Single Malt Oat Whiskey

[King Of Hearts]

Yes I'm thinking if that is alpha Amylase enzyme it should be good to 161'f before being denatured . Just got to get some testing iodine and I'm ready to start . I'll probably start mashing in an hr or 2 thanks again for all your assistance , will keep you posted on the progress

I don't think it's alpha amylase, it's probably amyloglucosidase, use it in the ferment.

[thecroweater]

Well mashing so see how I go up to my 4th rest (beta Amylase) showing some sign of conversion in the iodine test got my fingers crossed because the gristing was one nightmare after another and ended up pretty inadequate so I have some doubts to my success be getting a new grister before the next gen , new mash tun to for that matter

[thecroweater]

Pitched the yeast today and have a very vigorous ferment underway

[Kas]

How's this going? ferment should be just about done by now I guess?
Was thinking of attempting something like this myself

[thecroweater]

Yep most likely is but I am away for awhile so I wont get to run it until I get home again , might be a couple of weeks

[Kas]

Do you think it will keep ok while you are away? I try not to leave mine standing around for too long after the ferment is finished.

[thecroweater]

yeah should be right , its in airtight containers unheated with a full air lock in a dark cold room

[thecroweater]

Right back home now this has fermented out just fine. No sign of infection and is quite dry at a hdro reading of .900 .I have my kids with me so will run this as soon as I am able to most likely monday(can't watch the still and kids at the same time ) looks to be a real winner

[King Of Hearts]

Right back home now this has fermented out just fine. No sign of infection and is quite dry at a hdro reading of .900 .I have my kids with me so will run this as soon as I am able to most likely monday(can't watch the still and kids at the same time ) looks to be a real winner

Good work there CE. Be safe.

[thecroweater]

Well I just ran the part sugar head wash, it was one made from my left over oat malt, oat berries, rolled oats and sugar . this is by far the best stuff I have ever ran or for that matter tasted from anyone's still. Man oh man can't wait to run that single malt one now, I just know it will be even better but bloody hell this is good and its essentially just first gen low wines too

[thecroweater]

Well I just ran the second lot of wash from the oat mash and this stuff is showing some real promise . it is vastly different to the sugar head and I'm tipping that the spirit run will reveal that it is vastly superior to it cause its a bit hard to tell from low wines. the conversion was much higher than I expected or that my iodine tests revealed, so i will be dropping the sugar right down or might just leave it out altogether from the next gen on.

[thecroweater]

Ok I've put this down again, i got a much better grist this time and did a 50/50 malted unmalted mix of oats. It has 6 kgs of malted oats, 4.5kg of rolled oats and the remainder in gristed feed oats. The mash seems to have converted much better, well easier this time round and the other difference is I used some safspirit malt yeast someone gave me ages ago, by gum it took off, blew the airlock out of the fermenter lid in a few hrs

[thecroweater]

Ok I ran this, distress aged a percentage of it and back blended it in a refurbished keg. All I can say is this stuff is outstanding. it is very much like an Irish styled whiskey with an oatmeal cookie twist, very smooth too . I had high hopes for this mash but have well and truly superseded them, I've had half a dozen ppl taste this now all scotch and bourbon drinkers and every single one of them reckoned it was really fantastic drink. A special thanks to all the gentlemen who helped me put this recipe together

[vance71975]

Bout to get underway with this effort , malted a quantity of oats . I still can't find the DP of oat malt so I'm going to just guess that its low . I'm thinking about vaguely basing this recipe on Wineo's oat whiskey and method but going with 50/50 oat malt to rolled oats . Seems no one has posted on this anywhere so no foot prints t follow

Just to let you know, Properly malted oats have plenty of DP to self Convert, I use Oat Malt, as a base in many of my beers and have never had a problem with conversion. Just dont add other grains that need converting as they cant handle converting much more than their own starch.

[qball]

So, are you fermenting on the grain? If so, how are you straining the final product to extract the wort?

Can you write out your current mashing procedure please? Temps,, times, adjuncts or enzymes added?

