Experiment: 100% Munich malt

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Pyruvate
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Joined: Sat Apr 22, 2023 10:04 am

Experiment: 100% Munich malt

Post by Pyruvate »

One of the advantages of the little 1 gallon air still, Is it as easy to do experiments with minimal investment and risk.

My batch of 100% pale ale malt came out really nice, so the obvious next thing to try was 100% Munich malt. And damn I wish it worked, because there's some really nice stuff in there.

Starting late in heads, all the way through the hearts, and even down deep into tails where it started getting pleasant again, there was a wonderful rich malt aroma and flavor. It's really nice, and I'd really like to have a whiskey that has that in it, that strongly.

In various hearts fractions there is also a really nice floral/fruity component, a nice earthy component reminiscent of clean dirt/clean-dried hay/pleasant vegetal stuff reminiscent of green beans. A little something that isn't chocolate, but feels reminiscent of chocolate.

Lots of good stuff, and I really want to like it. But underneath all that throughout the entire hearts portion, there's a subtle almost acrid almost bitter unpleasant note.. It's not ugly like tails, it doesn't have that 'oh god don't put this stuff in your mouth' feel to it. But it isn't pleasant either.

It's subtle enough that I can almost convince myself to ignore it. But I can't, it's just there.

I think this might be lovely blended into other whiskeys at low percentage. And it'll be interesting to see what happens to that unpleasant flavor when it spends some time on wood. If that gets cleaned out on wood, this might make a really nice whiskey after all. But I kind of don't have a lot of hope for that - It's just kind of there across all the fractions.

Because experiments are cheap and easy, I'm going to try a couple batches of pale ale malt, which I really liked as whiskey, but with 5% and then 10% Munich malt, and see if I can get some of that lovely enhanced malt aroma without the almost acrid note floating in there.

And then I'm going to try a couple with different percentages of oats in it, to see for myself about that mouth feel thing people talk about. I may even try a 100% oats whiskey, just to see what it's like.

My idea is to build up to a mash bill to try when I get my bigger still, late this summer.

This is a lot of fun. Even when the experiment doesn't work the way I hoped.
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