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What about incorporating the PDF by Buccaneer Bob on "how to malt barley" . It is top class, a PDF, and ready to be incorporated into an excellent production like this. A very good contribution to your very good work. Well done and thanks for doing the work. JD

Jimy Dee wrote:What about incorporating the PDF by Buccaneer Bob on "how to malt barley" .

Rather than copying content, i would prefer to reference it. Bob's pdf is already perfect according to my perception, so i see little merit in translating it to .tex form.
But you are right, so far there is no mention about DIY malting, so i will include a paragraph and mention Bob's pdf there. Thanks for the input!

I hope SBB RUM all molasses rum ends up in the Tried and True recipe book.

I second Copperheads suggestion re SBB all molasses rum.

May I suggest Shineon's rye recipe as well. It's a fantastic Rye and it would be good to have some ryes in the recipe book

Jimy Dee wrote:I second Copperheads suggestion re SBB all molasses rum.

Good Post Jimmy Dee

Hefe - what about also contacting Cranky regarding his Apple Brand Recipe threat where he is trying to put it all together as a go-to post for fruit brands. The 2 of u are on the same wave length looking at the bigger picture. His finished product would be another good chapter in your compilation. To miss out on Crankys mastercraftmanship re brandies would be a shame. JD

jon1163 wrote:May I suggest Shineon's rye recipe as well. It's a fantastic Rye and it would be good to have some ryes in the recipe book

still life's rye I meant... and shine ons butter rum for sure

Shine On's Butter rum seems to be a real runner, am I showing my lack of knowledge by calling it ground breaking ?

I think the OP is just trying to put "T&T" into a consolidated form - additional recipes would require additional approvals - and we know just how hard it was to get "Honey bear" accepted.

Perahaps there is "editors licence" - for "other recommendeds" available by way of an "Appendix" - but I think OP is right in just doing "Tried and true" in the main volume

Pikey, I take your point, but if Crankys protocol (which is a tried and tested recipe to distill fruits in general) was incorporated, it would make this threads end product more applicable to tried and tested recipes (preferrably including fruit brandy) . Just my 2 pence worth. JD

Pikey wrote:I think the OP is just trying to put "T&T" into a consolidated form

Yep, precisely that. I initially decided to include all the T&T recipes, and only them. In the process of writing the pdf i however noticed that many recipes are quite similar, instances of a more general archetypical recipe, with just minor variations on it. It is my belief that there are just a handful of those archtypical recipes, and that perhaps presenting those abstractions together with the common ways of altering them, might be an even more interesting read than this pdf - but that is another project for the future. The merits of this collcetion IMHO are the closeness to the original recipes, and the opportunity for everyone to see for themselves how the recipes are (dis)similar in certain regards.
For those reasons i will not include other recipes, and i will include even T&T recipes that are insultingly similar.

Jimy Dee wrote:Pikey, I take your point, but if Crankys protocol (which is a tried and tested recipe to distill fruits in general) was incorporated, it would make this threads end product more applicable to tried and tested recipes (preferrably including fruit brandy) .

As stated above, i'm all for general recipes with a wide range of applicability, but this document is not the place for them - or at best another section in a future version of the document is.


I value your input though people, even if i sorta have to turn you down on this for now! Feels good to know more people are thinking about how to make this into a valuable tool!

Hefezelle - your the boss and fair play to you for setting out your pitch and sticking with it. No snowflake here. Belt on, your doing a great job. JD

Pikey wrote:I think the OP is just trying to put "T&T" into a consolidated form - additional recipes would require additional approvals - and we know just how hard it was to get "Honey bear" accepted.

Perahaps there is "editors licence" - for "other recommendeds" available by way of an "Appendix" - but I think OP is right in just doing "Tried and true" in the main volume

I was talking about SBB all molasses rum as I had a gut feeling it was in Tried & True section, turns out my gut feeling was right.
Obviously if a recipe is not in the Tried & True section of the forum it will not be in the Tried n True recipe book PDF

Update on the current version!

Only two more recipes to write! I got spell checking to work, found and fixed a bunch of typos. The promised paragraph on malting is included now. Switched back to the long TOC format, but i might tinker with that some more, i'd like the recipes to not list subsections in the TOC.

So, after writing the last two recipes my plan is to fill in all the missing information ("an unspecified amount of", ambiguous instructions, etc) by asking around in the respective threads, and then to get some pictures in there. Then the conversion fun for the US variant will begin.

Great job @hefezelle, Outstanding effort!
A hardcopie will be a must for every Distillers shed.

Update on the current version!

Whew, all 39 recipes are typed in, the table of contents has the compact style that i wanted it to have, i included some more hyperlinks, and corrected some tiny typos and misstatements.

If any of you feel like asking around in the respective recipe threads for info on how much to use for ingredients where i just have "an unspecified amount", then please be my guest - i'll gladly share that work! Best to private message me if you get an answer in the thread, so i don't miss it.

I love the book. It now sits in the "lab"
Thanks for all the work.

Update on the current version!

