Probably a stupid question & I am sure it's been covered somewhere on here before, but due to inept computer "search" skills I can't seem to fins the exact answer I'm after. I either pull up several hundreds results or none !!!!
Anyway, I have decided to advance a little past the UJSM mash & thought I would try a semi cooked, semi sugar wash mixed ferment. I have use the Jack Daniel's grain bill. Pitched it into a large pan with 2 gal of filtered water. I am holding it at a temp of approx. 180 degrees F for 1.5 hours. As I do not have any malted barley i thought I might use a mixture of Beano, ginger root & the inside white part of a banana skin. ( Honest, I have read this on the parent site !! )
I got to thinking that if the enzymes would be enough to convert the starch from my grain then I may not need to add the sugar & therefore have a proper cooked mash.
My question is do you think that 3 Beano tablets, 1/8 tsp of ginger root & some white stuff from a banana skin will be enough to convert the starches in a 5 gallon mash??
Sorry if this has been covered before but I just thought I'd pitch it out there. I'm cooking the mash as I type.
I do not thank "beano" breaks down starch it brakes down indigestible sugars, the rest your in the "gray area" of experimenting.
But I do not thank it will work . even if enzymes in banana/ ginger works you probably need more .it takes 10-20% malt. less enzymes
in those products means you whould need more than that.
I am looking on the label of the Beano bottle & there is Alpha-galactosidase enzyme in it. Weather it's the right thing or even enough, I don't know !!!
I read about the iodine test for the presence of starch, so i ran out just now & bought a bottle of iodine from the pharmacy. I assume that iodine is iodine is iodine. Am I correct ??? Either way I scooped out a sample of my mash in a paper cut & added a few drops of iodine & sure enough it turned blue/black so I guess there is still plenty of starch still present.
Oh well. I guess I'll revert to my original plan of using the grain bill for flavor like UJSM. I'm hoping to get a littler more of a complex "bourbon" taste by doing all this.
Next time I think I'll try malting my own barley. The grain I got came from a health food store so i assume it will sprout so as I can malt it.
olddog wrote:Question from down under, what are "beano's"
I once went searching for beano tabs Old dog and it seems that we don't have them here, but you can get a similar product from your local vet. I didn't pursue the idea.
blanik
Simple potstiller. Slow, single run.
(50 litre, propane heated pot still. Coil in bucket condenser - No thermometer, No carbon) The Reading Lounge AND the Rules We Live By should be compulsory reading
all malted grain has enzymes, just some more than others . that is why barley is chosen. and I hear wheat is ever higher.
it is getting tough to git some grains .I used to git any thing I wanted. I had a offer to buy barley malt by the ton but thought
against it. it mite draw the wrong kind of attention. I thank most grain in a health food is "haled" will work just that you
will be able to see the sprout. corn will work just not as much enzymes but if you use about 1/2 malted corn it will work.
Thanks again for taking the time to help me Dunder!
So are you saying that "health food store" barley will malt or not. I tried to get some rye & barley from the Co op but they didn't have any. ????????? Don't know where the best place would be to buy proper grain. I did get my cracked corn from there though & it seems to work just fine.
The sugar/cooked corn,rye,barley mash that I just made is smelling & tasting pretty good. I put 1 gal of backset in to sour mash it so I guess we'll see what happens in a few days. I'm hoping for good things!
So this morning, only 10 hrs after starting my cooked grain sugar mash it's bubbling away at a rate of approx. 4 bubbles per second !!! At least twice if not 4 times the ferment of my UJSM. Perhaps there was some starch/sugar convertion after all. Why else would there be such an increase in fermentation?
The grain you buy at a health food store has had the "outside" hall removed for grinding into flour. does not heart it for our use.
just different. with "whole" grain the sprout will be under the hall and has to be cut open to be seen. with haled/ sometimes called "berries"
you will see it as a white "dick" which should be about the length of the grain. do not confuse with roots that grow first.
after sprouting you can dry on a window screen / cookie sheet in sun or warm oven, air circulation of course helps.
after drying remove roots/sprouts by placing in cloth bag and beating it agents something. then "winnow" by tossing in a cross draft.
to blow away chaff. (roots can leave bitter taste)
you can also make different colors and flavors (by toasting) but at the expense of enzymes.
So I ran my corn/rye/barley cooked/ sugar mash last night. It turned out some great "corn liquor" but not any closer to a bourbon then my UJSM . I can only assume that I have to progress to a full cooked mash to achieve this. Am I right? I was hoping that cooking the grain would pull more flavors from not only the corn but also the rye & barley. I'm a little disappointed but at the end of the day I do have another 1.5 Lt. of great corn liquor!!!
Thanks also Dunder for your help. I am into my second day of malting my barley & I already have some of the grain with white shoots !!! I'm hoping to do a cooked mash with the Jack Daniel's grain bill to try & produce more of a Bourbon next time. The aging is a whole other "ball of wax" though!!!!
Bet if you dropped in a couple of medium toasted oak sticks, you would be suprised at the amount of rye/barley that comes forward.
It is the very things that we think we know, that keep us from learning what we should know.
Valved Reflux, 3"x54" Bok 'mini', 2 liebig based pots and the 'Blockhead' 60K btu propane heat
Thanks Hawk. I'll give it a try. I ran some UJSM & tried toasted & raw oak (separate batches) & charred maple. It amazed me the different flavors they all had considering they all came out of the same batch of "white dog". None seemed to be very "bourbony" though. I thought it was because it was just a corn grain bill, hence the corn/rye/barley experiment. How the hell do the commercial guys get "that" taste ??? Is it just because it's an "all cooked" mash or is it simply all in the aging or a combination of both ??
