What'd ya'll make today?

[Jimbo]

needs ta git me one 'dem. goddamn tennis,..uh... bourbon elbow tonight. 70 lbs and 28 gallons, one baseball size handful at a time is a LOT of handfuls. Dont think it took me too long tho. Wasnt keeping track. Took a couple breaks too. The hands can squeeze a handfull a lot dryer than squeezing a larger batch in a bag, by hand at least. With some lever arm physics at work in a mop bucket I imagine makes quick work of it.

[Windy City]

Hot Damm Jimbo that's a lot of grain to squeeze by hand
I like that idea from Corene1 I have been thinking of some kind of roller system like the old fashioned washing machines

[midwest shinner]

Great call corene, i may have to invest in one of those. I'm finally putting a spirit run down on about 2.5 gals of rye bread whiskey low wines with about 2 liters or so of wash in there to get it below 40%abv Just about to start pulling the fores... Prolly gonna whip up a nice large batch of rum wash tonite too using some apple and maybe banana rum dunders for some fruity notes.

[midwest shinner]

So i didn't end up making that rum last nite, i was beat by the time i finished my spirit run. So i started it today, ended up being 12 gals of water and dunder. About 15% apple rum dunder and 10% or so banana rum dunder along with panela, molasses and brown sugar. Hopefully it will make a nice, flavorful dark rum. I pitched bakers yeast and the wash should be between 8-9% abv by my calculations. Its fermenting like crazy, it sounds like a big bowl of rice crispies it will be fun to compare this to my 1st gen rum that's been aging a few months now as the recipe is almost exactly the same

[NZChris]

Grapefruit gin

12g Juniper Berries
6g Coriander Seeds
0.3g Cinnamon stick
1.2g Powdered Liquorice root
3g Savory
2 Apricot kernals
1/2 a small grapefruit peel
1/2 a Navel orange peel
0.26g of orris root powder
0.3g nutmeg
______________________
***1 litre of 43% neutral, equivalent***
573ml BW @75%
Add peel
Add mildly crushed botanicals
Macerate up to 24 hours at room temperature
Put into mini-pot
Put the peel in the top
Add 427ml water
Discard 1st 10ml
Collect 400ml, then save feints to add to next gin
Dilute to 45%
__________________________________
I mixed that first 10ml with 10ml of water and it instantly went cloudy. Taste was rubbish and I tossed it.

When diluting, the heart went cloudy well before I reached the 45% I was aiming for.

But.... the 100ml of tails, which were very citrusy, stayed clear when cut to 45%.

I have tried blending the tails back with the heart to clear the heart, but no joy.

It appears that the louche came from the first off the pot, not from the tails which is what I would have expected.

The final product is really tasty and I am not unhappy, but it just ain't clear like the neighbors expect, so I might have to keep it in my super secret special stash that I don't pull out when we shouldn't be having a 'roader'.

[Grappa-Gringo]

just got a chance to drop by and say I put together about a 80/20 ratio of cracked corn and barley....9 pounds of sugar and some water and yeast....got a submersible heater in it an it's bubbling nicely....smells great... Let's see what it turns out like next week after I get off my graveyard shifts

,,,

well...got a few hours this morning and distilled what I had fermenting...(see above quote) Came out at about 44% off a pot still/5 gallon keg. Nice and smooth flavor, hinting on chocolate...weird I know...but smooth. Maybe because it was malted rye???
Any thoughts or ideas???

gg

[Grappa-Gringo]

my original post said barley,.,, it should have ready rye...sorry for the confusion...

[Odin]

Rye UJ. Generation 2 will be distilled tomorrow. After that some more grappa.

Odin.

[Jimbo]

The Rye'd Bourbon grain bed I sugared up after running the bourbon last week is ready. It went from 1.062 to 1.002 in 6 days. Its at 7.8% ABV right now, perfect. Gonna run it later today.

