Honey Bear Bourbon

[Bradster68]

The batch I pitched yeast in this morning was very stinky. I let sit overnight (with everything I make). I gave it a stir and it smelled good again. I pitched my yeast and it's fermenting hard now. That would be my first infection if that's what that was.

[TwoSheds]

The batch I pitched yeast in this morning was very stinky. I let sit overnight (with everything I make). I gave it a stir and it smelled good again. I pitched my yeast and it's fermenting hard now. That would be my first infection if that's what that was.

I had one get stinky overnight like that and did the same. Can't say what happened for sure but it fermented out fine and was my best batch yet! (Though that might be because it had some of my tightest cuts.)

Good luck!

TwoSheds

[Bradster68]

The batch I pitched yeast in this morning was very stinky. I let sit overnight (with everything I make). I gave it a stir and it smelled good again. I pitched my yeast and it's fermenting hard now. That would be my first infection if that's what that was.

I had one get stinky overnight like that and did the same. Can't say what happened for sure but it fermented out fine and was my best batch yet! (Though that might be because it had some of my tightest cuts.)

Good luck!

TwoSheds

It smells yummy bubbling away. I got a few more 15 gallon ferments to collect low wines before combining and stripping. I'll definitely be keeping a close eye now.

[artooks]

I am planning to make this recipe, how long does it take from start to finish to drink this recipe ? I also have a autmated mashing tun to make beer it is called " Speidel Braumeister" is it possible to do it with this ?

[TwoSheds]

I am planning to make this recipe, how long does it take from start to finish to drink this recipe ? I also have a autmated mashing tun to make beer it is called " Speidel Braumeister" is it possible to do it with this ?

My notes show going from 1.065-ish to 1.000-ish in about 10 days. That's with heat to keep fermentation around 85 degrees. I tend to let it round out to the 2 week mark. YMMV. Then it's three strips and a spirit run, so say two days of distilling, but to drink? Well, that's up to you. I find this stuff pleasant white, but not my cup of tea. After 3 months with oak it's great. Six... stellar. Mine is approaching a year now and I'm about due to pull a couple more bottles.

I'm not familiar with that brewing system but imagine it would work as long as it goes high enough to mash in the corn. The brewing we do to distill is generally far simpler than for beer.

Have fun!

TwoSheds

[artooks]

I am planning to make this recipe, how long does it take from start to finish to drink this recipe ? I also have a autmated mashing tun to make beer it is called " Speidel Braumeister" is it possible to do it with this ?

My notes show going from 1.065-ish to 1.000-ish in about 10 days. That's with heat to keep fermentation around 85 degrees. I tend to let it round out to the 2 week mark. YMMV. Then it's three strips and a spirit run, so say two days of distilling, but to drink? Well, that's up to you. I find this stuff pleasant white, but not my cup of tea. After 3 months with oak it's great. Six... stellar. Mine is approaching a year now and I'm about due to pull a couple more bottles.

I'm not familiar with that brewing system but imagine it would work as long as it goes high enough to mash in the corn. The brewing we do to distill is generally far simpler than for beer.

Have fun!

TwoSheds

Thank you very much is there any change that has been made after the original recipe, so I think 6 months is the bare minimum duration for a whiskey

[TwoSheds]

Thank you very much is there any change that has been made after the original recipe, so I think 6 months is the bare minimum duration for a whiskey

I've sized it up for my equipment and have used flaked corn and cornmeal instead of cracked. Both seem to work fine though I think flaked may have a slight advantage in flavor.

I use ferm-pro enzymes and yeast. I'm not an experienced brewer and feel like enzymes offer some insurance on conversion.

Other than that, I ferment and strip on the grain because I can. I've done it before off-grain and it's also good but maybe a little less complex. I don't remember and none of that original batch survived to age.

I'd say start with small batches and see how you like it. The recipe is an excellent sipper as it stands so I'd say start with the original recipe. Your cuts will make a huge difference and there's plenty of advice around about that.

Good luck.

TwoSheds

[Dougmatt]

Hey all. Question for you. I’ve got a group coming over soon that prefers cocktails to straight whiskey. Tried my HBB in an old fashioned and didn’t enjoy it. What cocktails do you all make with HBB?

[Steve Broady]

Hey all. Question for you. I’ve got a group coming over soon that prefers cocktails to straight whiskey. Tried my HBB in an old fashioned and didn’t enjoy it. What cocktails do you all make with HBB?