Dunder. I have my barley in a closet in the front room. It seems to like what I'm doing as I have barley sprouting things as we speak!!!!
A commercial recipe whould read something like ""70% corn/maze --- 15% rye -----15% barley malt if you use sugar it will distract from flavor.
I'm on another forum, and they laugh at anything made with sugar except rum, they call it. "rumskey" "bourrum"
but I do understand using sugar because of availability/price and ease of use. if have not aged on wood do so, it will add greatly to the taste.
That's kinda what I thought. Hopefully I'll crack the "cooked mash" process soon. I think that, combined with some age experimentation will get me a little closer to what I'm after.
I'm sippin' on some UJSM aged on toasted & raw oak with a little vanilla added & you know, it aint half bad !!!
There are a lot of flavors produced during the aging in barrels that we are not going to get with our method. I don't have the 3 to 10 years to wait for them though. Commercial stuff is blended with several different ages of spirits to get just the right taste. Scotch has to be labeled by the age of the youngest spirit used in the blend.
My oak is from a red wine barrel, and even cutting off the 'used' portion, quite a bit of the wine flavors come out. The last batch I aged was very close to Pendleton Canadian
It is the very things that we think we know, that keep us from learning what we should know.
Valved Reflux, 3"x54" Bok 'mini', 2 liebig based pots and the 'Blockhead' 60K btu propane heat
So all I need to do is get the schematics for one of those "men in black" memory erasing flashy thing, put some UJSM in a barrel, apply the flash memory erasory thing & hay presto, bourbon in 3 to 10 years...... or when ever i find where i hide the barrel of whiskey !!!!
most figure about 30+days per gallon . so a 5 gal us(19L) whould aged about 5 months.........10 gal us 10 moths to a year. bigger barrels
like a full size barrel (40us gal ) whould be 3 years.
That's a great pint of reference Dunder. Thank you !
I got a little scarred when I started to age my UJSM. I think I over did it by putting two 1/2 X 1/2 X 6 inch toasted Oak sticks in a quart jar. It took on colour fairly quickly but got REALLY "toasted Oak" tasting really quickly. I took the toasted sticks out & replaces then with 1 raw Oak stick to try & gave another dimension to the taste. Since then the Oak taste has mellowed some what & taken on the taste of the raw Oak, so I can only guess at what less Oak for a longer period of time may produce !
I have just put half a dozen 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 inch toasted Oak cubes in a quart of my new "Cooked/sugar liquor". I thought I'd try the less Oak for longer approach this time & see what that produces................ IF it lasts that long!!
SO I have malted my barley, dried it & de-sprouted it. I cooked up 2.2Lb of cracked corn & 1Lb of cracked rye for 1 hr 15 mins at approx. 180 degrees f. I then added .75Lb of my malt mixed with a little ginger root & a few Beano tablets (just for good measure) when the mash cooled to 145 degrees. I have let the mash sit for nearly 2 hrs at 145 degrees. I just did an iodine test & it still shows starch present.
Have I just got all this wrong. I have read & researched but it still doesn't seem to be working. An I just stupid ???? It's too much work to malt barley & cut it up by hand ( don't have a grist mill) for this not to work or at least figure out just what I'm doing wrong.
Can anyone help me out again here. I'm a little despondent right now................
Hi Dunder
Thanks for coming to my rescue again
Should I leave it over night at 145 degrees or just turn the stove off & leave it at room temp ??
When I do the iodine test, it isn't "REALLY" black so perhaps I have got some conversion already It kinda tasted a little sweet..... maybe, or it could just be wishful thinking. At least it tastes different than before I pitched in the malt !!! I'll see what tomorrow brings
What I do is mash so I can leave it for a while (usually takes me all day any way) but I cook ,cool, add malt and stir, turn off all heat,
rap in old blanket or something to hold heat, an just leave over night at room temps. (some use water cooler)
Just as a note, 180F is too hot for a mash. To get a good conversion, you're going to want to keep your malted barley (the kind you get from homebrew shops or malt yourself) in the 145-150 range for about an hour or more, until you get your conversion.
When you've reached your conversion and are sparging or rinsing the grains, you go to about 170 degree water. This stops the conversion process.
On the subject of Beano, I've been using it for years in my mashes/washes, beers and wines. I am not a chemist, but I became interested in it after reading a few brewing articles with it. I add about 15 drops to my 5 gal mash and about 10 drops to my fermenting bucket and stir it well. Over the past couple years I've noticed an average of +1% more alcohol content per batch, figuring the same materials. This is with grain based mashes and beer. The few times I did an all sugar wash, I didn't note any difference...so the enzymes may just work with grain.
cheers
~bd~
"If it weren't for the alcohol, beer would be a healthfood."
I cooked my grain at 180 degrees & let it cool to 145 degrees BEFORE adding the malt. I then kept it there for at least a couple of hours. Last night I left it on the stove (with heat turned off) wrapped in a towel & with a heating pad up against the pot inside the towel. I just did the iodine test again but I an now not sure that I have been reading the results correctly. I thought that if you drop the iodine in & the drops turn black the there is still starch present. BUT, if I leave it for a moment the black goes away ?? SO, does this mean I have conversion or not.
Perhaps there was some starch/sugar convertion after all. Why else would there be such an increase in fermentation?
It kinda tasted a little sweet..... maybe, or it could just be wishful thinking. At least it tastes different than before I pitched in the malt !!! I'll see what tomorrow brings
