Home Distiller

Water for the foreseeable future, and lots of it. I got some discouraging news on a recent full blood panel. So, I am punishing my liver, and going on a diet to lose the 35 pounds I found after losing it two years ago. An opportunity to let things continue to age while I keep making more.
 

OtisT wrote: ↑Fri Feb 02, 2024 3:55 pm Last night I enjoyed some all rye whiskey aged 20 months (so far) on toasted Oregon oak. I have two batches, one made from cleared ferment while the other was made from the cloudy, settled, ferment. I refer to the latter batch as my dirty rye. Drinking it straight up. Both very yummy.

Right now I am proofing down for tonight some of the same two batches (clear and dirty) that are aging on toasted American white oak. Also 20 months so far.

I’m just taking enough now for a few glasses of each. I intend to let most of these batches continue aging until our next PWN get together, when I will have a chance to share with some distilling friends.

I really enjoyed both of those Rye Whiskies Otis, and the differences between the two were distinct, and I can only say that the dirty lasted a little longer than the cleared, so I guess that means the cleared was my preferred. and speaking of getting back together, I need to go bump that thread so we can start thinking about the next visit.

I had some of my white dawg, what I call chicken proof, with cranberry juice yesterday.
That is elite.

SteadyStills wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 1:44 pm Make it a round of boilermakers.

Or, as George Thorogood said, make it one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer!

I'm drinking 2-1/2 year old whiskey made from LME and aged with toasted oak.
Thought it was all gone but I found a quart that got pushed to the back of the shelf.
This is some good stuff right here.  

I’m sipping year-old North Carolina Bourbon. Jeez it’s good. I still can’t get over how nice and smooth and rich and tasty it is. Love this hobby.

HBB after a year in 5 gallon barrel at 62% and another year in carboy with sticks at 54%.
Not too shabby

8 month old Frankenstein, corn rye honey malt. I threw these together because I'm not a beer maker and had no idea what it would taste like.
It's actually not bad.
But...I'm a juicepatch so you never know.

some 3 month rapid aged corn, barley, and sugar.

1.5 year old Panela Rum aged in M0 badmo. Starting to come into its own now. The badmo is still mellowing and getting a nice vanilla and caramel with hint of citrus nose and soft supple mouth feel. Pulled off 2 bottles and solera’d over to replaced it from my 5G (notes on that below)

Tasted the badmo next to some younger (about 1.25 year old) of the same recipe in a second fill 5 gallon bourbon barrel done at heavy toast and char. The 5G is approaching “too oaked” with heavy char and oak flavors coming through.

Going to wait out the 5G and see if it turns a corner and comes back. If not, will blend it into some new make and hope for the best. Might have to rethink having the 5G as the solera entry barrel OR have to start drinking more and faster .

Dougmatt wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 3:39 pm
Tasted the badmo next to some younger (about 1.25 year old) of the same recipe in a second fill 5 gallon bourbon barrel done at heavy toast and char. The 5G is approaching “too oaked” with heavy char and oak flavors coming through.

Going to wait out the 5G and see if it turns a corner and comes back. If not, will blend it into some new make and hope for the best. Might have to rethink having the 5G as the solera entry barrel OR have to start drinking more and faster .

I had the same problem with a bourbon aging in a second-fill 5g barrel. The 'shimmery', 'bright' polish of the spirit after 20mo started to fade a bit into heavier woody/oak notes but I was too inexperienced (still am) to determine if it was time to pull it or not. I let it go another 4mo's to reach the 2yr mark and while the spirit is fantastic, I miss that 20mo profile. Makes me think barrel-aging is as much of an art as making cuts is.

I'm drinking some 14 month old caramel corn bourbon. (Essentially HBB, but I replaced the honey malt with caramel malt)
I'm digging it.
Just 10 more days, and I get to break the 2 year seal on Badmo number 238 and taste the 21% rye bourbon I filled it with.

Twisted Brick wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 4:02 pm

Dougmatt wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 3:39 pm
Tasted the badmo next to some younger (about 1.25 year old) of the same recipe in a second fill 5 gallon bourbon barrel done at heavy toast and char. The 5G is approaching “too oaked” with heavy char and oak flavors coming through.

Going to wait out the 5G and see if it turns a corner and comes back. If not, will blend it into some new make and hope for the best. Might have to rethink having the 5G as the solera entry barrel OR have to start drinking more and faster .

I had the same problem with a bourbon aging in a second-fill 5g barrel. The 'shimmery', 'bright' polish of the spirit after 20mo started to fade a bit into heavier woody/oak notes but I was too inexperienced (still am) to determine if it was time to pull it or not. I let it go another 4mo's to reach the 2yr mark and while the spirit is fantastic, I miss that 20mo profile. Makes me think barrel-aging is as much of an art as making cuts is.

Totally agree. If 50%+ of a finished spirit flavor is developed during barrel aging, It’s so hard to build experience at hobby scale doing 1 or 2 barrels at a time. Thinking about investing in a barrel blending class at a large distillery just to experience all the different barrel impacts and learn more while trying to blend 20-30 barrels and ages at one time. I watched a Whiskey tribe blending video done with Balconies and they had 100’s of barrels all the same age and proof, each barrel had unique flavor profiles and they had to blend into their “standard”. Was eye opening.

Red Hot cocktail
1 1/2 oz cinnamon shine (which started out as a clove heavy amateurish attempt at tequila, which somehow morphed into cinnamon after distilling)
3/4 oz sloe gin
1/2 oz homemade grenadine
Dash of angostura bitters.

A very nice sipping Gin that I distilled almost exactly four years ago using a mylar covered satellite dish as the heat source. It's in a bottle I stumbled on in a seldom opened liquor cabinet.