Love this refrac calculator online. Hydrometer has been dusty for a long time. http://www.northernbrewer.com/refractometer-calculator/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[woodshed]

50 gallons of Smoke shine mash. Headed to the fermenter in 45 minutes.

[corene1]

Spent the day running 10 gallons of bourbon mash. Made another 25 gallons of wheat and barley mash with some molasses added. And have 2 big pork butts in the smoker since 6 this morning. A 10 to 12 hour cook and we will be eating pulled pork and roasted corn for dinner. What a good day.

[TDS]

Yesterday, ran 10 gallons gerber on my new still, first real run...
made "quick and dirty" apple pie,
simmer apple juice with cinnamon sticks and nutmeg,
strain, add moonshine.

Chill, drink.

Me and the whole hood drank it and had a fire out back
of my neighbor G's house.
Good Day.

[midwest shinner]

Just finishing stripping 10 gals or so of faux wheat whiskey wash. Its my first time using wheat and though its not a true wheat whiskey it tastes great even straight off the still. Definitely picking up the fruity notes from the wheat, and likely the yeast i pitched contributes to that as well. Collected about 1.5 gals and am gonna be shutting down shortly. I'm happy with it for my first go. Oh yeah, forgot to mention its technically generation 1.5 as i mixed my first gen sweet wash with the second gen before stripping, its just the way things worked out this time.

[Odin]

Just blended some rye & oats pure whiskey back to 60% and set it on JD wood. And some other I diluted to 48% to drink it white. Very tasty!

Two more fermentors with rye & oats, one other with corn flakes.

Odin.

[steve2md]

I'm about an hout into a 13 gallon ujssm wash (2nd gen) with a gallon that I ran of on the 1st gen added in. 1st 1/4 gal was un drinkable heads (after pulling a pint of fores). as soon as it hit 65%, it tasted like liquid gold. Pulled the first qt and put it on some french oak right away. I'll be a little more selective with the rest of the hearts. I'd like a qt or 2 to be drinkable in the white, as I have a state gathering with my MC coming up in 2 weeks. The rest of the hearts will be blended and aged on various wood, then cut for drinking. Feints will be saved for future neutral runs to keep the vodka flowing for folks that don't like "whisky" (what's wrong with those people anyway???)

[midwest shinner]

After running a 1.5 gen stripping run yesterday on some faux wheat whiskey , i started gen 3 today. I removed about 3 wet lbs off the top of the bed and added another 1.25 lbs of wheat bran flakes(crushed ) and 1 lb of sweet corn mashed and added to about 1gal of backset and enough invert sugar and water to about 6.5 gals at 10% abv. So i kept my faux wheat whiskey going but added extra corn on gen 3.

[Odin]

2 times 25 liters of oats & rye in the fermentors. And 40 liters of corn flakes in another.

Regards, Odin.

[Jimbo]

Ran some smoked sugarhead I made from the leftover grains from a batch of AG rye'd bourbon. Macerated peat smoked and cherry smoked barley in the low wines for a week before running the spirit run. I also added a gallon of feints at 70% from an AG smoked whiskey (Bonfire) I ran recently, so the yield here was great. It came out really nice. Aging up now on oak for a few months.

[corene1]

Ran some smoked sugarhead I made from the leftover grains from a batch of AG rye'd bourbon. Macerated peat smoked and cherry smoked barley in the low wines for a week before running the spirit run. I also added a gallon of feints at 70% from an AG smoked whiskey (Bonfire) I ran recently, so the yield here was great. It came out really nice. Aging up now on oak for a few months.

I have a question. How do you tell if a whiskey is going to be good when it is only a couple of days old. I am getting pretty good at doing my cuts but figuring out how something will taste 6 months or longer from now is something I still don't have a handle on. No matter what AG or sugar head I make it always has a little bite right up front then after a few seconds I can get the taste of the blend that I have made. Does that little bite up front go away with time? I was cleaning my shed this weekend while doing a stripping run and came across a partially filled quart jar of whiskey that had gotten set aside for some reason or another so I opened it up and it had the sweetest smell you could imagine. I can only guess it was from one of my first runs and had been out of sight and forgotten about. That gave me some hope that I am doing this right, but when I taste straight out of the condenser or even a couple days later after airing out a bit I wonder if it will be worth saving. What do you look for as far as taste in your fresh whiskey?

