White Wheat Whiskey

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White Wheat Whiskey

Post by Twisted Brick »

So I just finished up my first batch of a soft white wheat single malt. While many folks here dismiss white wheat as flavorless, I wanted to report I found nothing bland about it, quite the opposite. Here’s a short summary on the project.

To start, I ordered a sack of organic white wheat and home malted it in three malt styles: pale, amber and caramel. I used the following grain bill in two 12gal mashes:

93% - 19.5lbs pale wheat malt
5%. - 1lb amber wheat malt
2%. - .5lb caramel wheat malt


The wheat malted up nicely and for each mash I made a 3qt starter using just the pale malt (1.030) and each main mash (1.066 -> 1.004 = 7.74) was made using slightly less than 2lbs/gal. For yeast I used S-04 for the first batch and US-05 for the second.

I let each squeezed ferment clear for two weeks and rested the low wines for three in a carboy. For the spirit run I added ¾ gal of reserved ferment to 5gal of low wines. I made fairly wide cuts (for me), going deeper into the tails since they never really got bad, just weak. One goal I think I met was to reduce the overall ABV of my keep (4.8L), which resulted in an average of 70.9ABV.

After 3 months of building this spirit it was satisfying to finally taste it. I didn’t know what to expect, and was frankly dreading the possibility that it would turn out a dull, one-dimensional bore. Surprisingly, the nose has notes of refined sweet grain and a hint of crème brulee. The arrival delivers an explosion of fruit (berries/grapes) on top of several layers of foundational flavors, mostly caramel and puff pastry. The finish tapers off into caramel and baklava. After a slew of tester drams I think the blend of malts has made for the depth of flavors and complexity, especially the caramel malt.

I have no idea how this expression is going to age out (oak sticks in glass) but the plan is to cut back on the char. I had no idea a newmake could produce such heavy fruit right out the spout nor the affect such a tiny amount of adjunct malt can have on the final flavor. I just hope they endure the aging process.

I will definitely be ordering more white wheat ($27/50lb sack) to repeat this and encourage anyone willing to try making specialty malts to give it a try. There aren’t a ton of commercial white wheat whiskeys available, but the real credit for me taking this plunge goes directly to a member who posted somewhere “I just loves me some white wheat whiskey”.

Thank you Prairie Piss.
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Whole pale malt vs milled
Whole pale malt vs milled
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Pale vs amber wheat malt
Pale vs amber wheat malt
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Caramel wheat malt
Caramel wheat malt
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by Stonecutter »

Respect to you Twisted. That’s one hell of a venture. What’s crazy is that I was searching the HD for a wheat recipes today. Post dram thoughts…would you change it up a bit next time? Maybe more Amber less Pale?
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by NormandieStill »

I'm on a wheat enzyme project, but this inspires me to try my hand at malting. I was planning on making a wheaty vodka but I've run the stripping runs pretty far and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out in the spirit run. Do you have notes on how you made your three malts. Is the caramel just a higher drying temperature or do you malt it differently?
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Stonecutter wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:23 pm Respect to you Twisted. That’s one hell of a venture. What’s crazy is that I was searching the HD for a wheat recipes today. Post dram thoughts…would you change it up a bit next time? Maybe more Amber less Pale?
Thanks, Stonecutter. I have only just begun making specialty malts so am just getting my feet wet with their flavor contributions. Swapping out some pale for amber does sound yummy. I think its just gonna take more batches and more testing. Whats nice is that wheat malts very easily.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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NormandieStill wrote: Sat Jun 19, 2021 11:11 pm I'm on a wheat enzyme project, but this inspires me to try my hand at malting. I was planning on making a wheaty vodka but I've run the stripping runs pretty far and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out in the spirit run. Do you have notes on how you made your three malts. Is the caramel just a higher drying temperature or do you malt it differently?
Wheat is one of the easiest grains to malt. Here is a tutorial . There are a few others on HD. This one promotes room temp germination, but (according to Briess) 54-59F is optimum. I steep and aerate at 60F in a spare fridge. It takes longer but greatly reduces the chances of infection and reportedly promotes fuller and deeper enzyme development.

I follow these specialty malting instructions , applying barley time and temps to wheat and rye although each of these grains don't bring a grain husk to the equation. You can find the process for making caramel malt in the column on the right. If you try making it, stewing the grain in a covered shallow pan gives you more control over the internal temp. I would not go more than 2" deep in the grain bed.
Last edited by Twisted Brick on Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by jonnys_spirit »

Wow! This wheat malt sounds very good! I did an all wheat way back and need to revisit with some home malting.