I’ve not tried HBB yet, but I have noticed that I prefer to tweak my old fashioned recipe to suit different whiskies. My philosophy has always been that a good cocktail should embrace and elevate the base spirit, rather than burying it, and it sounds like something in your old fashioned was competing with the HBB. Too much sugar? Angostura didn’t suit it? What didn’t you like about it, and do you think it’s fixable?

My other go-to whiskey cocktail is a whiskey sour.
2 oz whiskey
1 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 - 1 oz simple syrup, to taste
1 egg white

This is the cocktail that got my whiskey-hating wife to learn to love whiskey. It’s not the most complex cocktail out there, but it is reliable, and a classic for a reason. Leave the egg white out of it scares people, but it does add a nice mouthfeel.

[ShineonCrazyDiamond]

Well, I second the whiskey sour. One of my favorites. If it's cold out, a good Hot Todddy or another winter favorite, spice some apple cider on the stove and spike it with whiskey. Or give my Bootleggers Breakfast a whirl (great for a hard to find morning whiskey cocktail, or breakfast for dinner). I think originally it was for a rye heavy whiskey/bourbon, but any bourbon works.

Bootleggers Breakfast

2 oz Bourbon
1- 2 oz Maple Syrup
6-8 oz orange juice
Fresh ground nutmeg
Dash of cinnamon

Shake the above contents without ice, then with a few ice cubes. Serve over ice. Garnish with a cinnamon stick. Adjust sweetness and orange juice to taste. I don't know if I've ever written it down, so just play with it until you get a good balance of strength, flavor and sweetness. Maybe I'll have a couple tomorrow and actually pay attention to the measurements and post in drink forum.

Any of these cocktails should go well with Honey Bear.

[Deplorable]

That sounds pretty good to me. I like my old fashions made with bourbon barrel maple syrup, and a wide twist of orange zest, but light on the bitters.
Im going to have to try making one of those.

[Dougmatt]

Thanks for both ideas. Will give both a shot.

D

[Bradster68]

35 gallons of HBB. Corn is simmering as I type

[The Booze Pipe]

35 gallons of HBB. Corn is simmering as I type

Fuck ya! saw this and it got ,excited. Just ease on into ‘er and ease on out of ‘er.

[TwoSheds]

35 gallons of HBB. Corn is simmering as I type

Thumbs up! I love doing a good sized batch of this stuff. Don't forget to keep your feints for the next 35 gallon batch!

[Bradster68]

35 gallons of HBB. Corn is simmering as I type

Thumbs up! I love doing a good sized batch of this stuff. Don't forget to keep your feints for the next 35 gallon batch!

U add those feints to the next spirit run?

[Bradster68]

35 gallons of HBB. Corn is simmering as I type

Fuck ya! saw this and it got ,excited. Just ease on into ‘er and ease on out of ‘er.

I can't believe it took me almost 3yrs to finally make this recipe. I can't wait to do a spirit run of this stuff

[TwoSheds]

U add those feints to the next spirit run?

Yup. It'll up your yield, and likely add a little more complexity. I asked at a small distillery if their feints cut got bigger or if they ever had to dump some feints to keep the volume down and they said no, for years they had been recycling all their heads and tails back into the next spirit run with no major change in cuts.

Obviously there is some 'good' alcohol in there due to smearing but I suspect (with no literature to back it up) that the heat and re-heat leads to a level of conversion or estrification of the heads and tails into desirable compounds.

But yes, if you're running serial runs of the same spirit recycle your feints. If you're running different spirits they can be combined instead with sometimes interesting results.

TwoSheds

[Bradster68]

U add those feints to the next spirit run?

Yup. It'll up your yield, and likely add a little more complexity. I asked at a small distillery if their feints cut got bigger or if they ever had to dump some feints to keep the volume down and they said no, for years they had been recycling all their heads and tails back into the next spirit run with no major change in cuts.

Obviously there is some 'good' alcohol in there due to smearing but I suspect (with no literature to back it up) that the heat and re-heat leads to a level of conversion or estrification of the heads and tails into desirable compounds.

But yes, if you're running serial runs of the same spirit recycle your feints. If you're running different spirits they can be combined instead with sometimes interesting results.

TwoSheds

Awsome info TS .
Iv only ever saved em for combining. But I will definitely be adding em back this time . I really do hate wasting .

[The Booze Pipe]

35 gallons of HBB. Corn is simmering as I type

Fuck ya! saw this and it got ,excited. Just ease on into ‘er and ease on out of ‘er.

