Sooooo....... my last batch I did an experiment with corn meal and wheat flour. I am still waiting for it to finish, but the fermentation kicked off so violently it bubbled up almost 3" and caked the top of the lid, and almost pushed all the liquid out of the bubbler.
I used 7Lb of yellow corn meal, and 3Lb of wheat AP flour, no sugar, in an 8 gal bucket.
Most of the fermenting is probably done with by now, but I am waiting out the full 2 weeks to make sure.
For those of you starting out with YLAY, if you want to de-gas without having as much mess and wasted time... I use this with a drill. Makes life much easier and faster to do the daily baby sitting.
What's the best process with wheat flour? Are folks simply mixing it with warm water, or are you bringing it to gelatinization temp? I have a couple bags of expired flour that I'd love to try this stuff on.
ThomasBrewer wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 4:23 pm
What's the best process with wheat flour? Are folks simply mixing it with warm water, or are you bringing it to gelatinization temp? I have a couple bags of expired flour that I'd love to try this stuff on.
I just dumped around 175F water in the bucket, then added the flour, corn meal, whipped it with the drill, then let it sit around 10 mins. Then topped off with cold water to get the temp down to around 100. tossed the yeast in and done.
I also dont bother rehydrating the yeast. With YLAY it is just an un-needed step, and wastes time that we all dont have enough of.
as a side note... since I use my boiler (still bottom) as the method to heat the water, the whole process from start to finish on this prep was like 30 mins. I have a 8500W coil in the boiler, so it makes pretty quick work of heating water.
I just treated it like anything else "hot" water, definitely not boiling, definitely didn't gelitinize it. I aim for pitching temp after mixing, it may need to set a little while to cool before pitching.
The biggest thing I noticed besides overflowing the container was it settled a bit more than a coarser grinds do I made sure to get it back up in suspension when stirring.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Don't know anything about points/pounds/gallon, sounds confusing.
What prompted me to look at it was when I distilled a ylay rice ferment I based how many jars I would need on what I get from corn/ylay. I had to scramble for more.
I happened to be a Costco today and looked at the label on the rice I used. It gives 35 gm starch for a 45 gram serving. That works out to almost 78% starch.
elbono wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:26 pm
Don't know anything about points/pounds/gallon, sounds confusing.
basically corn and rice are about the same starch potential, I think corn is harder to extract all the starch from so rice will seem to give a "bigger" yield.
but I get a 50# of fine cracked corn for 13 bucks
rice costs me 10 bucks for 20 lbs so the corn might end up being cheaper for me
but in the end I am still not loving the all corn ferment I made from the magic yellow yeast and I doubt I will use it again for that purpose
squigglefunk wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 7:43 am
I hope the rice will be better
The rice makes a very good neutral.
The whiskey was... interesting? Hard to explain -- softer, sweeter mouth-feel? I both oaked & kept some white.
yup, interesting... i also have over a gallon on oak and and about three quarts left of the clear.
my friend who drinks a sample of everything I make says it's his favorite white dog so far... I am not so sure, I think he says that about every new batch lol
Rice is going great, one stripping run down, a few more to go. Cooking it before hand makes it finish fermenting and turn to rice goo in about 4 days. Then I have some corn. Those have both been documented well so I won’t add anything about them.
BUT. what I’m real excited to try is bananas. I did a search and saw a mention early on in the thread about angel bread improver being used for them but no yellow label. If anyone else is interested, I’ll write up my process and the results when I finish up with the rice and corn bags I got.
Big_dog wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 4:37 am
BUT. what I’m real excited to try is bananas. I did a search and saw a mention early on in the thread about angel bread improver being used for them but no yellow label. If anyone else is interested, I’ll write up my process and the results when I finish up with the rice and corn bags I got.
did a batch of 60 lbs of rice, it smells much better coming off the still than the batch I did with corn? Maybe I ran the corn too soon, I let the rice sit for about a week longer in the fermenter. It also got a lacto infection like the corn one, and it had progressed more, completely covering the surface so that also changed the flavor some I'm sure.
