All Bran Recipe

[John Barleycorn]

I did a 20L ferment with just the bran flakes and sugar. Everything went like clockwork. Finished on the 4th day at about 11%. Stripped 2100 mL before having to quit. Diluted the center 250 mL and let stand. Smells very fruity ... very pleasant ... a bit like pineapples to me, or like a very strong wine. Is this typical?

Thanks rad.
--JB

[Prairiepiss]

The heads always smell a little likea strong apple wine to me? The hearts don't? What kind of still did you use? How did you run it? And how ling did you air it out? Off the still I could see these smells possibly? Thays why I air for 24 to 48 hours. The smells improve and make cuts much easier to make.

[Odin]

+1 Mr. P,

I had the same questions. For me, the notes JB is describing resemble heads ... Shouldn't be possible when it is a small take from the middle.

In a potstill: All Bran will taste like a light to medium flavoured wheat whiskey. Wheat shining thru.

In a fractionating still: will give you a vodka with hardly any taste, but a lot of mouth feel. Grainy mouth feel, I would say.

Never tasted "wine" in my All Bran. I smell what I call "brandywine" in all of my heads fractions though (ethyl acetate?).

Odin.

[John Barleycorn]

What kind of still did you use? How did you run it? And how ling did you air it out?

Drove the pot still as hard and fast as she'd go ... only about 12 hours of air.

Based on the charge I probably had a ways to go yet ... but had to call it quits early.

[rad14701]

What kind of still did you use? How did you run it? And how ling did you air it out?

Drove the pot still as hard and fast as she'd go ... only about 12 hours of air.

Based on the charge I probably had a ways to go yet ... but had to call it quits early.

So you still need to do a spirit run, making proper cuts... Stripping runs are only intended to be used to reduce the volume of low wines for the subsequent spirit run... Proper cuts should remove that fruity headsy smell...

[Prairiepiss]

That mite be your problem. For a spirit run in a lot still you want to run it slow and low. Not hard and fast. By running it hard and fast I would say you smeared the heads throughout your run.

Rad beat me to it.

[John Barleycorn]

So you still need to do a spirit run, making proper cuts... Stripping runs are only intended to be used to reduce the volume of low wines for the subsequent spirit run...

Yep, that's the plan. I have another all bran wash about to finish. I'll strip it & run the lot through the reflux.

I would say you smeared the heads throughout your run.

I'd say you're spot on. It smelled like a Hawaiian pineapple field throughout the run.

Thanks gentlemen,
--JB

[Prairiepiss]

So you were doing a stripping run? I misread your first post. Stripped is a term often used by new members in the wrong context. And you were tasting it so I assumed by stripped you ment distilled. My bad.

Tasting stripped spirits won't give you an accurate view of what's to come. As you have found out. Over time it mite help you. But for now it should just be a reference note.

[Odin]

I remember being in Hungary last summer. Having holidays and rain, I decided to put my small mobile distiller to work there too. Found me some Special K, made a ferment, distilled once without taking cuts. Smelled, took a sip anyhow ... SAKE?!? Really? Looked at the recipe, found that Special K is made from a lot of rice and a bit of wheat. Made another wash, put the result of that together with the low wines mentioned afore and did a spirit run with cuts. All of a sudden I tasted a whiskey in there. WTF?

Yeah, tasting a low wines without cuts will give you like ... no indication to what you will get after a spirit run with good cuts! At least, that was my experience ...

Odin.

[sparky marky]

Decided to fire up the vm for my first all bran spirit run!
added 15 liters of stripped all bran at about 50% to 60 liters of all bran wash that finished a week ago. My aim is a vodka for martinis.
It definately has a taste...even when taken off at 96% it has more flavour than I'm looking for in a vodka, birdwatchers gives me a super clean odourless, flavourless neutral but it's not great as a vodka. we shall see after a bit of airing and a few days. The flavour is on the right track but there might be too much of it, the answer might be for me to strip EVERYTHING before diluting and running through the vm

[Prairiepiss]

I was going to suggest to strip it all then dilute with water for your spirit run. And you mite try using less all bran. I use 1/3 cup per gal. I think Rad has used as little as 1/4 cup.