[Jimbo]

That's a really good question. Anyone else wanna answer? LOL.

How old was that one you found that tasted so sweet and good? Do you remember how it tasted originally? How it was aged, wood details and for how long? These are the things you need to commit to memory.

You know up front a few different ways. If you did everything right for the yeast, low ABV, low and slow ferment, you can taste the cleanness of the ferment in the mash/wash. You should always taste the wash after ferment, IMO. Low esters, no funk or odd tasting congeners and youre golden. Maybe I learned that making beer, after making LOTS of beer over 20 years you can taste a lot of things, including a yeast that was pissed off. Dont piss off your yeast. I honestly think thats the most important variable here.

Anyway, if you make a careful mash, ferment it carefully and make good cuts (non-greedy) ditching the aldehyde smelling heads and the wet cardboard dog tails into the feints jar. Then age it up nice with toasted and charred oak. Its gonna be amazing in 6+ months. There's a difference between tasting white dog and heads and tails. You know what Im talking about Corene, youve made plenty cuts. And under the white dog, you can taste the character of the grain and ferment. This is half the flavor in whiskey. The other half is the oak. There's nothing like that caramelly vanilla sweetness on top of a solid base. Its like a good frosting on a well made cake.

I think the commercial guys largely make shit, greedy cuts. This is why it has to age so damn long, and why I still taste heads and tails in an 8 year old bourbon and I dont in my 6 month old one.

The 'its nice' comment on my smoked sugarhead was really speaking to the smoke phenols that came through. I think they will do a fine job covering up the sugar part of the ferment, which I can spot quick in a whiskey. Its not terrible (the sugar), but its not my favorite flavor in a whiskey.

[corene1]

That's a really good question. Anyone else wanna answer? LOL.

How old was that one you found that tasted so sweet and good? Do you remember how it tasted originally? How it was aged, wood details and for how long? These are the things you need to commit to memory.

You know up front a few different ways. If you did everything right for the yeast, low ABV, low and slow ferment, you can taste the cleanness of the ferment in the mash/wash. You should always taste the wash after ferment, IMO. Low esters, no funk or odd tasting congeners and youre golden. Maybe I learned that making beer, after making LOTS of beer over 20 years you can taste a lot of things, including a yeast that was pissed off. Dont piss off your yeast. I honestly think thats the most important variable here.

Anyway, if you make a careful mash, ferment it carefully and make good cuts (non-greedy) ditching the aldehyde smelling heads and the wet cardboard dog tails into the feints jar. Then age it up nice with toasted and charred oak. Its gonna be amazing in 6+ months. There's a difference between tasting white dog and heads and tails. You know what Im talking about Corene, youve made plenty cuts. And under the white dog, you can taste the character of the grain and ferment. This is half the flavor in whiskey. The other half is the oak. There's nothing like that caramelly vanilla sweetness on top of a solid base. Its like a good frosting on a well made cake.

I think the commercial guys largely make shit, greedy cuts. This is why it has to age so damn long, and why I still taste heads and tails in an 8 year old bourbon and I dont in my 6 month old one.

The 'its nice' comment on my smoked sugarhead was really speaking to the smoke phenols that came through. I think they will do a fine job covering up the sugar part of the ferment, which I can spot quick in a whiskey. Its not terrible (the sugar), but its not my favorite flavor in a whiskey.

