wasted wash

[mister406]

Hi guys, just wanted to post my adventure tonight with a corn flakes mash. The recipe was easy enough and I neded to make my sacrificial run After all the ingrediants were put into the fomenter with an air lock,it started to bubble in about an hour. after 2 hours it was going crazy.sounded like a machine gun in the air lock, It was bubbling really good when I went to bed. I got up about 6 hours later and it had stopped bubbling. I stirred it up and went to work, When I came home it still was not bubbling. It had the appearance of a cross between pee and puke.The corn flakes were all settled to the bottom and the liquid was fairly clean of anything floating. I decided to cook it just to see what would turn up.I mean it stunk terrible in the fomenter. Any way , the 1st 2 ozs or so were light blue , wich surprised me.I dumped that stuff down the drain and kept collecting.Every so often I would smell the collection jar and it had a slight alcohol smell but a VERY strong yeast smell. It seemed to me that the longer I cooked it , the more it smelled like yeast. I collected about a pint and got a surprise phone call and had to shut down.When I returned home an hour later, the pint jar was slightly cloudy,smells like yeast,and has a blue tinge to it.I,m sure the mash was not done ,but,at that point I knew I was I was going to toss it,because I do not know enough to fix a screwed up mash, that is why I am posting this. What should I have done with that mash when it stalled? All in all ,I got some time in running my still, and learning a decent amount about collecting,temps, water flow in my liebig arm,etc.I tossed the entire batch that was left down the hopper and will try to make a new batch tomorrow, but I was hopeing you guys would have some advice for a beginner with a big thirst .Oh Yeah, I put some in my test tube and the hydrometer read between 25 and 30,so i am assumeing it was about 50 or 60 proof. Is that right?

[Dnderhead]

corn flakes ? just what was this,i don't thank it was a mash as i don't thank you can convert toasted grain.so it probably is sugar head? how much of what?

[Prairiepiss]

And what kind of yeast?

[MuddyDuck]

I am currently running the same sugar head as my first mash-the cornflake recipe of Odin's. I had a similar problem with
stalling out after the first few hours of activity. I ended up noticing my water level was too low in the carboy (dont know what was my original sg was with all the suspended solids). After adding water and re-pitching yeast (I used some bakers yeast that may have been too old so I bought some EC-1118) it seems to be coming back to life, albeit very slowly. Would an off smell indicate an infection in the mash?

[mister406]

I used 1 box crushed corn flakes,1 cup 2 row barley,cooked at 170 for 20 minutes,then 1 and 1/4 cup sugar.Dissolved the sugar,poured into 5 gallon carboy,added 2 heaping tblspns of fleischmans active yeast.,put the air lock on, Like I said, it started within an hour,then it took off. It bubbled very hard for a few hours then stalled.

[lustreking]

It didn't stall, it bubbled for a few hours and then finished. You don't have nearly enough sugar for 5 gallons, and the malted barley addition was probably cooked too warmly for it to convert into fermentable sugars. If you typed your recipe in as prepared, it should only net an SG of around 1.005-1.008 with a potential alcohol of less than 1%.

Try checking out some of the recipes in the Tried and True section.

[Dnderhead]

yep ,sugar head or wash, the amount of sugar determines the amount of alcohol.
but dont git the idea that adding a whole bunch of sugar will give you a whole lot
of alcohol. about 1 lb to 2 lb per gallon at the most. 1 lb per gallon is a good start.
leave the 2 lb per gallon to the more experienced.

[mister406]

Sorry,I forgot to mention that is was a 2 gallon mash or wash,whatever you want to call it.But You may be right about cooking it too hot. The temp was around 180 for most of the time. I guess the redipie was counting on the sugar from the corn flakes and barley in addition to the sugar I added. Does this make sense?

[lustreking]

Even at 2 gallons, you still don't have enough sugar in your wash. The sugar will give you an SG of 1.016, or a potential alcohol of ~1.6%. Heating your barley mash that high probably didn't convert much at all. Even if you did fully convert the malt and corn flakes, the SG would probably be, at most, 1.038.