Unmalted All Rye Whiskey

[OtisT]

Unmalted All Rye Whiskey

Last year I found an absolutely wonderful bottle of all rye whiskey, 100% unmalted rye, aged on toasted American oak and I thought “I can do that.” After a fair amount of reading, I’m ready to make an all rye for the first time. Here I go....
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Mashing (32 gallon ferment)

Ingredients
70 lb Meca Grade Rye, Unmalted. Ground twice at the lowest setting the store grinder would go. ( .15 )
4 oz active yeast
4 oz boiled yeast (nutrient)

+ 10 gallons of boiling water and 70 lb of grain. Grain was still dry on top. Cover and Insulate while I boil more water.

+ 10 gallons of boiling water and mix. Now it’s a heavy slurry. I added 100g of Ferm Solutions AHA-400 Alpha Amylase Enzyme and mixed. Cover and insulate while I boil more water.

+ 10 gallons of boiling water to a total of 32 gallons of ferment then mix. It now has a nice viscosity and it mixed up well. A little foam from mixing process but nothing like what I was expecting. Cover and insulate at 3:30 PM. Mix at 5:00 PM. Temp is 170ish.

6:30 PM add the wort chiller to start cooling. This stuff is so thick the wort chiller is only effective when I’m actively stirring things up. When I let it sit a few minutes, the output temp is not much warmer than the input temp. I have gotten quite the arm and shoulder workout, working the wort chiller up and down in the mash every once in a while.

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10:30 PM and it has cooled to 105 F. Removed the wort chiller. I now have 32 gallons of sticky, gooey mash. I added 35 ml of Ferm Solutions GA-150 Glucoses Amylase Enzyme then covered and insulated the barrel. I let sit overnight.

9 AM and the mash is at 90 F. Iodine tested and I got a complete conversion. Tasted very thick and sweet. SG is 10 50. PH is 7. Still a 100% slime/gooey mash. I put the wort chiller in, gave things a little stir and went away for an hour. I came back to about 10 additional gallons of thick foam on top. Over the next hour, the foam reached the very top (23 gallons of foam) before I added five drops of defaming agent and stirred that into the foam to knock it down a few inches. It was at 85 F so I started preparing to pitch.

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At noon I added four ounces of boiled yeast, 4 oz of rehydrated bakers yeast and I gave it a good mix and covered it. The foam was 4” below the top. I will check every 30 minutes or so for a while to see if the foam gets better or worse with fermentation.

Otis