Thanks for the information! I just did the math , I have been on the forum now for 9 months, doesn't seem that long! The jar I found I have to say was from my first attempts at doing all grain barley. My AG ferments seem to always come out around 7 to 8% abv and have a tart but clean taste. I have only 1 batch of oak that I use as I am not familiar enough with the fine points of toasting and charring. I use the center of white oak that I cut a couple of years ago for doing BBQ cut it into 1x1 x3 inch pieces and toasted it at 350 degrees for 4 hours and then did a light char on it. My thought was that if I keep the oak the same the flavor changes has to come from the mash and fermentation process, along with distilling and cuts. It is a standard so to speak, one less variable to deal with till I get more experience under my belt. You are right about the sugar. It has a definite taste that comes through. I have been doing a couple of sugar heads using the spent grains from an all grain mash to make a 2nd wash . It tastes good but I can pick out the slight change that the sugar gives it, it seems to give it just a bit of sharpness. I have an experiment going right now, I saved my grain bed from a bourbon mash and used 20% backset, water and molasses to do a second run. I am curious to see what the flavor change will be over using sugar.

[Samohon]

Got 8 gal of Odins fantastic Special K... recipe fermenting away nicely atm. It makes a great tasting vodka...
I get 10 - 12% abv from the wash so I will strip this batch with my pot still, ferment another, strip that and throw everything through the VM.

Been hitting my vodka stock lately so its running pretty low...

[Jimbo]

Sounds good Samohon. I need me a vodka machine like that. Cant get very neutral at all with my potstill.

Corene, there's one more point I meant to say and forgot. I mentioned making careful non-greedy cuts. But you can overdo that too, we're not making vodka. When Im smelling and tasting my way through the jars Im careful to not lop off the early fruit flavors. This is critical when making apple brandy, where all the fruit is up front in the run, but even with whiskies, the character of the grain, and the fruity esters from the beer yeasts I use (for this reason) come over early. Its a fine line slicing the aldehydes and other crap but not cutting too deep in the flavor. I caution everyone not to rationalize to yourself taking a small fores/heads cut in the interest of flavor or quantity, but too much is bad too. I wish there was a better way to describe this in words, but there's a tipping point where a kind of gagging fores/heads badness to a flavor bomb change happens. Hell, Im doing a terrible job trying to explain this, but cuts have been covered lots here. Im sure there's a better explanation somewhere on how to find that perfect slice between crap and fruit. Same with Tails. When Im working through the jars I always keep the first one that takes the turn. Tails are easier, its pretty distinctive. I keep the first one, because again, we're not making vodka.

When this bit of heads and early fruit + hearts + bit of tails ages on oak, I believe, to my taste, after 6+ months makes a terrific flavorful whiskey, with no heads/tails flavors but lots of other good flavors. For the record I use 88 square inches of oak per gallon, which is a 1x1x5" stick per quart. JD staves I cut up (already toasted) and then I char the 5 uncharred sides. (a whiskey barrel is 52 sq in/ gallon).

[NZChris]

Stripped gen#6 UJSSM yesterday. Held back some wash for todays spirit run.

Also cleaned up some feints for making gin, as my guests have been raiding my gin library.

[shadylane]

Just checked the gravity of a wash I started 3 days ago. It's getting close to 1.03.
Used 25lB cracked corn, 40lB sugar, 40g DAP, 40g Epsom salt then added 10 gallon almost boiling water. Stirred it real good then waited an hour.
Figured any bad yeast or bacteria should be dead or badly hurt by the high temps.
Sprayed cold water into the fermenter till SG was 1.08. Temp was a still a little too high at this point so I had to wait awhile before pitching 50g of rehydrated 1118 yeast.
Been stirring it twice a day with a garden hoe to keep everything from settling to the bottom of the fermenter.
Tried checking the Ph but my papers must be old, Dang things wouldn't change colors.
First time I can recall making a sugar and corn wash, too bad 1/3 of it will be used as a sacrificial run to clean up the mods on my still.
Dadburnit. I forgot the dozen multi vitamin pills I crushed up and added just before pitching the yeast.