Thx

[Poseidon]

I second qballs request as I,d like to run another batch to second the sour mash I'm currently working on....

[Dnderhead]

"how are you straining the final product to extract the wort?"
if your doing sour mash you don't strain/sparg .so the grain is "clean".
its sort of smiler to sourdough ,what is left in fermenter is the "starter"

[thecroweater]

ok yeah this is where i need to buy/make a press , reckon I got the stuff bask in South Aust. to make one up. At this stage I strain it the hard way one handful at a time squeezing it in my hands over fly wire into a bucket, first I have strained it with fly wire of cause . I haven't used sour mash for this but the strained grain gets frozen and used for my recapitulated mash
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=32818
which I see is not so different from the piggyback method posted on here by umm I think NC Hooch
anyway that bit is hard work but the results have been very rewarding thus far as for the recapitulated one using the grain of this and to start some of the stillage I'll let ppl know as it is just low wines at this point in time but they show some serious promise . I'm holding off running it as I expect a dramatic improvement in my stillin apparatus very soon

[thecroweater]

So, are you fermenting on the grain? If so, how are you straining the final product to extract the wort?

Can you write out your current mashing procedure please? Temps,, times, adjuncts or enzymes added?

Thx

yup no worries I thought I had but I see re-reading that I have writting what I was thinking of doing not what i did. Ok I'll have to get my notes and copy the relevant imfo I can tell ya it was a full mash to start with starting at low temps and going up to 72 centigrade so bout 160ish Fahrenheit but then I ended up dropping this last rest so as to not denature the Beta amylase(155 fahrenheit figurin the alpha will still active , it just wont quite get to the optomin temp for it

[thecroweater]

Ok got my notes here had to convert all this back, just not use to Imperial measurements anymore
got it up to 113 fh and let it rest from there down to 104' for around 3/4 hr , this was my Beta Glucanase rest then stepped it upto 129' and rested it between that and 122' for 1 hr, that was my Protease rest. Ok next I heated it to 153 and rested it for 1hr between that and 143' this was the Beta Amylase rest . Ok for most of them that was it but the first couple I did an Alpha Amylase rest also for an hr at 161' , I dropped this rest after that so as to not denature the Beta Amylase enzyme, I can't really say that was a good move or not but it was the advise I was given by some, both ways seemed to work and one less rest is less work I spect

[vance71975]

Ok got my notes here had to convert all this back, just not use to Imperial measurements anymore
got it up to 113 fh and let it rest from there down to 104' for around 3/4 hr , this was my Beta Glucanase rest then stepped it upto 129' and rested it between that and 122' for 1 hr, that was my Protease rest. Ok next I heated it to 153 and rested it for 1hr between that and 143' this was the Beta Amylase rest . Ok for most of them that was it but the first couple I did an Alpha Amylase rest also for an hr at 161' , I dropped this rest after that so as to not denature the Beta Amylase enzyme, I can't really say that was a good move or not but it was the advise I was given by some, both ways seemed to work and one less rest is less work I spect

Hate to say it, but 161 Will denature the Beta Amylase enzyme, 160 is typical Mash Out temp for brewing beer, and it is done for the purpose of denaturing the enzymes to halt conversion. That being said, with the rest of your numbers and times i am quite sure you got a very good conversion. Next time around hold your final temp at 151 instead of 161 and you should be golden to not denture the enzymes. Typically we try to keep our final rest temp at 158 or lower, because of the fact that even at 158 it will start to denture the enzymes.

[thecroweater]

yep vance that why I said I dropped that rest so as to not denature the B amylase as I was led to believe that the alpha will still activate at the lower rest it just won't be at its optimum, something I never realized before

[vance71975]

yep vance that why I said I dropped that rest so as to not denature the B amylase as I was led to believe that the alpha will still activate at the lower rest it just won't be at its optimum, something I never realized before

Even a Short time at 161 can denture the enzymes is the point i was getting at, dont remember the exact number off the top of my head but i do know it was 10 mins or less.Just something to consider for next time. And your right they are active at the lower temps just not as effective.