I can't believe it took me almost 3yrs to finally make this recipe. I can't wait to do a spirit run of this stuff

I haven’t made it yet myself, but I’ve been Eyeing it..life set me back three years in this hobby so I’m playing catch-up with all the things I want to do

[Bradster68]

I haven’t made it yet myself, but I’ve been Eyeing it..life set me back three years in this hobby so I’m playing catch-up with all the things I want to do
[/quote].

Life can get in the way. And absolutely there's so much to try in this hobby.
There's a definite reason this gets the attention it does.
I can't wait to get some on oak

[Bradster68]

A pic of my 35 gallon ferment

[The Booze Pipe]

A pic of my 35 gallon ferment

Looks like you’re using the “easy large batch “ method. I just just did this with 80# cornmeal. I’m finishing the stripping now. Only difficult part is squeezing the grains. I know a lot of people are using the mop wringer. I had some extra buckets to setup an Ass Press. Works pretty well but I need to modify for better results

[Bradster68]

A pic of my 35 gallon ferment

Looks like you’re using the “easy large batch “ method. I just just did this with 80# cornmeal. I’m finishing the stripping now. Only difficult part is squeezing the grains. I know a lot of people are using the mop wringer. I had some extra buckets to setup an Ass Press. Works pretty well but I need to modify for better results

I'm doing large batches but my BOP can only boil 50lbs of corn at a time. Someone (my son) took my bigger one.
I like boiling my corn for 2 hours, and doing my.malts in a separate pot. They sit overnight, next day add cold water to pitching temp. I do plan on using SCCD technique,but need another pot now.
My daughter bought me a mop squeezer for Christmas. Getting more now from my spent grains. The more AGs I get going the less sugar head ill mess with. Nothing like the real deal.
Hopefully we won't get scolded for derailing this thread.

[Dougmatt]

The more AGs I get going the less sugar head ill mess with. Nothing like the real deal.
Hopefully we won't get scolded for derailing this thread.

My HBB is now almost 1.5 years old aging in an M3 badmo.

I did a sugar head off the spent grains which I loved initially. Lots of flavor, and sweetness from memory (I posted it in this thread I believe). That is in an H3 badmo and is 1.25 years old.

Just tasted both…. The AG is something I will drink neat and really enjoy…. No idea what I will do with the sugar head. Feels like I wasted a badmo first fill honestly. Just doesn’t have the mouth feel or richness. Might be that I tasted them side by side, but there’s just no comparison…. I don’t think I will mess with sugar heads anymore. UJSSM doesn’t really do much for me, and this side by side really tells a story.

Everyone is different and no judgement, just sharing my thoughts with these two samples sitting in front of me right now…

[Bradster68]

The more AGs I get going the less sugar head ill mess with. Nothing like the real deal.
Hopefully we won't get scolded for derailing this thread.

My HBB is now almost 1.5 years old aging in an M3 badmo.

I did a sugar head off the spent grains which I loved initially. Lots of flavor, and sweetness from memory (I posted it in this thread I believe). That is in an H3 badmo and is 1.25 years old.

Just tasted both…. The AG is something I will drink neat and really enjoy…. No idea what I will do with the sugar head. Feels like I wasted a badmo first fill honestly. Just doesn’t have the mouth feel or richness. Might be that I tasted them side by side, but there’s just no comparison…. I don’t think I will mess with sugar heads anymore. UJSSM doesn’t really do much for me, and this side by side really tells a story.

Everyone is different and no judgement, just sharing my thoughts with these two samples sitting in front of me right now…

Your absolutely correct. It was a plain old wheated bourbon that has aged 10 months that made me see the difference.
I'm guessing the different wheats and honey malt in the HBB will make it even tastier. And I only drink things on ice,no mix

[NorthWoodsAb]

Honey Bear Bourbon


-SCD

Wow!
That is all I have say about this recipe.

I finally got around to doing my first AG, after nearly 5 years with my still and the hobby making rum. HBB was what I wanted to try. I've had my grains for almost 2 years, gathered them just before getting injured in 22, finally have enough strength to stir a mash.
Honestly I had no idea what to expect. I'm not a Bourbon drinker, had a couple drinks of Gentleman Jack with a work mate a few years ago but prefer Gibsons 12 yr (Canadian Whisky), Jamison, and half a dozen Scotch whisky's.
Being a metric guy I screwed up my calculations and ended up light on my grains, 1.75 #/gal at 1.058 sg.
Running it the smell was totally foreign to me.
So my run has been airing for a couple of days and decided to try it. Very nice, smooth and still green.
Can't wait to see what it will be like after some time on oak.
Thank you SCD for recipe.
I can see myself and a few others getting "Comfortably Numb" on this shit for some time to come.
There will be more of this made in the NW Lab.
Cheers
NW

PS compared to a molasses wash clean up was a breeze after the run.