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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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I'm looking forward to seeing what you get into next. :thumbup:
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by NormandieStill »

And there's another rabbit hole. I'm going to do a test batch of pale malt (just a few hundred grams, to see how well my grains malt), but I think I know what project N+2 is going to be.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by Hambone »

I’m looking to do a white wheat ferment for a vodka, maybe I should try just potstilling it first for a whiskey…
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by Deplorable »

My hat's off to you TB. I remember when you bought that wheat. This is going to be a long story line from bag to glass. Make sure you put a pint away in a library of spirits at least.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by Twisted Brick »

Thanks Deplorable. After making a steady stream of of bourbon expressions, this exercise was proof (for me) that without that much more effort one can design/distill a custom whiskey to one's preferred tastes. This one happens to be extremely difficult to stay out of. Better get moving on the sugarhead for this.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Hambone wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 11:58 am I’m looking to do a white wheat ferment for a vodka, maybe I should try just potstilling it first for a whiskey…
Great strategy. If it's not what you were looking for proof it down and reflux it.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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One more version of "bread wines" detected, sub'd :thumbup:

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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Great to hear! I've been wanting to figure out a good wheat recipe, we grow wheat on the farm so I've got decent access to it for a while, already get field corn by the barrel. However we grow mostly red winter wheat, which is supposed to have more of a bite than white, my next mash was going to be a heavy rye and light red wheat mixture, but couldn't source any red wheat, so it's going to be white, which still may shake out okay.

I've done a 50/50 corn/wheat, corn/barley, corn/oat, corn/rye, corn/corn, and aged them all the same, not a drastic flavor difference between the five, but I don't think I've got the nose or palate for dissecting a drink.

Tried an all Oat and an all Barley, but got turned around while straining and mixed the two.

How did you decide the ratio of wheat to use?
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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BlueSasquatch wrote: Tue Jun 22, 2021 4:58 am
How did you decide the ratio of wheat to use?
My early brewing days, reviewing commercial grain bills and savvy HD distillers. First attempt percentages were also just to establish a baseline. Over the 10 days or so since I made it the spirit has started to change and over time I suspect the flavors (especially the fruit) are gonna become muted. The oak might steal some thunder as well. Next batch I might up the percentage of amber malt just because.

I'm totally jealous of the grain resources you have. :thumbup:
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by BlueSasquatch »

The farm is being sold soon, so sadly my free resources will come to an end, going to stock up on a few barrels first. Should've started this hobby earlier.

Did you use enzymes or were there enough present to convert fully? Iodine test?
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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I tend to use my stovetop mashes for starters to gauge the effectiveness of my maltings and this wheat performed as usual. 1lb of finely milled malt mashed in a half gallon of water returned a negative starch test and 1.060, which then gets heated to 170F for sanitation and proofed down to 1.030 for pitching. That said, I still use gluco in all my mashes to work on any unfermentable dextrines that the grain's enzymes can't convert. The gain in sugar isn't significant - its more about not leaving anything behind and the notion of optimizing flavor.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Interesting, so you re-heat the mash once you get a negative starch test, to 170 before cooling/proofing down to pitching temps? And you go from 1.06 to 1.03 for flavor purposes?
For these non-corn batches, I've been heating water to 160, turning it off, adding my grain, stirring for 20 minutes, then letting it sit until it hits 90 and pitching, usually the following morning.

Have that batch of Rye/Wheat within a week or two to cook, I was going to follow suit, except review the procedure for the enzymes I have, I think one of them is a high heat at like 170-80 maybe.

I like the re-heat to 170 for sanitation, I've had some bacteria troubles every 5th mash or so. Figured it was either slow drop to pitch temp, or possible hitchhiker on the grain.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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BlueSasquatch wrote: Tue Jun 22, 2021 1:24 pm Interesting, so you re-heat the [starter] mash once you get a negative starch test, to 170 before cooling/proofing down to pitching temps? And you go from 1.06 to 1.03 for flavor purposes?
Not for flavor. As wonderful and adaptable as yeast are, they cannot discriminate between the mediums they are pitched into. When yeast is exposed to wort, it is subject to osmotic pressure. When introduced into high-gravity worts (>1.06) yeast can suffer hyperosmotic shock, resulting in bursting of the yeast's cell walls (weak to begin with) and critical loss of water. Up to 50% of yeast pitched can die, leaving the wort underpitched.

Pitching into a lower-gravity (1.030-40) wort/starter solves this problem and helps condition the yeast for pitching into the main wash.

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/ ... t-starter/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf ... .tb00162.x
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by BlueSasquatch »

Twisted Brick let me twist your ear for a spell again.

Looking to do a Wheat Whiskey, since my source for Triticale has dried up. I've mostly got the grain bill figured out, looking at;
-Triple Honey Wheat Whiskey
40% Red Wheat Malt
30% White Wheat Malt
20% Gambrinus Honey Malt (Barley)
10% Midnight Wheat Malt

Re-reading your post has me thinking more about swapping the ratios around some, higher White than Red, and for the Honey Malt, perhaps a caramel wheat malt would do a suitable job replacing it, and then it gains the all-wheat title.

