What'd ya'll make today?

[masonsjax]

Cooking up a 5 gal batch of Kombucha tea today.
I picked up a few sacks of grain over the weekend, gonna get some bourbon started soon, maybe next week.

[midwest shinner]

Just a follow up on my previous posts, my recipe which I'll call my spring cleaning "whisky". I started with about 3 gals of Popcorn Suttons corn whisky recipe, which I wasn't wowed by, I made a 5 gal leftover recipe with wheat bran, cornmeal, oats, h20, enzymes, and yeast. I ended up running my cm mod on my pot still during the early part of the production run, and pulled off a real clean flavorful liquor. No burn whatsoever, just a slow warmth spreading. Hopefully some time on oak will make er even better. First run in quite a while so I'm a happy camper. My use of the cm mod during what would have been my fores/heads portion seemed to compact those portions compared to not using it, in my taste buds humble opinion. Still feel like a stoked newb almost, just a reminder that I haven't lost what I've not been using...

[aceswired]

Taking a crack at a banana brandy. 7-8 pounds of bananas, ripe, baked at 140 for the morning with a gallon or so water. set aside half a gallon of this, then added brown sugar to make the rest a 5 gallon batch. I'll strip the sugar head and rerun, adding the pure half gallon for the spirit run.

Just experimenting; )

[BTR Kentucky]

Did an all nighter last night, this morning of ujsm with corn and a few oats. I got it cranked up again tonight with ujsm all corn. Still waiting for it to get warmed up to see some action. Going to be another long night. Man this stuff sure is addictive. Cannot wait to see how last nights turned out after a few days I will blend some hearts and rerun the rest

[masonsjax]

Got 10 gallons of a bourbon ferment going today using flaked corn, 6-row, and malted rye. Need to do a couple more soon.

[yakattack]

Started 23 kg of barley malting. Test batch was a success.

[FtW]

Got myself a 10 gallon bourbon barrel, #3 char. Made by East Coast Woodbarrels, looked em up & they seem pretty new, no real reviews to be found.
Haven't filled it with water for swelling & leak testing yet, still have a ways to go for enough bourbon to fill it. Went through 60 lb corn, 20 lb barley, 10 lb oats & 10 lb wheat this weekend to get 2 x 25 gallon ferments, both ending up with an OG around 14 brix (~ 1.055ish).

First barrel, excited to get it filled! Then just have to keep my paws off it...

[MichiganCornhusker]

Lots of progress this weekend.
Pulled a lot whiskey off oak and bottled.
Re-ran some old stuff that I had blended too much tails into, with a bunch of feints that I'd been saving up.
Toasted and charred a whole bunch of new white oak, and some cherry, to get the next wave of whiskeys, already cut and blended, onto wood.
And, then commenced to soaking 50# of corn to start another round of corn malt.
Life is good!

[firewater69]

sounds like an awesome weekend MCH, I brewed a batch today, 40/40/20 two row,cracked corn and malted oats. I pitched the wild yeast starter that I caught in my shed, I brew a lot of beer as well so there's several different yeasties there, along with DADY and bakers. I'm looking forward to seeing what it makes. the starter had a sour smell but didn't taste sour http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =3&t=56303 the ferment smells great the bready smell is back and the airlock is rolling!

[Euphoria]

Ran off 3.75 gallons of 190 Proof yesterday on my 4" flute with 5 plates working. Got to clean up my stuff today, ran late so I just shut it down for the night.

Also "coffee filtered" and bottled up 3 gallons of finished spiced rum that I've been infusing with corene1's spice reduction recipe. Yummy stuff.

[DoubleJ]

Last night I made a 10 gallon batch (2 x 5 gal) of honey shine. I followed the recipe I saw over in the Shared Recipe forum. It was a little too hot to pitch my yeast last night so I did it this morning. I'm not seeing any bubbling through my airlock yet... Hmmm... We'll see how it goes.

[Hillbilly Popstar]

Just wrapped up the spirit run of 4 generations of cornflakes sugar wash.
Ended up with 5.17 gallons of 32%abv low wines and this was my gross take.
[img]http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016041 ... 9ccba9.jpg[/img]

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[BTR Kentucky]

8-9 gallons of low wines and feints. First time and it will not stop. Im at my 23 pint at 158 proof on my pot still. Still have a ways to go. Wondering how it will taste and how much will be hearts.

[aceswired]

8-9 gallons of low wines and feints. First time and it will not stop. Im at my 23 pint at 158 proof on my pot still. Still have a ways to go. Wondering how it will taste and how much will be hearts.

I remember my first feints run. Darn thing just would not stop. I had to shut it down because I ran out of time. That was a similar sized charge and I think I kept close to 3 gallons....

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[BTR Kentucky]

Its crazy. Never thought it would do this much. I am at 27 pint jars at 158 proof. Wondering how long i am will be at this. I know we dont go by the temp gauge but it is at 187*f on my boiler, that is telling me there is still lots to go bc normally on regular runs its way past there with 12 pints. I am wondering how much will be hearts or good drinking? I am also wondering how long it will take to blend all these jars together, The most jars i have ever blended it around 13 or so then its cloudy telling me its tails. So lots of work, but should, fingers cross, be some good shine.