[Bradster68]

I got almost 9 gallon of low wine to run through. Super pumped
Not what I wanted but hey

[NormandieStill]

Forgot to post this here earlier; I made a lazy batch of this using YLAY. Three ferments (each was 8kg grain / 23L water). I let them ferment for about four months before I finally got around to stripping them (life y'know?). I siphoned the clear off into fresh buckets and combined the slurry. I stripped the slurry in two steam runs (I think it was only 2 runs) and the clear in another 2 direct-fired runs. This netted me around about 33 litres of pretty cloudy low wines at 25%. I put 28 litres of them back into the still (ran out of room) and ran them slowly. This got me about 9 litres of spirit of which I kept 3.2 litres as hearts. The first two jars (800ml) went into the firelighter pot and the rest is in a HBB feints jar for the next run (Got enough grain to probably another 4 complete batches which should keep me in HBB for a good while. Of that 3.2 litres, about 3 litres went on charred, med toasted french oak, and the remainder was proofed down white.

Interestingly I've still got a little drop of the white left from my first batch of this. There is no comparison, my whisky blending skills have vastly improved in the last few years!

So taste... White, this is an absolute flavour bomb. I was getting grainyness almost from the start of the hearts cut and that just keeps going to the end. There's a sweetness throughout as well. I've not filtered for oils at any stage, and the mouthfeel is off-the-scale. The white is clearly new make and doesn't have the rounding over of brown spirits, but damn! I'm still using Melanoidin malt rather than Honey malt (because you just can't get it here) but that malty, biscuity flavour is there. I can't wait to see what this does with the wood.

The YLAY approach is dead easy, and I can easily see myself building up an HBB solera using this method. In about one-and-a-half hours I can have three buckets filled and pitched. If I can sort out the temperature control I can even potentially run the equivalent volume in a HDPE barrel outside.

So thanks (yet again) SoCD. It's early afternoon here, but I'll raise a glass to you this evening!

[Dougmatt]

Forgot to post this here earlier; I made a lazy batch of this using YLAY. Three ferments (each was 8kg grain / 23L water). I let them ferment for about four months before I finally got around to stripping them (life y'know?). I siphoned the clear off into fresh buckets and combined the slurry. I stripped the slurry in two steam runs (I think it was only 2 runs) and the clear in another 2 direct-fired runs. This netted me around about 33 litres of pretty cloudy low wines at 25%. I put 28 litres of them back into the still (ran out of room) and ran them slowly. This got me about 9 litres of spirit of which I kept 3.2 litres as hearts. The first two jars (800ml) went into the firelighter pot and the rest is in a HBB feints jar for the next run (Got enough grain to probably another 4 complete batches which should keep me in HBB for a good while. Of that 3.2 litres, about 3 litres went on charred, med toasted french oak, and the remainder was proofed down white.

Interestingly I've still got a little drop of the white left from my first batch of this. There is no comparison, my whisky blending skills have vastly improved in the last few years!

So taste... White, this is an absolute flavour bomb. I was getting grainyness almost from the start of the hearts cut and that just keeps going to the end. There's a sweetness throughout as well. I've not filtered for oils at any stage, and the mouthfeel is off-the-scale. The white is clearly new make and doesn't have the rounding over of brown spirits, but damn! I'm still using Melanoidin malt rather than Honey malt (because you just can't get it here) but that malty, biscuity flavour is there. I can't wait to see what this does with the wood.

The YLAY approach is dead easy, and I can easily see myself building up an HBB solera using this method. In about one-and-a-half hours I can have three buckets filled and pitched. If I can sort out the temperature control I can even potentially run the equivalent volume in a HDPE barrel outside.

So thanks (yet again) SoCD. It's early afternoon here, but I'll raise a glass to you this evening!

Would really love to hear your impression of ylay versus traditionally mash. I’ve heard so many mixed stories of either YlAY is so easy to “it doesn’t taste right”. Frankly if it tastes “as good” it would change my life . Planning a side by side test soon myself but would enjoy opinions ahead of that.