Yeild from grain with liquid amylase.

[DaveZ]

I recently bought a bottle of liquid amylase to experiment with. I mashed 5kgs of cracked corn with the amylase for an hour or so at 62C after a cook at a higher temp for as long as I was able to stir it. I then fermented the mix using bakers yeast, took a week or so to completely finish. I drained off the liquid, rinsed the grain and added that liquid as well. After distilling through a reflux still I ended up with just a smidge over 1300mls @ 88% ABV temp corrected, that's including fores, heads, tails, the works. I've never played with all grain before, and will probably run a few more trials to see if this liquid amylase is worth using, but I'm wondering if this yield is anywhere in the ballpark or if I'm so far off that I shouldn't bother with it any more?

Cheers,
Dave.

[bellybuster]

how much liquid did you start with. Need all the details to be able to do the math.

[DaveZ]

It was fermented on the grain and the fermenter had about 25 litres total volume in it.

Would it really make any difference wether I had, say, 25L and ended at 10% abv or of I doubled the liquid and got 5%? If the available sugars are fermented then the amount of liquid should only affect the final abv of the wash? Or am I missing something?

[bellybuster]

not sure if the dilution of the enzymes would affect it or not. May just take more time or possibly the opposite?? Sounds like an experiment.

I started playing with enzymes and found it's really hard to tell how effective it is as you cannot know how much of your wort is fermentable so the results are not predictable. The final output of the still is really the only indication of how much success you have.


anyway, you started with 25 litres at 10%, that should yield 2.5l at 100% (not possible of course) lets say for interest 2l. You got 1300 ml at 88% and probably stopped stilling before all the alc was distilled off. I'd say you did fairly well. Others may say that's a low yeild but you did convert with enzymes alone that with my experiences are less than perfect at conversion.
I found I got better results by also adding enzymes to the fermenter. They work slowly at ferment temps but they do still work.


Oh my!!! Off topic but my dog just farted and it brutal!!!! Nose hair burning acrid fumes. I suffer this for you.

[DaveZ]

I don't know if the wash ended at 10% or not, it was just a figure.

What I meant to say is that once the enzymes have done their job you'll end up with X amount of fermentable sugars, if the yeast ferments all those sugars then your yield should be the same no matter what volume you fermented in. The only thing that would change would be the ABV of the wash. I think anyway. I'm just after a comparison of yield from 5 kgs of corn using this method as opposed to, say, using malted grain for the enzyme.