[sparky marky]

I think thats the plan mr P.
It's definately a super recipe! It just needs to be tweaked to fit its purpose

[100percent]

just got dont mixing up my first batch of this recipe and wow...It is aerating now and its crazy, bubbling like fresh coke. Only modifications i made from recipie on page 1 was i added 1.5 cups of sugar to get my sg up. It was 1.071 and with the added sugar it is 1.086. I am scared to put the lid on my bucket. Probably put a small hole in the lid and put it on. How long should i air this stuff. It says 1 hour on page 1 but in my skimming the thread i see people airing for 12-24hrs.

[Prairiepiss]

What are you airing with? An aquarium pump and air stone? 30 min will bring the oxygen level up to 8 ppm. You won't get much higher then that without using bottled oxygen.

[100percent]

I stirred it vigorously every 10 minutes then at the 1hr mark I dump the wash from one bucket to another then back and I now have it capped. Has a small pin hole that has constant air/co2 coming out. I'll try and check the sg once the activity dies down.

[rad14701]

I stirred it vigorously every 10 minutes then at the 1hr mark I dump the wash from one bucket to another then back and I now have it capped. Has a small pin hole that has constant air/co2 coming out. I'll try and check the sg once the activity dies down.

You might want to go bigger than a pinhole...

[Prairiepiss]

I stirred it vigorously every 10 minutes then at the 1hr mark I dump the wash from one bucket to another then back and I now have it capped. Has a small pin hole that has constant air/co2 coming out. I'll try and check the sg once the activity dies down.

You might want to go bigger than a pinhole...

+1 Was thinking the same thing.

[100percent]

I did go slightly bigger than a pin hole and I made sure there was no pressure building up. The hole I made is about 1/16th I'd say. I can put my finger over it for a few seconds and then slide it off the hole and hear the pressure release. I'm keeping it at 75f hopefully that will keep things going quickly. My gerber wash I kept at 70f and it took 7days. But it turned out great, if this all bran works the same I will probably never do anything other than these recipes. Hey are awesome!!

[LWTCS]

Maybe 3/8....or maybe yer good with a mop.

[100percent]

No issues yet with my small hole.

[Mr.Brown]

i mixed up 3- 5gal batches of this fri afternoon using red star active dry yeast following the recipie as listed on page 5. The OG's were from 1.097 to 1.010. Just took my readings. i'm at .997 to 1.002. thats in 57 hours ! holly crap thats fast. Can't comment on the finnished product yet, but wow, thats a fast ferment

[100percent]

checked mine tonight also and it was at 1.020 in 60hrs, still working though.

[Stilly]

I've been running AB and Gerber on and off for 13 months now. Most of time AB. Reading up on Gerber a month or so ago, I decided to get back to it and try for some very light flavor pot run vodka. I have been using Walmart Wheat Chex and using minimal cereal, a little bit of Wyeth yeast nutrient, a little DAP and Miracle Grow as RAD suggests. Most of the washes have been in the 9-11% SG range and end at .990 or a little lower. They usually finish in 3 to 6 days, I don't use as much yeast as RAD, about 1 to 1.5 TBS per gallon of wash. If they start slow, I give them a 30 second blast of oxygen thru a .5 mm airstone, and that tickles them right up.

I just single ran some in the pot still and after 3 days of airing and diluting down to 40% I have a dead ringer for Pinnacle Vodka, single run on a pot still. Pretty amazing. What a great recipe. I had intended on double or triple running it, but with the reduced cereal I am getting just a bit of wheat flavor which works for me.

Cheers
stilly

[100percent]

ran my first all bran wash today and i was not happy with the results. I followed the recipe on page 1 for this wash and did 4 gallons. ended up with basically heads and tails and nothing that seemed like hearts. I ran it moderately slow for what i have done so far. ( my slowest yet)

I caught 200ml for my foreshots, caught 3 more 200ml(half pint) jars that i was planning on saving as heads. I then switched to my pint jars and planned on catching 6 of these before shutting it down. I planned on this amount because that was roughly the same amount of a 4gallon gerber wash i ran last friday. That run had a huge hearts cut with a very nice flavor and very smooth. On that run i ended up with only 400ml of tails. Back to this all bran wash...the first pint jar i caught has a ton of bite(this is after catching 800ml) ok i figured,,,maybe still some heads, jar 2.....blah, wet dog with oily film on top. I went ahead and caught the rest as planned and i figure ill save it and run it through again. I really dont understand what happened. The wash started at 1.086 and i racked it at 1.002. Plenty of abv, what happened? Hate to bring this newb crap into this thread but i have had 2 successful alcohol runs with less successful fermentations.This was my best wash to date and yielded the worst result. I have another wash going hopefully it will be better.