[DoubleJ]

Today I did my second run (first generation) of UJSSM. My yield was surprisingly high, to my untrained eye, that is. For the initial mash/wash, I scaled it up to 7 gallons. And I only did that because I found out the hard way 5 gallons of water, 7 lbs of sugar and 7 lbs of corn don't fit in a 6.5 gallon bucket.... I happened to have a 10 gallon bucket on hand so I just transferred the contents into it and scaled things up accordingly - 7 gallons water, 10 lbs sugar, 10 lbs corn (40% increase across the board)

So on the first run I yielded 1 gallon (4 litres) of low-ish proof shine. I think the first 1 litre jar was 115 proof.

I kept a 2 gallon backset from that first run and added another 5 gallons of water and sugar accordingly.

After running today I yielded 9.5 litres. This time I collected in 500 ml jars, only because I didn't have enough 1 litre jars. The 5th jar proofed out at 134. My last jar was about 50 proof.
Again, I poured off 2 gallons of backset. Now I'm just waiting for things to cool off so I can add the backset to the ferment.

I have a question now. What I do I do on the next run? Do I cut the hearts and add the heads and tails as feints to the next run? Or do I add the hearts as feints and save the heads and tails for a feints only run in the future?

Thanks all.

JJ

[MichiganCornhusker]

Started my first corn field today.
Finished up 50# of corn malt, and took about 50 of the little fellers outside and planted them off my front porch.

[Bigbob]

Made my first run of sweet feed since December! Got just shy of 2 qts of 90 proof. Taking one qt up to the mountains Monday for a work party. I know it's going to be raw but oh well! Second qt is soaking in oak. Finishing the rest off tommorow.

[CR33G3R]

Just got the still set up for a spirit run of 67%corn 18%rye 15% 2 row
Gonna run it first thing in the morn.

[Appalachia-Shiner]

Well, it ain't made the likker yet, but I ground up 2. 6 gallon buckets of corn I got free last fall from a friend that grew over 1000 acres. I got it right out of the sheller wagon, put it in 14 buckets and put the lids back on them. It did NOT mold or have any I'll effects over the winter, and had that great fresh corn smell. I'm gonna malt some of the other buckets soon.

I ground it with a Corona type grinder with the handle removed, and a grade 8 bolt inserted hooked to a half inch drive electric drill. I ground it to a size between corn meal and cracked corn and it went pretty fast.

[Hillbilly Popstar]

25 lbs of sweet feed, 25 lbs of sugar, 20 gal. of water.

It's going down.


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[MichiganCornhusker]

Made a bunch of low wines.
Used my steam stripper setup to strip the last of my sweet potatoes, and also a 100% rye.
I went through almost 60 gallons of fermented goo and ended up with about 5 gallons of low wines of each, without a single worry about scorching!

With the fermenters cleared out, I then started a 100% blackstrap rum, good times.

[Johnny6]

I've got a couple quarts of Jimbo's ginger liquour sitting in the fridge. This is my first time making it. VERY good. I'll definitely make this one again...

[Jimbo]

Glad you like it. Damn stuff is addicting, nice spice kick from the ginger and the sweetness is a good mix. Windy City just sent me a picture of an empty half gallon I gave him. I think that was a hint.

[tinterian]

So I was doing a simple sugar wash recently (I don't normally do sugar washes these days after all the reading I've done here), and when I had gone to run it, I was baffled by a strong taste and smell of caramel in an 85% end product. At the same time, my volumes were way off. My determination after some thought was that while it was fermenting it had gotten quite cold in the room where it sat, and the yeast had crashed mid-ferment, leaving a high gravity of sugar left in the wash unfermented (confirmed). When I put it through the still, the sugar had cooked leaving the wash a brown color, and imparting a great caramel taste in the liquor.

Here's to happy accidents!

[yakattack]

You got very lucky. That could have turned out very badly if your using an electric element make sure to taken it out and inspect to make sure there is no sugar burnt to it. Or it could very well ruin your next run.

Congrats on the happy accident

[tinterian]

That's what I was getting at... It was lucky. I checked it all out after, nothing scorched (I use propane on that still). I'm pretty picky about cleanliness. You could tell when it came out of the still where the flavor came from. The wash started out at 1120 and it got ran at 1060. I repitched after I figured out what went wrong.

[still_stirrin]

...The wash started out at 1120 and it got ran at 1060....

OMG....that's a biggun!

Too bad you didn't use Turbo....

[tinterian]

It was a turbo, but when I use turbo yeast I keep them cool to slow them down. It just got a little "too" cool. Anyway, I don't normally do sugar washes, this was just something that I did because I had it on hand.

[midlife-u-turn]

Finally got my all grain oat Whiskey on some oak and rolled up a batch of Connecticut shade wrapped gars.
Tonight I'm doing up some double maduros and enjoying a splash of all grain 5 grain whiskey.