermented out dry. I took my gravity and it read 1.050 with temperature correction was 1.053.

I had 44 gallons of available 48 gallons total in volume between (2) 24 gallon fermenters.
When I wringed through the mop wringer, I only ended up with 25-28 gallons of wash. They trapped A TON of water!

Now, takeoff on the still was only at 55% with a fully, loosely packed copper scrubbers in 2' column on pot still.

Collection already down below 40% before I collected a gallon, just an hour later.

This is way too much time and effort to get such shit results. I have limited time to make enough volume to get through the season and to build up aging stock, even though I already have a ton. I wanted a full 5 gallons of bourbon aging at 60%.

It appears to me in only going to end up with maybe 1.5 gallons at 60%, if I'm lucky, by the time this is double distilled.

I'm clearly doing something wrong here but I'm not sure what. I'm wondering if I should dump at least half the grains back in the coolers, add boiling water and repeat the process. There's no way this the only alcohol production I'm getting from 80 POUNDS!

unless, and this is definitely possible, that I'm completely off IV my expectations and that's just the way she goes. I just don't remember this small of a return on my time with my last batch of all grain
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Deplorable »

Damn, you left a lot of beer in the grain. You shouldn't lose more than a couple of gallons. How fine is your strainer bag, is it too fine? Think about your processes, and what you can do to improve efficiency. Your abv was pretty low, so the amount of product youre getting is not surpising. Increase your grain ratio to boost your ABV up until your efficiency improves and you are converting more starches. How fine was your grind? were your enzymes fresh or past their prime? It's feed grain so is that contributing to a lower yeild?

My first attempt at a bourbon (SCDs CROW recipe) was 25 gallons on 52.5 pounds of grain, a 9.5% ABV mash. I was able to wring about 23 gallons from the grain. 12 gallons of clear and 11 gallons that was pretty milky. I let it rest to settle out, and racked off about 18 gallons total of nice clear beer, and added all of the thin custard to a single bucket to clear some more. Its been about three weeks since I intially squeezed. Last weekend I ran the 18 gallons of cleared beer and collected 5 gallons of low wines at 30%. The bucket of thin custard is continuing to clear, as the custard settles and it looks like I will get another gallon or so to add to the charge for the spirit run at the end of the month.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

I ended up with 2 gallons at 40% from my first strip.
I'm going to try to upload a photo but they are so big they won't upload
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

I've had the enzymes over a year but the iodine test seemed to tell me the conversion was sufficient.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

image1.jpg
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

image2.jpg
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Expat »

Is this last picture your grind? Doesn't look nearly fine enough, which would explain a low yield.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by hypnopooper »

Not sure if I'll be much help here. I only do all grain mashes and haven't used enzymes since I ran a distillery to make 100% corn wiskey and vodka 6 years ago. However, my experiences when I did use enzymes was to hold the corn to a temp above 180 for 1-2 hours with the HTL in the corn mash. This allows for the corn to convert the starches to dextrins. Then you cool to about 150 and add your amyl GL to convert the dextrins to sugars.

Have you tried contrasting your hydrometer reading to a refractometer? How does the mash taste? It should be very sweet within 10-15 minutes of adding the amyl gl enzymes.

Other ideas might be as follows:
What's the grind on your corn?
How old is corn? Feed store corn is not usually "as efficient" in conversion as Dent corn.
What about your water? Is it well or spring water or is it tap water. Tap water additives may be causing a problem.
Water pH, I use Five Star 5.2 pH stabilizer, 6.85 seems a bit high to me
What's your yeast?

SCD has a great thread on easy large batch mashing here:
https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtop ... 3#p7462525
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

Thanks guys.

That crack that I did was on the corn average 1-2.5mm.
I could grind it but it would take forever. I ran all the grains through the roller grinder twice.

The corn is feed corn and so are the oats.
I started my water at pH 6.85 per booners instructions that that should be sufficient.

I used a combination of distilled water tap water and reverse osmosis water

Hypno I basically followed that setup but then added the grains at 150 with the gluco. My SG read 1.050, corrected to 1.053.

I figured the oats lowered the yield but I was anticipating at least 38 gallons out of this with 44 gallons of volume displacement and 80 lb of grain.

I only collected 27 gallons. So should I just throw it all back in the coolers add boiling water again at 7 pH with high temp alpha and do the whole thing again and see if I can pull out more?
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

So for my first strip of 11 gallons I got 2.2 gallons at 40%

I shut it down when the hydrometer in the parrot read 15%, assuming it was actually 20%.