[corene1]

Sounds good Samohon. I need me a vodka machine like that. Cant get very neutral at all with my potstill.

Corene, there's one more point I meant to say and forgot. I mentioned making careful non-greedy cuts. But you can overdo that too, we're not making vodka. When Im smelling and tasting my way through the jars Im careful to not lop off the early fruit flavors. This is critical when making apple brandy, where all the fruit is up front in the run, but even with whiskies, the character of the grain, and the fruity esters from the beer yeasts I use (for this reason) come over early. Its a fine line slicing the aldehydes and other crap but not cutting too deep in the flavor. I caution everyone not to rationalize to yourself taking a small fores/heads cut in the interest of flavor or quantity, but too much is bad too. I wish there was a better way to describe this in words, but there's a tipping point where a kind of gagging fores/heads badness to a flavor bomb change happens. Hell, Im doing a terrible job trying to explain this, but cuts have been covered lots here. Im sure there's a better explanation somewhere on how to find that perfect slice between crap and fruit. Same with Tails. When Im working through the jars I always keep the first one that takes the turn. Tails are easier, its pretty distinctive. I keep the first one, because again, we're not making vodka.

When this bit of heads and early fruit + hearts + bit of tails ages on oak, I believe, to my taste, after 6+ months makes a terrific flavorful whiskey, with no heads/tails flavors but lots of other good flavors. For the record I use 88 square inches of oak per gallon, which is a 1x1x5" stick per quart. JD staves I cut up (already toasted) and then I char the 5 uncharred sides. (a whiskey barrel is 52 sq in/ gallon).

Believe it or not I got your point. I too really like the taste of the jar that is right at the turn from hearts to tails. It has just enough of both to set aside as it stands. The rest is blending I always seem to mix a tiny bit of late heads with some early tails then mix with some hearts. If I had to put it into numbers it would look like 10% of late heads and 10 % early tails then 80% hearts per quart. I always have a couple of jars of hearts that I do not mess with, just leave them alone and put on oak. All the rest of it goes into the feints shelf.

[Richard7]

Jimbo and Corene1,
I think I understood Jimbo pretty good as well because I practice. Cuts and smells and all of that.

I run a different still than y'all so my cuts are different. I run a Nixon/Stone offset so my heads/hearts cut comes by real fast. And that is the cut y'all are talking about.
I should probably use smaller jars in that area and be picky about which ones I use. Those fruity notes that Jimbo talked about are great but they are very close to heads on my still.

Also mine does not do a great job in the hearts/tails area they kinda mingle but when I get THAT tails smell I don't add it to my blend. The rest of the hearts may have a "tailsy" hint to it but not enough to offend me. Heck a little tails wont hurt a thing other than taste but them heads will kill your head the next morning!

One of these days I am going to make me a big ole worm and a pot still head (I have the copper but where can I buy the time?) so I can understand both ends of this hobby!

[NZChris]

Long day doing UJSSM spirit run. Airing it overnight and will experiment with some cuts tomorrow.

[Odin]

Tonite I will run a CF wash thru my rig and turn it into a vodka with some mouth feel. I will save the feints and add them to a rye ferment that's almost done. Together with some one liter of feints from a previous rye run. That way I can turn it into a pure whiskey at 96%. Recipe on my new pure approach is all but done. I feel that the only thing I need to look for is a good cut off point toe end hearts. If I do it by smell or taste, it does not get me there. Still smells & tastes good, but when I mix everything it is too hot. I feel the hotness comes from early tails. So ... what I will do is not end the process at 92.5 degrees C in the bottom of the column, but at 92 ...

Always more to discover.

Odin.

[Beerbrewer]

Put through my recycled branflakes whiskey/vodka? That I based on Odin's Cornflake whiskey (except I used Branflakes obviously), got a fair amount, will be making the cuts tomorrow and then do the original branflakes wash sometime next week, bit back to front but I need something to drink soonish since supplies have dwindled since giving a lot away to friends and family.