Whisky using the malt bill and yeast of Heady Topper

[hanon]

I'm making a whisky using the malt bill and yeast of the #1 rated beer in the world according to Beer Advocate, which is the definitive crowd-sourced beer rating site. Heady Topper is the best beer I have ever had and I harvested yeast from it. Aside from the massive amount of hops they use, the taste is credited to the mash water (extreme hardness and 5.3 pH), Pearl malt, and Conan yeast.

The above attachment is from a brew sheet for Heady Topper. I've made the beer before and it turned out great, now I'm going to see how it works as a whisky minus the hops. Here is the recipe:

11.25 pounds Pearl Malt
12 oz Caramalt
12 oz White Wheat
8 oz Turbinado Sugar
2 oz Acidulated Malt
4 tsp Gypsum
Heated 7 gallons of water to 158 degrees. Mashed at 150 degrees for 60 minutes.
Cooled to room temp and pitched 250 billion cells of Conan yeast. pH was 5.3 on the dot.

I'm fermenting in my mash tun on the grain and after 36 hours this is still fermenting very hard at 88 degrees. As a beer I normally keep this at 68 degrees, so the ester profile from the yeast will probably be quite different. I may have to try this recipe again and ferment it off the grain at 68 degrees as I would if it was a beer.

[Brutal]

Nice. Subbed.

[SoMo]

If you do it again add the hops, the best commercial I've had came from cooper run distillery it was an extra hopped wheat beer distilled. Freaking good.

[hanon]

I want to try something like Charbay R5 first before I do a hopped whisky. A lot of people on the boards say hop oils are not good for your still.

[SoMo]

Yep, how many have tried it tho? Fores would clean it up but I hear ya.

[hanon]

I'll probably do it at some point unless I try Charbay R5 and it sucks, but I have this batch, another batch or two of peated malt, a batch from a stout I plan to make, and a revolutionary vodka (using something that I imagine has been used to make a vodka, although I've never heard about it) before I get around to distilling a hopped beer.

[hanon]

I finally got around to running this. I ended up with 1 gallon of low wines at 18%. It totally smelled like apricots or plums.

[hanon]

I ended up with 400 ml of hearts at 57% and 900 ml of feints at 34%. I actually used 150% of the mash bill listed from the first post and made a Heady Topper clone, so if I would have done this strictly as a whisky I would have most likely ended up with twice as much. It tastes slightly sweet and very light. I cut the hearts down to 95 proof and am aging it on light toast oak chips. If I do a similar whisky again, I'll probably do it just like a beer, boiling it, hopping it, and fermenting it under 70 degrees off the grain.

[hanon]

I'm generally saving my malt now when I make a beer and trying to squeeze a bit more out of it. I'm starting to build up some feints so I'm going add them on my next spirit run. I have 4 gallons at 1.030 SG that I squeezed out of 16 pounds of barley from my last IPA. I'm fermenting it on the grain in my 8 gallon kettle with Conan yeast at room temperature.

[hanon]

After 4 months on light toast oak chips this seems to be pretty clean. It has a very odd taste from the Conan yeast though that nobody seems to be a fan of. Since doing this, I've been using other yeasts for my left over barley, but they all seem to end up with a slightly sweet taste whereas my peated whiskey doesn't have that at all.

[MitchyBourbon]

How did I miss this thread 4 months ago. Excellent idea.

I think most breweries use forced carbonation to carbonate their beer but if Heady Topper is naturally carbonated it is possible that they add a different yeast to provide carbonation. This could account for the "different" taste you experienced.

[hanon]

Heady Topper is force carbonated and if they bottle conditioned I'm sure they would use Conan. I use Conan when I bottle my clone. Conan is a very definitive yeast and it definitely came through in this spirit. Conan makes awesome IPAs as the apricot taste seems to work well with hops, but I wouldn't use it for any other style of beer. I think something neutral like US-05 would be a much better choice for a whisky, as I've tried quite a few different yeasts with my leftover barley malt and they all seem to have a sweet taste to some extent. I'm going to use bakers yeast next time as it is much faster and I'm hoping it won't give the spirit nearly as much of a sweet taste as all the ale yeasts I have tried.