Now I'm running my second 13 gallon strip, and I have 3 gallons left for my spirit run to add a bit of depth.

I don't know I would be able to squeeze another 10 gallons out of that grain seems pretty dried out to me but it has an intense alcohol smell.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

Deplorable. I'm going to go read through your post about your method. I read it the other day IIRC and I'll have to see what I did wrong.

I thought 7% ABV with the amount and type of grains I had was sufficient, but again, I'm just perplexed at where that 10 gallons went


Then I started thinking what if I put the grains into my bayou classic with the false bottom and just try to sparge with boiling water whatever I can pull out of it say maybe five gallons per 40 lb of grain and just see if I can pull it recirculate it and backwards sparge it to see if I can pull enough to get more I don't know what else to do
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

Pardon the multiple posts here I'm having a stream of consciousness and maybe some guys can pick different things to answer if you're willing:

The grains displaced between a third and one half of the volume in those buckets, so I couldn't possibly have actually had 44 gallons total because a significant portion of those grains took up the volume. I'm missing something here but I don't understand what
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

Expat wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:51 pm Is this last picture your grind? Doesn't look nearly fine enough, which would explain a low yield.
How fine should I go? From what I read I didn't need to go much with the oats because I'd have wringing problems with the mop ringer, and the rye was ground similar with the corn which is what I've always done with my extract brewing partial mashes where I steep the specialty grains. I don't know that my grinder can get it much better than that until I pull out the blender and that just sucks. Same thing if I wanted to bring out the mill. I have an attachment for my KitchenAid and it's just so much grain I'm worried I'm going to wear it out... and it takes forever
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by hypnopooper »

With feed store corn, I mill everything down to a near flour consistency to get to the starches easily. Since I won't be separating the grain from water for distilling, the finer particles are no issue for me. If your dedicated to the all grain route, you may want to look into something like a hammer mil type grinder but, this also creates more issues with particulate that could scorch during distillation if your using an immersion based heating element. Separation then becomes the issue to solve, and at that point, I just don't know if I could be convinced that it's even worth the effort personally. If your interested, I use this grinder below its super efficient, but they seem to not be available anymore at Tractor Supply, might be an issue due to covid:
https://www.amausainc.com/news/new-prod ... in-grinder
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

Here's a photo of my grinder setup. Always two passes, massive a third is in order. It seems to be a decent mix of flour and granules:
image3.jpg
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Twisted Brick »

Honest_Liberty wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:21 pm I ended up with 2 gallons at 40% from my first strip.
I'm going to try to upload a photo but they are so big they won't upload
You're right - that yield is frustrating and unacceptable. I detect several areas where improvement can be made.

1) review the quality of your grains. Not all grain, especially feed quality has the sugar content of brewing malt. Feed grains are notoriously low in starch in favor of proteins, which benefit animals. No use beating yourself up over low yield from sub-optimal grains - they are two different products.

2) Like the others have said, grind your grains to a meal. Commercial distillers have reported a 20% increase in yield merely by grinding their cracked corn to meal. Unless your oat husks ended up 'hollow' and all of the sugars were gelled and converted, you've left a lot of sugars behind.

3) Lastly, at the grain-to-water ratio you ran, you should have converted much more sugar (if it was there to convert in the first place). My bourbons use corn meal and raw rye or wheat and barley. I realize 3gal of 35% ABV low wines from each 11gal strip. A finer grind and longer mash time should net you a higher yield.

On the photos, use the photo editor that came with your computer's OS to reduce the image file size and orient them vertically, not horizontally.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Expat »

Honest_Liberty wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:37 pm Here's a photo of my grinder setup. Always two passes, massive a third is in order. It seems to be a decent mix of flour and granules:

image3.jpg
Looks like a grain roller mill from beer making rather than a grinder, is that correct?

Here is a picture of some of my corn prior to mashing.
IMG_20190615_152015.jpg
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by hypnopooper »

I'm also going to re-emphasize the pH details. Not to take away from Woodshed's recipe, and certainly don't want to get into any arguments with another distiller, but there's a really great article about Mash Chemistry 101 at https://distilling.com/distillermagazin ... istry-101/.

Theres a bit more details on the pH there, but Im also going to post a screen grab with highlighted details that higher pH will likely slow your conversion rate.
Mash pH.jpg
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by dukethebeagle120 »

Need finer crack
I make eveything into a powder
its better to think like a fool but keep your mouth shut,then to open ur mouth and have it confirmed
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

You’re not that far off, Liberty.

Under best circumstances it’s gonna take two 55 gallon ferments to do a 5 gallon barrel.

