My first drinkable whiskey

Many like to post about a first successful ferment (or first all grain mash), or first still built/bought or first good run of the still. Tell us about all of these great times here.
Pics are VERY welcome, we drool over pretty copper 8)

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Pyruvate
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My first drinkable whiskey

Post by Pyruvate »

Working with a little air still for now. My first two batches were 100% distillers malt - figuring it would be kind of working with training wheels with all those enzymes - and 80% grain barley, 20% distillers malt. I didn't get any distinctive flavors from either of those, just a kind of generic non-descript grain. And I screwed up the cuts on both of them, so they have enough tails in them they are essentially undrinkably unpleasant.

I saved both of them and the feints, and at some point I'll rerun them together to redo the cuts, even though there's probably not a lot of flavor in there to play with.

But this third batch was 100% pale ale malt, fermented on grain. Stripping runs down to about 10% ABV off the still, 35% ABV low wines. I've learned, the next batch I'm going to go a lot deeper, down to about 25% for the low wines.

Very careful fractions on the spirit run, taking 40 mls at a time, and a lot of careful thought in care and tasting and waiting a while and retaining before I decided where to make my cuts.

And what I kept has been sitting at 121 proof for a few days now. Yesterday and today I took a little bit of it down to 80 proof and tasted it.

And it is really quite nice. I made something interesting and drinkable.

There's a floral note, not quite rose but somewhere in the rose family, and something vaguely tropical fruit, floating around the top. Down a little deeper there's clean dry hay, clean earth, clean horse barn. Sometimes when I swirl it there's a very strong note of kind of generic grain, with hints of malt, but that comes and goes.

This is quite lovely and sippable as white whiskey. I'm thinking I'll put it on oak at about 116 proof, with wood recycled from a 3 liter barrel that I used to make several batches of barrel-aged Manhattan.

I'm quite pleased, and still enjoying the hell out of this.
Last edited by Pyruvate on Fri May 26, 2023 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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acfixer69
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Re: My first drinkable whiskey

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Enjoying it is what it is all about.
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Deplorable
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Re: My first drinkable whiskey

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The sweet reward of hard work and learning...
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malt_lover
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Re: My first drinkable whiskey

Post by malt_lover »

Awesome mate, for me benchmark is will I pay to buy that drink or can I have another one. Welcome to the journey.
Wildcats
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Re: My first drinkable whiskey

Post by Wildcats »

Sounds like you have a winner. Congratulations. That's what this hobby is all about. Have fun and stay safe.
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rubberduck71
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Re: My first drinkable whiskey

Post by rubberduck71 »

I started out with an airstill.

I think 40 mL cuts may be a tad overkill? My preference was for 150 mL since I needed over 100 to float the alcometer in the graduated cylinder.

I got into a rhythm with Odin's rye bread recipe and utilizing a 1.5 technique. Each batch gave me 450-600 mL of hearts, and about the same in feints that were tossed into next spirit run.

YMMV
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