I decided to give the corn another go with a twist, I took about 15 gallons of boiling hot rice back set, threw that into a 55 gallon fermenter on top of about 80lbs of fine cracked corn, stirred it up and let it sit overnight, then added warm water until it felt about the right pitching temp (couldn't find my thermometer) by the evening it was bubbling like mad with a strong Co2 smell. the next day I topped off the water to almost the top of the fermenter (about 25 more gallons I'd say) There were some doughballs at first but they broke up nicely when I was adding the final water and stirring.
so what are people doing here with the trub/leftovers of this method?
I'm starting to think that's where the weird flavors are coming from for me.
The beer that I got trying to drain what was left of the "rice" did not smell good at all. I can only guess it's the addition of the mold they use as all the other ingredients are things I've always used for fermenting. It doesn't smell good in the yeast package either lol...
The distillate from the spirit run is much less weird smelling than my all corn run but ... I threw most of what was trapped in the grain/trub away, it smelled terrible.
About all I get left is grain husks and a bit of other rubbish....I've tossed a bit of it into one of my UJSSM ferments.....but am beginning to wonder if what's left is worth the trouble.
I've been taking the leftovers, giving it a good rinse a few times, then dry it in the sun and feed it to the pigs. Not sure if I need to go through all that trouble, I was just worried it might make them sick if I didn't rinse it clean/er
SGB wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 1:03 am
I've been taking the leftovers, giving it a good rinse a few times, then dry it in the sun and feed it to the pigs. Not sure if I need to go through all that trouble, I was just worried it might make them sick if I didn't rinse it clean/er
or drunk.....
pickled pork maybe?
Taking a break while I get a new still completed....
I dump mine on the compost pile, what my stupid dog doesn't eat makes veggies grow. It's hard to tell if she's getting a buzz, she's pretty wacky.
The only time she puked some up was from a really nasty smelling experiment. I think that was over consumption, she chowed down on that batch.
Back in the day, pig slop sat around and smelled like there was fermentation was going on before it made it to the trough. Happy pigs make happy tasting pork.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
I am finally going to make some corn with Angel yellow. What I have come up with what I think is the definitive recipe for 30 L ( A little more than 6 us gal) is 75 grams yeast to 7.5 KG (16.5 lb) corn. 38C water and the rest is pretty clear. I also want to use malted rye and barley to make more of a Rye Whiskey flavor in a future ferment, One thing at a time. I think as long as I stay around the 7.5GK total grain, I should be good. Any comments?
One thing I read somewhere was the funky smell thing that can occur with the cracked corn animal feed. People said to add a teaspoon of citric acid to lower the PH would help to stop or slow down any unwanted growth. I don't know if anyone here has tried that. I think I will.
I am looking forward to trying this out as all my other ferments have been sugar with mashed flaked corn, malted barley and rye,
I think your wasting yeast at that rate .
30L water 75 grams yeast 7.5 kg grain.
The instructions on the packs of yeast I have state.
250-300L water 500grams yeast 100kg grain.
I've never worked the ratios out for 7.5 kg grain.....but have done for 6kg.....that equates to..........
15-18L water 31grams yeast 6 kg of grain.
By my calculations even 12.5 kg of grain only needs 62 grams of yeast.
I'm no mathematician but I'm pretty sure my figures on this are right.
Thanks for verifying that I had my numbers right elbono.
The point I was trying to make is that you don't need to use extra yeast, working at the ratios of water/yeast/ grain suggested by the manufacturer has always worked just fine for me.
Might as well get your moneys worth out of a pack of the stuff by converting as much grain as possible to booze imo.
Thanks everyone for your input. The yeast amount I stated does seem like a lot. Wino's SS a recipe I have used a lot calls for one quarter cup of daddy yeast, that is about 35 grams. to 6 us gals which seemed like a lot the first time I made it but it turns out great for what it is. So I'll dial back the yeast amount as suggested. Thanks again.
Further thoughts. I read on the angel site that 1% yeast to the total grain amount. That s how I came up with the 75 gr to 7.5 kg of grain. I will take the wisdom of experience over the instructions anytime.
Yellow label Angel yeast is nothing like any yeast you would use in a wash like Winos......I doubt there is any point in comparing the amounts used.
Follow what the manufactures say and it will work, go your own road at your own risk.