You have room to improve, but I’m thinking it’s in the 20% range, you’re not gonna find the silver bullet to double your yield.

Good home brew whiskey takes volume and time.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

dukethebeagle120 wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:52 pm Need finer crack
I make eveything into a powder
Then how would I squeeze the grains before strip?
I would imagine that would be awful hell.

Booner's used feed corn as regular cracked corn from the bag and was achieving 9.2% or something per 1.8lbs.

Didn't even mill it finer. I made sure to hit the ph per his instructions. I really, really despise waste. I just added 50lbs sugar and 30 gallons back to the grains for my first attempt at a gumballhead vodka.

I'll squeeze every last damn ounce of water I can, then it's getting tossed down at the cabin for the wildlife.

I'm going back to booners next, small test batch of ten gallons to determine just what the heck I'm doing wrong.

The oats definitely didn't crack good.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by shadylane »

Honest_Liberty
Here's a possible recipe. Using your grain bill.
Mix the 42 pounds of ground corn with 20 gallons of boiling water in insulated 55 gallon barrel.
Wait until the temp has cooled to just under 190f.
Vigorously mix in the HTL and cover the barrel. Let it sit over night.

The next day, add a gallon of backset to lower the pH for the Gluco.
Measure the temp and add 20 gallons of water that's hot or cool enough to get the mash temp 150.
Mix in the Gluco, 30 pounds crushed feed oats and 9lbs malted rye. Stir occasionally .
Give it several hours for conversion, then quickly cool to yeast pitching temp.

I'd recommend a small test batch before going whole hog :wink:
Last edited by shadylane on Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

MichiganCornhusker wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:59 pm You’re not that far off, Liberty.

Under best circumstances it’s gonna take two 55 gallon ferments to do a 5 gallon barrel.

You have room to improve, but I’m thinking it’s in the 20% range, you’re not gonna find the silver bullet to double your yield.

Good home brew whiskey takes volume and time.
Holy crap! Seriously? That much? Damn. I really miscalculated. I ended up with only 4 gallons at 40% but I stripped 25 gallons in two runs from 10:15 fire up to shut down and cleaned up by 5:30. I felt pretty good about that aspect. I'm going to do some more research, ONCE AGAIN... It's never ending. I keep reading and I keep screwing up.

Definitely going to go back and attempt to get better in order to match Booners casual all corn. Then I'll go back to attempting bourbon again. I've got to be able to pull more from this.

The grains displaced 9 gallons per 24 gallons bucket. When I added 15 gallons back out was to the brim and now the damn oat cap is stupid again. I have to pull off a few gallons from each and put in a 5 gallon bucket. It's been an hour and a half and this stuff is going gangbusters! The oat cap blew the lid off the fermenter 3"!

The comedy of errors that has been my short 4 years making spirits never seems to end. I think I have something figured out and then I couldn't be more wrong
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Twisted Brick »

Honest_Liberty wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:26 pm
MichiganCornhusker wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:59 pm You’re not that far off, Liberty.

Under best circumstances it’s gonna take two 55 gallon ferments to do a 5 gallon barrel.
Holy crap! Seriously? That much? Damn. I really miscalculated. I ended up with only 4 gallons at 40% but I stripped 25 gallons in two runs from 10:15 fire up to shut down and cleaned up by 5:30. I felt pretty good about that aspect. I'm going to do some more research, ONCE AGAIN... It's never ending. I keep reading and I keep screwing up.
Dude, you're not screwing up, you're gaining valuable experience as you learn. Case in point: my calculations said 8 x 12 gallon ferments was gonna be enough to fill my 5gal barrel. That's a shit ton of hours invested in mashing and fermenting. 8 strips (down to 10%) yielded 19 gallons, but with cuts, I am a 1/4 gal short. Ferment #9 is clearing in the garage right now. 9 x 12 = 108 for the barrel. 2 x 55 = 110 for the barrel. MCH nailed it.

Now, if your grains don't serve up the amount of sugar you calculate you're gonna need for enough low wines to run, you're gonna need more. I like Shady's advice.

Following Expat. Here's whole home-malted/kilned rye before and after hammer-milling. Smaller grind = bigger yield.
.
Rye malt copy.jpg
.
Milled rye copy.jpg
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by still_stirrin »

Shady gave you a good plan to follow. That’ll improve your extract efficiency. Milling the corn to a coarse corn meal will help gelatinization and the start of your saccarification. Crush the malt using your roller mill, but you’ll need a better grind for the corn, especially unmalted corn.


