YLAY with four and "quick oats"

[john_bud]

Ok I had read the YLAY likes it ground fine and would chew it up leaving little sludge... so I thought to try.

4.4# corn flour
2# wheat flour

6# double or triple run cracked corn (was the plan)
20.0gram YLAY (<-- corrected Typo)

Added the flours and hot water to make 4 gallons and started running the corn in my victoria hand crank mill...

Dang it!

Weevils in the bag of cracked corn. Scratch the cracked corn off the bill! Stirred the flour glop up good, added an airlock and put it in the fermentation box with a heat wrap to hold 90F +/- 2F.

That was yesterday this morning, after checking on it today and seeing it had bubbled up and calmed down, remembered the 2# of quick oats oatmeal. Put that in the bucket and gave it a stir. Within an hour it's bubbling like mad. It had dramatically thinned out overnight before adding the oats, now I'm wondering if I should add more ...corn flour? Wheat flour? Oatmeal?

Suggestions?

[MooseMan]

John you really should have read some more.
200g of YLAY in a 4gal ferment?

[NormandieStill]

I had a similar weevil issue in a bag of oats a while back. Following the consensus here I made weevil soup.

200 gram of YLAY is definitely excessive for 12# of grain. I use 43g for 8kg of grain (which would be a bit over 16# I think). No wonder it took off fast, your lucky the water didn't boil.

[john_bud]

Typo 20.0 gr thanks for pointing that out!

Was planning on 12.4 pounds total or (hits calculator) or 5.6kg.

Times 0.4% or 0.004 is 22gr (range is 0.2% to 0.6%) so just shy of the middle IF the crack corn was used. Which it wasn't due to creepy crawlies in it.

im going to add some more (probably rice? Maybe corn flour) and some water to hit the 5 gal total originally planned.

On edit: I added 3.5 pounds of additional corn flour. Would have been 5 pounds, but it was frothing up as I slowly added. Put in a couple quarts of water too. Once it calms down the remaining 1.5# will be added.

[Chauncey]

Shoulda washed the cracked corn the weevils float. Skim em out and don't worry about em they won't distill over

[MooseMan]

Apologies regarding the addition amount John I assumed you had not done your research on YLAY.

Any critters that make it into the ferment will make great yeast food, so don't throw that grain away.
Just make sure you hit it with really hot water.

[john_bud]

Apologies regarding the addition amount John I assumed you had not done your research on YLAY.

Any critters that make it into the ferment will make great yeast food, so don't throw that grain away.
Just make sure you hit it with really hot water.

No problems, mate! I appreciate the input.

But... eeeww. Lol. Not gonna make intentional weevil stew brew. Yeah, I even know the food i eat isn't free if crawlies! Anyway, it forced an experiment making bourbon flour mash and I like to experiment!

[NormandieStill]

That was my first thought too, and there's a difference between understanding that there are probably weevils inside the grains and actually seeing the wriggly buggers wandering around... but they really represent a tiny proportion of the total volume of flour and you can consider them a nutrient source for the yeast.

Also... you might not want to know this, but yeast is just a useful mould and you're drinking the toxins that it couldn't process. Basically your whisky is just concentrated yeast piss. Next to this... what's a little weevil between friends?

[john_bud]

Well, since I was going to need to grind the corn 2 or 3 times and have to watch the little buggers over and over... I decided that was a "bag of deer corn" and put it in front of a camera!

[NormandieStill]

Fair enough. I have a hammer mill so they disappear down the "drain" with the corn and come out the other side as flour!

[john_bud]

Just FYI, the "deer corn" turned into a dandy buck from right close to the house. So it wasn't wasted!

[EricTheRed]

Next time just leave the weabils in

Tried to find the thread about rats being chucked into rum mashes but failed.

Margaret has a canary if there is weavils and bugs in my mash. I just don't tell her. Else she'd make me sift it all.

[quadra]

[Saltbush Bill]

If you keep the Yellow label at the recommended temp and use the correct ratios of Yellow Label/ Water/ Grain , stir as per instructions for the first few days there is no need to grind to flour.
It will work just fine at a medium to fine grind from my experience, this also makes it easier to remove husks and other rubbish that you don't want at end of fermentation.

what's a little weevil between friends?

Just a bit of extra flavour and nutrients.

[squigglefunk]

If you keep the Yellow label at the recommended temp and use the correct ratios of Yellow Label/ Water/ Grain , stir as per instructions for the first few days there is no need to grind to flour.
It will work just fine at a medium to fine grind from my experience, this also makes it easier to remove husks and other rubbish that you don't want at end of fermentation.

what's a little weevil between friends?

Just a bit of extra flavour and nutrients.

in my experience, if you don't cook the grain (the "no mash" process) it does help to grind as fine as possible. I think the instructions say something to this effect.

If you cook the grains first I don't think it needs much grinding if any.

There's a vid on here somewhere of a process using full corn kernels, steamed and fermented with no grinding. I think they use nuruk or something to that effect, not the magic yellow yeast

[Saltbush Bill]

My experience has been that a fine grind helps , but flour, isn't absolutely necessary. Big difference between fine grind and flour imo.

[Twisted Brick]

My experience has been that a fine grind helps , but flour, isn't absolutely necessary. Big difference between fine grind and flour imo.

Good point. I milled corn a step finer than meal (halfway to flour) and squeezing it through a strainer bag was a nightmare. The grain fines simply passed through the mesh along with the beer. The beer also required extra time to clear. All subsequent batches were ground to a medium meal. Folks stripping on-grain with steam can dismiss this.

[MooseMan]

I very rarely even grind, I just buy flaked grain, steep it in really hot water from the PC while I'm running a strip, then add 10% total liquid volume of hot backset straight after a strip.

I've always had what I would consider full conversion, with good yields, and the grain leftovers are not too fine.

I gravity strain the slop through a hung bag overnight, then if I'm dumping it I'll press to get an extra gallon of wash, if not I'll add water and sugar to start a neutral sugarhead.