[vance71975]

yep vance that why I said I dropped that rest so as to not denature the B amylase as I was led to believe that the alpha will still activate at the lower rest it just won't be at its optimum, something I never realized before

Even a Short time at 161 can denture the enzymes is the point i was getting at, dont remember the exact number off the top of my head but i do know it was 10 mins or less.Just something to consider for next time. And your right they are active at the lower temps just not as effective.

Good Point, sorry forgot you were an Aussie. Ya in your case im sure malting it yourself is a ton cheaper.

[thecroweater]

These days I bucket the wash out until I start to get particles and then have fly wire over a bucket and tip it though down to and including the top say 3 inches of chaffy grain. I do a piggyback on this grain bed so I want the top light crap removed anyway to make room for the grain I add. If I wasn't doing piggybacks I guess I would press out more of the mash down to the lees

[Steep-n-Rocky]

Thanks for the info. I just did a rye mash with 17.5 lb rolled rye, 4.5 lb malted wheat and all 4 stepped rests. I am going to reuse the grain bed / lees myself. I used a yeast combo of Nottingham ale, Safbrew T-58, and red star ADY bakers yeast. It was not my original plan to work with multiple yeasts but any port i a storm (i.e. I was almost out of all of them and did not know it until it was time to pitch). With oats I am going to sub oats for rye in the same mash bill with the same rests. I do not skipp the beta amylase rest as I do see a difference in the mash. I also mash out at approx. 168 F to try and prevent infections. Stepped rests always seem more prone to infections than SMOP.

Have you changed anything in how you approach oats now based on experience?

[fizzix]

Hey Croweater~
Had some oat beer over the weekend and willies it was good!
I know you're a believer that oats have a distinct flavor (going by the argument here).
I'll be doing Booner's All Corn next, but have 100% oats in my site after that. How did this SM Oat Whiskey turn out after aging? (NOT the sugar head, but the enzyme/malt)
Thanks in advance!

(By the way, It's difficult keeping my hands off the Crow's Rum. Had to make more!)

[thecroweater]

Quite distinct but very nice, a lot smoother than most whiskeys

[midlife-u-turn]

I'm a big fan of oats, I think it makes a great smooth tasting product. I've been doing a series of bourbon mashes lately with a high percentage of oats. Doing a strip run on batch #3 today. One of my favorites is an oat, caramel malt and 2 row, (approx. 85%, 10%, 5%) has about two years on oak now and it's tasty. I use the brew-in-bag system and with oats I just up the grain:water ratio as I don't tend to get as good a conversion with oats. I always use liquid enzymes on all my all grain batches for a little insurance.

[Taxy]

I just tried a 1.5kg rolled oat / 3kg sugar wash and it came out very tasty as a white dog of only 3 days old.

I was afraid of getting a gooey mess with the oats but after having converted them with alfa-amylase / gluco-amalyse enzymes the resulting wash was quite thin. For the conversion mash you do need about 6l of water per kg of rolled oats, though.

There was a lot of trub after fermentation but it was quite easy to strain the bottom trub through a sieve (first siphoned off 'clear' wash on top).

This got me very interested in an all grain oat wash. I just got a grainfather and am considering the following mash schedule for 4.5 kg of malted oats:

113 F - 45 C - beta glucanase rest for 45 min
129 F - 53,9 C - protease rest for 1 h
151 F - 66 C - 1 h
185 F - 85 C - add 1kg rolled oats + alfa amylase enzyme 1 h (instructions on my AA enzyme asks for optimal temp between 80C-90C)
135 F - 57 C - check pH < 5.5 + Gluco-amylase enzyme + 1h

I add the rolled oats for bump in ABV and do it seperately here with enzymes to get as complete a conversion as possible.

Do you think I could get away with adding the rolled oats in the beginning, let the malt enzymes convert them and skip the enzyme additions? Would this risk a gooey mash / stuck sparge?