Go read Shady’s post over and over. The answer is there.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

still_stirrin wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 8:19 pm Shady gave you a good plan to follow. That’ll improve your extract efficiency. Milling the corn to a coarse corn meal will help gelatinization and the start of your saccarification. Crush the malt using your roller mill, but you’ll need a better grind for the corn, especially unmalted corn.


Go read Shady’s post over and over. The answer is there.
ss

Thank you. I will.

Twisted. Wow. I've been totally miscalculating this.
It is a ton of time and grains. I really have a hard time with waste and not realizing potential.
Looks like back to the reading board, again.

Thanks everyone for all the help!
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

shadylane wrote: Thu Feb 11, 2021 7:19 pm Honest_Liberty
Here's a possible recipe. Using your grain bill.
Mix the 42 pounds of ground corn with 20 gallons of boiling water in insulated 55 gallon barrel.
Wait until the temp has cooled to just under 190f.
Vigorously mix in the HTL and cover the barrel. Let it sit over night.

The next day, add a gallon of backset to lower the pH for the Gluco.
Measure the temp and add 20 gallons of water that's hot or cool enough to get the mash temp 150.
Mix in the Gluco, 30 pounds crushed feed oats and 9lbs malted rye. Stir occasionally .
Give it several hours for conversion, then quickly cool to yeast pitching temp.

I'd recommend a small test batch before going whole hog :wink:
I missed this in my reading. I'm going to really digest this. Thank you.

I will be doing a much smaller test batch before another 40+ gallon all grain. For sure
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by shadylane »

Pretty much the only option with corn, is to ferment on the grain.
Corn can be a pain in the ass. Especially if you don't have a steam rig for cooking and distilling.

First step is to convert the starch into dextrin.
A rule of thumb is around 2 pounds of grain per gallon of water.

One option is to pour boiling water on the ground corn, insulate and let time unravel the starch.
And then mix in High temp alpha to liquefy and convert the starch to dextrin.

Another option is to mix High temp alpha in warm water and then mix in the ground corn.
Slowly heat the mash to 190f while stirring. Turn off the heat. Put on the lid and wait for around 2 hours.
This works nice, because it's quicker and the corn never gets thick and wants to scorch. :ewink:

On a side note
The alpha enzymes like a pH of around 5.6 to 6.5
Just by luck grain is slightly acidic and with water mixed in, it's in the pH ballpark.

https://enzymash.biz/download/sebstarhtl.pdf
https://enzymash.biz/download/sebamylgl.pdf

Here's a video by pintoshine

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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Honest_Liberty »

Thanks shady. I'm embarrassed to admit I've watched that video no less than a dozen times. I've currently got the paddle but not the electric drill.

I'm gonna wait to attempt that until I get my brew room done in my basement with NG. The room is perfectly set up to ventilate. I got quoted at $600 to tie into the 1" gas line and run it about 8'. A little expensive, and I could do it myself but I don't want to take the risk. Plus I'm having difficulty finding the right regulator.

But when that's all setup, I'm gonna go that route for sure.
In the mean time I'm going to grab a sack of cracked corn, mill the bejeesus out of it, and see what I can do for 5 gallons. I need to start small and really pay attention.
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Re: All grain woes. Something's gotta give here

Post by Twisted Brick »

HL,

No one responded to your question about separating your spent corn meal from the golden goodness that you will charge your still with. Here's how I do it, and it is old-school, manual labor. 12.5 gallon ferments with 26lbs of corn/rye/barley. Takes me 50min. If I'm drinkin' beer and listenin' to music,
a while longer.

1. Let ferment sit a day or two after the ferment is completed and rack the clear top half into a holding vessel. This time is valuable as it lets the yeast clean up after themselves.
2. Scoop the spent corn granules into a BIAB bag you get from the LHBS and find a method of hand squeezing you find effective. I squeeze over a 14" colander into a 3gal ss pot. I place the squeezed-dry crumbly corn into another pot destined for the compost heap. Some guys like to make a sugarhead out this.
3. I put the squeezed liquid into a conical fermenter to clear (just use a carboy or other large vessel). After 3-4 days the fines/custard will have dropped out, leaving you with clear, golden wash to strip without fear of yeast notes in your spirit later on. Some guys can't taste the yeast so they strip dirty. Only you can tell if its worth extra step and a few days wait.

Squeezing 55 gallons of ferment is gonna challenge your sanity. Committing a mop wringer and bucket will shorten this job and help you from cutting corners which may sacrifice your yield.

Get after it, Tiger!
“Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore, always carry a small snake.”

- W.C. Fields

My EZ Solder Shotgun
My Steam Rig and Manometer
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