First time for both dedicated SI and US units versions, yay!
I've managed to switch between metric/US and letterpaper/A4 versions with a variable in the document, which means there is only one source file to maintain, something i'm happy about. Well into the conversion process, all of the instructions and some of the ingredients lists are done in both versions now. Ingredient lists for recipes 14-39 have yet to be converted to US units, so don't be surprised that they are empty in the US version!
Also, i decided to include a paragraph or two about dilution, which i first have to write up.

Monty671 wrote:I love the book. It now sits in the "lab"
Thanks for all the work.

PLUS 1

Thank you for your effort, I've saved a copy and look forward to further updates.
Good to have a copy offline, just in case of 'whatever'.
Once finished I'll print it out and put a copy in a safe place, maybe laminated for protection!

Looks like good work!

Keep it up can't wait to see the final product. It'll be a useful resource.

I've been made aware that it might be more sensible to write the US version recipes for a volume of 1 gal instead of 100 gal. There are good arguments for both variants IMHO, so i'd like to make this a community decision. If you have a preference for either variant, or an argument that favors the 1 or 100 gal recipes, then please let me know! Here's what's to consider:

• 100 gal is an excessive fermenter volume and people might get the impression they have to use that volume
• People starting out will typically use small volumes, so 1gal is closer to what they use than 100gal
• Scaling up might be an easier calculation than scaling down
• More experienced people will use volumes of 30gal upwards, so to them 100gal is closer
• Ingredients will have to be listed in tiny amounts for 1gal, either in small units (2 teaspoons) or in fractions (0.042 cups). For people with 30+gal volume, this might be inconvenient or require a calculator

So overall it's a bit of a trade-off of convenience for newbies vs experienced users. More leaning to the 1gal variant myself, by now. So far i've only converted the first 14 or so recipes to US units, i'd still be willing to recalculate them for 1 gal. For the metric version on the other hand, i'm not going to do that over again, i'll stick with the 100 liters version there.

100 liters is roughly 22 US gallons.

But many here have adopted a standard 1/2 barrel (15 US gallon) keg as a boiler. For that, 10 to 12 US gallons is a “normal” boiler charge volume (+/-). Typically, 3 boiler charges would be optimum for stripping to a low wines (spirit) run, such that a ferment of 30 to 35 US gallons is appropriate. Many here have 40 gallon rubber trash bin fermenters, or like I, use 5 gallon glass carboys to ferment.

So, if a standard ferment size is 30 to 35 US gallons (135 to 160 liters), it would be consistant with those who use a keg boiler.

But, most recipes are “scaleable” up or down with (reasonable) success. Regardless, it will get you “into the ballpark”.

Just a “point of interest”....
ss

I think the volumes should be left as the creator wrote it. Not everything is completely scalable. Vitamins and yeast come to mind. A table spoon of Epsom salt doesn't need to be multiplied by 6.

I write all mine in 5 gallons. First, a 1 gallon wash is useless to most people. 5 gallons is about right for a gallon still, and x3 is good for a 15 gallon one.

Just my honest feedback. It's your book.

I believe I am at least partially responsible for the monkey wrench over size so I guess I should let everybody know my thoughts on the matter.

One big reason I object to 100 gallon increments is that it gives an impression that we are fermenting in commercial quantities and that is not a good impression to give.

I also feel if you don't use the original quantities scaleability is better with a 1 gallon recipe, although now that SCD mentioned 5 gallons I think that may actually be the best option.

Another reason for keeping the scale small is most novices start off small with 2.5 to 10 gallon stills and eventually upgrade to 15.5 gallon boilers. Some do go as high as 30 gallon boilers but not that many so smaller scale is easier to scale up to what is needed.

Then fermenter size is the next issue. Most people start out with smaller fermeters, 5 gallon buckets and carboys being the most common so the argument for the 5 gallon amount has merit there but is also easily scaled up for the people using trash cans.

Now as far as giving recipes as originally written, some of them are in what to me can be strange and difficult to scale amounts. For instance Birdwatchers is given for 80 liters and uses cups, grams and Kg as measurements. To me it would be much better given at a scale that is closer to 5 gallons rather than 21 (80L) Others are given in specific increments and don't really scale very well up or down but where it is possible I feel it's best to go with the smaller scale of 1 or 5 gallons.

ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:I think the volumes should be left as the creator wrote it. Not everything is completely scalable. Vitamins and yeast come to mind. A table spoon of Epsom salt doesn't need to be multiplied by 6.

I write all mine in 5 gallons. First, a 1 gallon wash is useless to most people. 5 gallons is about right for a gallon still, and x3 is good for a 15 gallon one.

Just my honest feedback. It's your book.

+1

I agree. 5 gallons is pretty much the defacto standard for homebrew recipes. Should probably be the same for wash for distilling. It just fits most the readily available fermenter sizes etc...

+2, also since this is a world wide forum the units vary between liters and gallons. When I find a recipe I like I write down both measurements. If the book is to be viewed world wide this might help the reader.

Agree with SCD it should be in original volume, there are inherent errors in all recipes due to local access to ingredients availability.