I've been thinking about doing another batch, but it needs a full day of sunshine to get a distillation done and we are not getting many of those lately. I should get a steep done and ready for a good sunshine forecast day. Sampling this bottle might be the incentive I needed to get off my butt and do it again.

In the same cabinet I found my version of Buckfast Tonic Wine. It does taste very nice, but it has lots of sugar, alcohol and caffeine to hype up the trouble makers if you are silly enough to serve it up at a party or take a bottle to a football game.

My god Chris , mylar coated Sat dishes .
You have the quirkiest ideas

Why the hell don’t you have a camera to show us how you do all this cool stuff . Sounds so interesting yet we only get words . Us visual types need pictures to understand ….put things in perspective

So was it your average roof top sky/freeview eliptical dish or or a bigger prime focus (parabolic) Asiasat style dish ?

And how did you track that thing to follow the sun ?

That's a whole fun thing worth wanting to know about

Could be a solar powered stripper too .
Apparently there is around 1kw per cubic meter just waiting to be exploited .

Yummyrum wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 3:56 am My god Chris , mylar coated Sat dishes .
You have the quirkiest ideas

It wasn't my idea, I borrowed it off the net.
4ft parabolic dish, wallpaper glue, newspaper, then mylar on top. Setup was anything useful I had in the shed, including an old ironing board to support the still and a ladder to put the water container on. Focusing was done manually every 15 minutes. The Liebig temperature controller was powered by a 12V car battery topped up with a small solar panel.

NZChris wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 8:07 pm

Yummyrum wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 3:56 am My god Chris , mylar coated Sat dishes .
You have the quirkiest ideas

It wasn't my idea, I borrowed it off the net.
4ft parabolic dish, wallpaper glue, newspaper, then mylar on top. Setup was anything useful I had in the shed, including an old ironing board to support the still and a ladder to put the water container on. Focusing was done manually every 15 minutes. The Liebig temperature controller was powered by a 12V car battery topped up with a small solar panel.

Love it .
Thanks for the back story .
4 foot dish , thats a nat’s dick over a square meter .
So if what I thought ( about 1kw / square metre) is correct , thats about 1kw of heat focused at your boiler . Quite neat for a Gin run .


You got to get a camera Chris .

Found one.

Ah man I LOVE that ingenuity!
I've tried making a sun oven, but we simply don't get the sun here like you guys do

Chris I'm with Yummy on this, you really have to start getting some images in here of your exploits, people will lap it up.

After my third spirit run of UJSSM which had Gens 8-10, I took some time to look back over the last 5 months and poke through a cabinet now half full of gallon jugs and quart jars with all sorts of stuff going on. Pulled some samples from my attempts at completely over oaking to see what those turned into, from my first two spirit runs of UJSSM white and with light oak, and my first run ever that was a BW. Sat down and just sampled them all.

Pretty crazy to see/taste where it started, where it is, and try to plan where its going. Second spirit UJSSM at only 1.5 months old with light oak was the clear winner, though it is almost too smooth. Its off putting to have 45% abv in a rocks glass neat that has zero burn. Now to try out that 8 gal mash tun I picked up this week on an AG of some kind. ...God help me...

MooseMan wrote: ↑Fri Feb 16, 2024 11:43 am Ah man I LOVE that ingenuity!
I've tried making a sun oven, but we simply don't get the sun here like you guys do

Chris I'm with Yummy on this, you really have to start getting some images in here of your exploits, people will lap it up.

Not everything I do is up to the standards of this forum, note the brass fittings used on that still, I wouldn't want newbies copying my mistakes. That still has been retired and a new one with a copper riser has replaced it.

That run was done with three times the botanicals, so made three times the volume of finished product after blending with neutral, which is why I was still able to find some four years later.

Got yet another head cold, so after a couple of nights bad sleep I decided to have a nightcap.

I found a half gallon jug of the very first Odin's cornflake whisky I made, with added rye bread.
It's had untoasted and uncharred barrel oak in it for 10 months and at 88 proof it's like drinking corny, silky butter with a slightly nutty finish, what a treat from such a simple recipe!

I might have to have another before bed!

Almost 18month old Grappa-Geist in a used Rye Bourbon BadMo - just enough to round out the edges nicely. I rarely sip on this so it’s a treat

Cheers,
jonny

I’m drinking a delicious sweet feed whiskey sent to me by another member here. I’ve been holding on to it for some time, and tonight felt like the right time to appreciate it.

My posts are guaranteed not to incur envy, but celebrate this site which has opened up a huge world to me. While I wait for my liquor I make do with whatever I can get my hands on so I’m sipping neat a Havana club anejo which tastes more to me like heads now that ive learned from taste what they are and while i search around me for a bottle of Hechicera or somethin, but the nearest decent liquor store is 60 km away and I don’t do traffic anymore unless its necessary. I’ve grown averse since taking up this hobby to the idea of laying down 40 bucks for a halfway decent bottle, though I’d give double for a good one. I’d ALMOST rather drink what I make even if it dont come out great, like a bunch of heads leftover from UJSSM refluxed just to see how it works out. But it doesn’t. So I trust the next post in this thread will describe something elegant which I might not ever put my hands on.

Plum blueberry brandy on 375 degree toast oak(4 hrs) from 2021... not too bad at 100 proof

Sampling my version of Noble Vodka, made using inspiration from a method posted by a banned poster.

Very nice.

viewtopic.php?t=92136

Helping my wife finish off a bottle of very nice local bubbly.

Uranium glass goblets are adding some pomp and pageantry. We got them for a few dollars from a charity shop.

NZChris wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 12:57 am
Uranium glass goblets are adding some pomp and pageantry.

Maybe adding more than that.