Also up in the air on the midnight wheat, heavy roasted malt I've been told is largely for color purposes with beer, very slight flavor, which I imagine would become more slight via distillation.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Twisted Brick wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:28 am

I have only just begun making specialty malts so am just getting my feet wet with their flavor contributions. Swapping out some pale for amber does sound yummy. I think its just gonna take more batches and more testing. Whats nice is that wheat malts very easily.
I for one, offer my services in the taste testing field.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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BlueSasquatch wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:00 am Twisted Brick let me twist your ear for a spell again.

Looking to do a Wheat Whiskey, since my source for Triticale has dried up. I've mostly got the grain bill figured out, looking at;
-Triple Honey Wheat Whiskey
40% Red Wheat Malt
30% White Wheat Malt
20% Gambrinus Honey Malt (Barley)
10% Midnight Wheat Malt

Re-reading your post has me thinking more about swapping the ratios around some, higher White than Red, and for the Honey Malt, perhaps a caramel wheat malt would do a suitable job replacing it, and then it gains the all-wheat title.

Also up in the air on the midnight wheat, heavy roasted malt I've been told is largely for color purposes with beer, very slight flavor, which I imagine would become more slight via distillation.

I wish I had more wheaters under my belt, but here are some thoughts:

First off that grain bill sounds yummy, but I'm not sure about the midnight wheat. The profile you are constructing is of lighter, delicate flavors that would be drowned with a 550*L black malt, usually called for in dark ales/lagers and stouts. The idea of a honey wheat whiskey sounds dangerously delicious and seriously needs to be addressed!

Considering the following, the combinations are endless and the percentages of wheats and honey are all up to you.
AMERICAN HONEY MALT (Briess)
Smooth, clean, honey, sweet bread, biscuit

This is a traditional melanoidin style malt with a complex flavor. This custom‐crafted malt lends sweet bakery flavors that increase in complexity with higher usage rates. With lower inclusion, you can expect subtle honey and bread flavors. At higher usage, expect complex bakery flavors ranging from honey and graham cracker to biscuit and brown sugar.

It can be used in a wide variety of beer styles from light lagers & ales to malt-forward beers like dark lagers, red, and Scottish ales.

Usage Levels / Beer Styles
1-5% To add honey & sweet bread flavors in light beers
5-10% Contributes complex honey, graham cracker & malty flavors in ales & dark beers
10-20% Delivers prominent warming bakery-like flavors such as biscuit, honey & brown sugar
The challenge in deciding on a grain bill is predicting how the spirit will change over time. I guess it just means you'll have to make a bunch of different batches! Just remember that small percentages of adjuncts go a long way.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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BlueSasquatch wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:00 am

Also up in the air on the midnight wheat, heavy roasted malt I've been told is largely for color purposes with beer, very slight flavor, which I imagine would become more slight via distillation.
Don't discount the flavor addition of roasted malts like midnight wheat. It is that roasted malt that gives a stout not only the color but also the roasty and sometimes even acrid flavor. There is a distillery nearby that uses a stout beer base (no hops) and that flavor comes over very strong in the whiskey, it is totally different from a normal grain bill whiskey.

On a beer the roasted malt is rarely more than 5% of the malt bill. So I am sure your suggested 10% will have a significant impact. With that much also remember that you are not getting any fermentable out of roasted malts, so keep that in mind for the gravity calculations
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Twisted Brick wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 10:17 am First off that grain bill sounds yummy, but I'm not sure about the midnight wheat. The profile you are constructing is of lighter, delicate flavors that would be drowned with a 550*L black malt, usually called for in dark ales/lagers and stouts. The idea of a honey wheat whiskey sounds dangerously delicious and seriously needs to be addressed!

Considering the following, the combinations are endless and the percentages of wheats and honey are all up to you.

The challenge in deciding on a grain bill is predicting how the spirit will change over time. I guess it just means you'll have to make a bunch of different batches! Just remember that small percentages of adjuncts go a long way.
Looking over your bill, and then a bit of the Honey Bear Bourbon, I've revised my bill a touch. Torn between a smooth nice white wheat and a more spicy red wheat whiskey, since I recently have become quite the rye fan. Instead of having the two grains close-ish to one another (40/30) why not just make two batches where they are predominately one or the other? It takes about #30-40 of grain to hit the "free shipping" mark anyways.

10 Gallons, 20#
70% White
20% Red
5% Honey
5% Midnight

10 Gallons, 20#
70% Red
20%White
5% Honey
5% Midnight

Gives me two distinctly different wheat whiskeys I assume, while keeping some measure of control between them, I'm still up in the air on Midnight, per your reply and Subbrew, the flavor the midnight imparts may be a tad jarring with the more soft tones. Perhaps just lowering the ratio, 8% Honey and 2% Midnight.

