Rye bread whiskey

[Odin]

I hope it is the tasty oils coming over in abundancy ...

Regards, Odin.

[midwest shinner]

Btw i think the cloudy low wines are due to a homemade gasket made from flour,water,oat bran and olive oil(for better consistancy and easier removal) which i used on the run cause when i was setting up i noticed my regular gasket was badly cracked. So i think the oil from the gasket made it cloudy. No matter, i know the final spirit will be just fine. And as i said the low wines smell delicious. I am coming to find that i am a huge fan of rye, so I'm sure this recipe will be a regular one in my house. Thanks again Odin for the work you put in to get it to this point

[midwest shinner]

So i finally am getting the spirit run done on my rye bread whiskey low wines. About 2.5 gals low wines with about 2 liters of the same wash to proof below 40%abv for the run. I'm about to start collecting and man the smells coming off my alembic are amazing! Some fruity notes almost and obviously very sweet smelling. Too bad the heads give such a headache, cause i find many times they smell quite good coming off the still...Anywho, thanks again Odin for the recipe, rye has become my favorite grain lately, there's just so much to love about it.

[Odin]

Couldn't agree more MW! Just sipped some Rye Brandy (38%, white, 3 grams of sugar added per liter) and love the fruitiness.

Odin.

[midwest shinner]

I don't understand exactly what you mean by rye brandy Odin, but it seems you and i have very similar tastes in likker. too bad we don't live closer to each other so we could actually share some stuff with each other a bit easier...

[Odin]

No problem. What I call my rye brandy is pretty much a white whiskey with a little bit of sugar added. Just to help me thru that ageing time my normal rye gets on JD wood ...

And ... if we want to exchange likkers, let's just PM and do it.

Regards, Odin.

[midwest shinner]

Ahh, I understand what you mean by rye brandy now. I have used a similar method in the past on my unaged likker, but I used a wee bit of glycerin instead of sugar to help smooth out the rough edges. It works extremely well, it only takes a tiny bit of glycerin and it completely gets rid of any harshness, its like magic

[Odin]

Yes! Sugar does the same, but just not so much. But with some ultrasonic ageing ... Great drink.

Odin.

[midwest shinner]

Why has this recipe not made it to the tried and true yet? Its certainly a keeper

[Odin]

What I understood is ... that the rye bread is not readily available in the US. Or at least to a large portion of the distilling community. That's at least what I understood from the management. And a tried and true recipe should consist of ingredients that are available to the majority of our members. Makes sense.

Odin.

[midwest shinner]

I don't know Odin I mean i would be willing to bet that 90% of grocery stores across the U.S have rye bread, it just not likely the real dark pumpernickel. But any area that has health food or specialty grocery stores should have it available. I just think its a great recipe and the flavor that comes over is so different from normal rye grains. Ahh well, thanks for sharing the recipe anyway, I'm a big fan of it, i can't wait to see how it is after aging on some wood. I will likely age some on oak and some on either cherry or apple wood.

[Odin]

Well, if that is the case and you feel it should be tried & true ... you could always put it to the attention of our mods. I think that was the goal I started with as well: to give the forum an easy rye recipe. I mean, there isn't and there should, since rye whiskey is great! Great, and part of (at least) the American whiskey history. Not to say it is having a revival from here to Tokio!

Regards, Odin.

[midwest shinner]

I will send one of the mods a pm about it then

[Cu29]

I made an AG batch with only 10% malted rye (that was given the treatment) and it's really super tasty. You can hardly notice 15% rye malt in my bourbon's, but 10% MRRM (Malliard Reaction Rye Malt) is very tasty. I'd say 10% is still pretty shy. I'll bump that up next time for sure.

Clearly I need to run a full batch (all rye) to catch my barrel of bourbon up to the tasty rye flavors I'm missing.

For the record, I just crushed about 3 kgs of rye malt and cooked it in 6 quarts of water for 6 hours. I had sort of a marbling effect when I used 1kg/quart of water. I was trying for all dark colors with the added water. I'm not sure where the sweet spot is but it was tasty at twice the water. I can't say it was any darker with more water. I might bake the next batch for a while at 350 F to get closer to the rye bread taste (and still cooking for 6 hrs at 195 F).

I'll have to try regular rye as well, but I ended up with a sack of rye malt so there you go.

[midwest shinner]

Congrats on making it into the tried and true again Odin! Hopefully this will help widen the exposure of this recipe to more people. It really is a good one. I'm gonna have to try maillardizing my own grains before using now...

[Odin]

I am flabbergasted!