[LWTCS]

This was my best wash to date and yielded the worst result.

Dilute and run it again

[100percent]

This was my best wash to date and yielded the worst result.

Dilute and run it again

Will do, hopefully it will turn out better than this. Was kinda discouraging, been doing really well with this and was really confident with this one. Ill try it again tomorrow and see what happens.

[rad14701]

Sounds like something didn't go right with the distillation run because I can think of any way you could mess up fermenting the basic All Bran recipe... Dilute and rerun as LWTCS suggested...

[sparky marky]

Decided to fire up the vm for my first all bran spirit run!
added 15 liters of stripped all bran at about 50% to 60 liters of all bran wash that finished a week ago. My aim is a vodka for martinis.
It definately has a taste...even when taken off at 96% it has more flavour than I'm looking for in a vodka, birdwatchers gives me a super clean odourless, flavourless neutral but it's not great as a vodka. we shall see after a bit of airing and a few days. The flavour is on the right track but there might be too much of it, the answer might be for me to strip EVERYTHING before diluting and running through the vm

Update to this: after airing, diluting, bottling and chilling in the fridge I have changed my mind.
I compared this all bran at 40% to birdwatchers at 40%. They were both at about 4 degrees C.
The all bran has a slight grainy smell but is only really noticeable when compared side by side with the bw. The taste is good and is what I was looking for in a vodka but the main difference I could detect was the body. The all bran feels MUCH thicker in the mouth, especially right at the back of the mouth! Iv almost convinced myself that it looks somehow thicker as I swirl it in the glass!
I'm impressed. This is the recipe I will henceforth be using for my column.

[rad14701]

Decided to fire up the vm for my first all bran spirit run!
added 15 liters of stripped all bran at about 50% to 60 liters of all bran wash that finished a week ago. My aim is a vodka for martinis.
It definately has a taste...even when taken off at 96% it has more flavour than I'm looking for in a vodka, birdwatchers gives me a super clean odourless, flavourless neutral but it's not great as a vodka. we shall see after a bit of airing and a few days. The flavour is on the right track but there might be too much of it, the answer might be for me to strip EVERYTHING before diluting and running through the vm

Update to this: after airing, diluting, bottling and chilling in the fridge I have changed my mind.
I compared this all bran at 40% to birdwatchers at 40%. They were both at about 4 degrees C.
The all bran has a slight grainy smell but is only really noticeable when compared side by side with the bw. The taste is good and is what I was looking for in a vodka but the main difference I could detect was the body. The all bran feels MUCH thicker in the mouth, especially right at the back of the mouth! Iv almost convinced myself that it looks somehow thicker as I swirl it in the glass!
I'm impressed. This is the recipe I will henceforth be using for my column.

Those are the biggest differences between All Bran and Birdwatchers, smell and mouth feel... And when pot stilled there is an even bigger difference between the two... Glad you took the time to make a side by side comparison and post your findings...

[astronomical]

I've chosen to use this recipe to stock uop my neutral supply (Used WPOSW last time). I'm aiming for fast ferments (4ish days) so any advice on whats achieved that would be appreciated.

Ill be using Crosby Baker DADY and fermenting at 82F (it seems to like that temp)
Inverting as directed
aiming for 12% batches
using Aldi bran flakes
Using DAP in place of the fertilizer
5G and 7G batches

Will post results if good or bad.

I'll be rereviewing this whole thread, but, if you have any nutrient suggestions (or whatever) I'm all ears. I may try some distillavite and I have some B vitamin complex I could use too.

Excited about this.

Thanks for the TnT Rad!