Or perhaps the Red heavy should omit the honey and the white heavy should omit the midnight. This hobby is less like a road with forks and more like an open field.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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I would be really interested in the flavor differences you get between your two proposed grained bills. Subbrew makes a good point saying the midnight wheat, used in a small percentage, might just offer a complementary ‘base’ flavor.

What kinda yeast you plan on using? Aging scheme?
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Twisted Brick wrote: Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:24 am I would be really interested in the flavor differences you get between your two proposed grained bills. Subbrew makes a good point saying the midnight wheat, used in a small percentage, might just offer a complementary ‘base’ flavor.

What kinda yeast you plan on using? Aging scheme?
Right, I was hoping the Midnight would add "subtle tones" so I think dropping it to an 8/2 for Honey/Midnight is a good move.


Well my first dozen batches were DADY but I've picked up two other yeasts that are a step up?

SafSpirit M-1: https://fermentis.com/en/product/safspirit-m-1/
FermSolutions FSI-048: https://ferm-solutions.net/product/fsi-048-whiskey/

I used the 048 on a Rye whiskey, not sure it would have been terribly different than with DADY, but I'm starting to suspect my still, process or mouth has something off about it, I just rarely notice multiple flavors, or "overwhelming" tastes of anything, everything seems muted compared to how others talk about it all.

I suspect for this Wheat Whiskey I'd also use the 048 on both, to keep that variable controlled.

Aging scheme is most likely to be cubes in glass, my 5L barrel was just filled again last week (pulled a gallon+ of honey bear from it, rye aging in it now) and the first/last time I used chips, I found them to all share an odd Oak/Tobacco smell and mild taste to them that I don't care for. However the 2-month cubes I've got going, are superb so far.

Side tangent yet again, the Oak cubes are in 6 jars, I have a Yellow Corn Whiskey and a Red Corn Whiskey aging in 3 v 3 of those jars. The oak in the jars are all medium char but are American, French and Hungarian. So far my favorite is the Red in Hungarian. I am also surprised to notice this morning, that the yellow has the same odd oak/tobacco smell as the chips did I mentioned earlier. When the Yellow v Red was white, I couldn't pick them apart, but aging seems to have set them apart quite well. (I say red/yellow corn whiskey, it had a bill where only the corn color changed, 50% corn, rest was barley, wheat and rye)

So as of right now, I'd be leaning towards ordering more Hungarian Oak, maybe a light char this time, for both.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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Please report back on the yeast performance whichever one you use. I have some M-1 I've never used and looking to try out one of FermSolutions' offerings in the future.

I think your corn whiskey grain bill is close enough to call it a bourbon!
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

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NormandieStill wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 11:51 am And there's another rabbit hole. I'm going to do a test batch of pale malt (just a few hundred grams, to see how well my grains malt), but I think I know what project N+2 is going to be.
Well the grains malted well although I'm going to need to come up with a decent drying solution. My biggest problem is that despite shaking the living sh*t out of the dried grains, I can't get the stalks to come off.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by BlueSasquatch »

Just got around to mashing the wheat this weekend, had another kid, 3D printing Halloween costumes for everyone, been pretty busy, just drinking whats been made already but the colder weather has me wanting to fire up the still again.

75% Red/White
15% White/Red
8% Honey Malt
2% Midnight

5 Gallons of water, strike temp 160, stirred/insulated for 1-2 hours, SG of 1.11 which after adding 5 gallons of cold water, put me at 1.056 and 1.058 for the two batches, which I think is around 75% efficiency.

Iodine test, told me I was good to go, but the SG was only something like 1.041 which has turned me off from starch test in favor of calculating a target SG, first time mashing where I had bothered to do that.

Was a long evening, set them covered, inside overnight, about 8 hours later temps at 78 and 88 for the two batches, tossed in 20grams of M-1 each.

I just cover the two 10-gallon drums with BIAB bag, and use the clamp for the lid, to make sure it's on there well. Fermenting is taking place, can notice from the strong odor as well as noise of bubbles. Was going pretty good Sunday, died down some Monday, probably wait until Friday to check the SG and see if it finished or not. Bit concerned about nutrients and possible lack of Oxygen, I agitated it prior to going to bed, but not prior to pitching the yeast, just alot going on that morning. I need to come up with something to help oxygenate these larger batches. For 5-gal buckets I'd just dump back and forth a few times, but the 10 gallons I'm one bad pour away from a disaster, much harder to lift and pour as reliably as a 5-gallon bucket.

Overall pretty good mash day.
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Re: White Wheat Whiskey

Post by subbrew »

My aeration solution is wrap an aquarium pump in a starsan soaked rag (an inline filter would be better) and run a tube to an airstone. I drop that in for half an hour or so. Have not tried it yet on a thicker mash though, might not work as well there.
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