Thanks for the trust, moderators!

And MW, thanks for giving our mods your opinion.

Odin.

[Barney Fife]

I can give this recipe a well-deserved thumbs-up! A great drink!

I didn't find the correct rye bread in regular grocery stores and supermarkets, but I did find it in high end grocery stores, such as Whole Foods and such. Well worth the search!

[Jimbo]

Thumbs up from me on the recipe too. I didnt make it, but Midwest Mike did and I drank it. Really nice drop. Unique taste and very delicious.

[Halfbaked]

I swore that I would not make any more sugar likkker period when I get back up and running. I think that I am a liar. I like rye whiskey and like that you say it does not have to be oaked to be good. Is everyone feeling like this that has drank it? This will be my first likker back into it because I have nothing (well almost nothing )not that is not store bought and I want one that is good in the white. I live in the country and we do things a little different here. We have bread stores and warehouses for bread. They have lots of stales that you are able to buy that most buy for $20 a truckload to feed their pigs. It fattens them up more than anything you can feed them but not in a good way IMHO. There also is tons of pastries in the truck load. Has anyone ever done a pastry likker?

I am in 100% on this receipt and it will be called Odins Rye.

[Barney Fife]

I found it a bit too raw in the white, but then, I don't typically like -any- whiskey in the white.

And please re-read the early part of the thread; you're not going to use regular North American "rye" bread, which is mostly wheat with just enough rye to call it rye, and it's leavened and baked like normal bread, drastically different than the rye bread Odin specifies(and that has become a real treat for me, also, as I love how this bread feels and tastes!).

The one to use is a specialty bread, here, and I suspect you won't be finding it in the stales section of any warehouse.

[srayner371]

How much yeast would you add to the total 28 liters in the fermentor?

[Barney Fife]

The amount of yeast to use for anything depends simply on how much patience you have. The more yeast you toss, the faster and more vigorously it will take off. You can go overboard with this, and the wash will literally explode on you, leaving a sticky mess all over your fermenting room. The only risk to using too little is that an infection may take over before the yeast can, but that rarely happens.

Many of us are fond of harvesting yeast, also, and end-up with our own specialized strains, but we'll still not use that much of it. If you're after quality, you'll soon learn to avoid using too much yeast and/or "yeast bombs".

[Prole]

I too am intrigued by this thread. My thought is to make my own dark rye from scratch and to grind and throw some dark malted barley and a handful of buckwheat as well. I'll make 2 dense, dark loaves and break them up in a 5 liter sugar wash.

Here's a recipe I came up with for the Rye:
3 cups of water
1 tsp salt
3½ cups of rye flour
½ cup of ground malted barley/buckwheat mix
4 tsp yeast

knead, break into to loaves, let rise and bake
at 350 for about an hour.

Should be interesting -- I'll age it with toasted oak chips as well.

[Odin]

The trick is, Prole, you look into getting the Mailliard reaction. Do not cook/bake your bread. Go for lower temps & longer periods of time, in slightly alkalyne environments. Think under the bp of water and 6 hours in the oven!

Regards, Odin.

[Mr Shine]

Thought I'd give the heads up... I saw the same rye bread that someone posted an image (can't find it now) of in the this when I went to Aldi. If you have an Aldi near you and are still looking for a good "real" rye, it might be worth checking Aldi to see if they have it.

Maybe I'll have my wife take a picture next time she goes.

[Odin]

Aldi is German ... they may have some kind of German rye bread that's dense & dark. Good thinking! Hey, over here in the Netherlands, they even sell Frisian rye bread. A variety I like very much.

Odin.

[midwest shinner]

I can say for sure if you're in the midwest that Trader Joe's has a great rye for this purpose. its a heavy pumpernickel made from mostly rye and molasses. I've used it myself

[Prole]

Around here, homemade may be the best bet. As the Mailliard reaction, it happens during in the baking of the bread even at regular baking temps but I also plan on toasting some buckwheat groats and then boiling them in the wash along with some dark roasted barley I bought at a homebrew supply. I may use less sugar and malted wheat/barley extract as well.

[Odin]

Prole, you need to bake it at lower temps. Below boiling. Normal baking will get you some Maillard, but mostly caramelization. And that does not get you to the flavour profile you are after with this recipe.

Odin.

[Hawkeye3]

I went on a road trip to the not so local Trader Joe's and found the correct bread I hope. Very dark, very dense and 100% rye with molasses etc. it looks like you can see bits of grain in it. this will be my next run when I get back from vaca. in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know.how it works out. Can't wait.