Home Distiller

Finally getting around to a "Bentstick" Oat, Wheat, Rye right from the OP its at 175 degrees
on its way down waitin for 155, malts, and enzymes. smells wicked good now, and it doesn't have yeast yet
mmmmmmm!!! smells so goooood! I know it's not that special to a bunch of ya's, but I only get to run 3 or 4 times a
season, so it's liquid gold for me.
have a good night fellow HD'ers
bronctoad

Sounds good bronc. Good mashes still get my attention.
Sorry you only get 3 or 4 sessions, though.

Absinthe.

Most of the ingredients are grown in my garden or gathered locally. Fresh off the still it's nice already, time can only improve it

Harvested a big bunch of Peppermin leaves yesterday, crushed them a bit to open up the cellular structure. Put them slighly packed in a plastic box to ferment them at 25 °C for about 3 days. Will let them leave their box once a day to let them breath. Should give a peppermint tea, when dried and chopped at the end. Next time I will try to get some essential oil out of the leaves to mix in dark chocolate. It‘s a bit off topic, but I like mint chocolate together with some whiskey, what maybe puts the post back in topic.
The smell is arleady awsome and more intense than yesterday. The whole rooms is filled with a lovely peppermint bouquet.

Got my corn steeping & grinding my wheat. Had to take a break & get a drink. Damn, this new honey taste so much better.

My last Absinthe for the year.

The anise seeds were the only ingredient that weren't picked fresh off the plants immediately before use.

The color and louche are superb and I'm very happy with the flavor.

NZChris wrote:My last Absinthe for the year.

The anise seeds were the only ingredient that weren't picked fresh off the plants immediately before use.

The color and louche are superb and I'm very happy with the flavor.

I have never tried Absinth before, does it really have the weird effect or is that just bogus and what not

Fiddleford wrote:I have never tried Absinth before, does it really have the weird effect or is that just bogus and what not

Bogus AFAIK, not that I've ever drunk enough to get really smashed.

NZChris wrote:

Fiddleford wrote:I have never tried Absinth before, does it really have the weird effect or is that just bogus and what not

Bogus AFAIK, not that I've ever drunk enough to get really smashed.

I got anise seed and my sister is a herb witch, I'll need to make some one day dad likes the stuff

Friends just gave me a truck load of pineapples so I ran out and bought ten 55 gl. drums that had corn syrup in then for eight dollars each and have been cutting pineapples all day. If I need more I can get them tomorrow going to use corn sugar to hit my brix correct my ph and let her rip. Going to take me forever to run it all but when you get a truck load of pineapples for free if you don't jump on it your nuts plus once it's done fermentation it will keep until I can see to it.

I’m trying to make a bourbon with something like the Heaven Hill mash bill.

17 gallons of water
26.5 pounds of corn meal (78%)
3.4 pounds of rye (10%) (malt, not grain, cause I can’t find grain in small quantity)
4.1 pounds of 6row barley pale malt (12%)

Using alpha enzymes for the corn and also gluco after adding malts.

I’m also sneaking in a pound of honey malt cause I like the smell so much.

The corn is cooking now.

Going for about 2 pounds grain per gallon ratio.

This promises to make a fine drop, Mt Ranier. I have a similar recipe with rye malt just coming into form (13mo's) now. It's delicious.

Twisted Brick wrote:This promises to make a fine drop, Mt Ranier. I have a similar recipe with rye malt just coming into form (13mo's) now. It's delicious.

Thanks. First one using rye. Going to strip and spirit and put it in a 3gallon Gibbs #4 char barrel for a few months then some time in glass to mellow it some more. I’m building up some stock these days. Gimme a year and ill be golden.

Sunshineer wrote:Friends just gave me a truck load of pineapples so I ran out and bought ten 55 gl. drums ....

Holy shit sunshineer, that is quite the score. I’m guessing you’ll need to mush the hell out of the pieces to expose all the sugar for the yeast. Maybe place an evenrude in each barrel for a few minutes?

I just looked up the sugar content of pineapples and it’s about the same as apples, or about 1/10 sugar by weight. I can’t wait to hear how this turns out. Congrats on the score, and good luck to you. Otis

Rum repair run
Whiskey repair run

I ran a repair run on a bunch of rum and vodka last night, and made the cut today. I had a lot of rum and some vodka experiment jars, all having been used for testing various wood aging treatments. After bottling the stuff I liked I put the remaining 10 liters in my mini pot still and ran a single slow pot still run. After cuts and proofing to 60% I ended up with one gallon of some really pleasant, sweet and somewhat neutral spirits. I was surprised by how clean this rum came out, with no hint of wood.

I did a similar salvage run of whiskey test jars the day prior, and it still smelled some of wood treatment after the distillation. The reason for the whiskey retaining some of the wood profile when the rum did not may be because the whiskey had a stronger/longer dose of wood from the tests. Also, a few of the jars of whiskey had a slight acrid smell to them from high temp toasts and heavy chars, and some of that acrid smell came through though not bad enough to make me want to toss the batch. The whiskey I salvaged was put into a second use bourbon barrel.

Lesson learned: I had learned before that the smell of a scorched run can not be repaired by re-distillerion. Now I know that acrid smell is also something that is not repairable.

Otis

Tweaked my latest Absinthe by adding more Roman Wormwood. Easy to do and took maybe half an hour. It was a worthwhile addition and I'm sure it will be appreciated when it has had a few weeks time to meld and mellow. The color and louche are fantastic.

did some brewing last night,kettles still going its up at 1.63 sg now its a all grain.
10 pounds malted barley
3 coffee cans full of cracked corn
5 gallons of water

Smells wounder full and the taste of the wort is pretty good. this is probably my first successful ag and I'm pretty excited to put yeast to it and let it ferment away. the resulting spirit will be blended with other mixtures of ag batches to get the right profile so I't will be long before I can drink it (of course I'll bottle a mickie maybe).

Run a lovely batch of sweet mash and started on my sour. My l'il copper darlin' and thumper was spittin' out an honest 85 abv after the fores. Run it down to 30 for feints. Nice....

So I put together 8 pound ground cracked corn milled and amylase converted with 1 pound malt rye and one pound malt 2 row threw 10 pounds corn sugar on its an 8 gallon mash with sg of 1060. The smell of this grain flavored sugar shine mash is amazing! Something about the rye I think I've found my niche we will see in about 10 to 14 days after its finished dry racked and ran

Bottled my December product. Awful nice. This wash is running like it was a pump in the fermenter. Half inch blow off runnin like theys no tomorrow.

One stripping run of Birdwatchers, going to do the next one in a weeks time, add them together and make myself some Odin's Gin (since the missis wants to make up some fancy cocktails).

This is from 5/3/19. Corn, malt barley and rye dady and dextrose is this yum or bummer

Well, i didn't actually make it, but my wife just had a baby today at noon. I did my part about 9 months ago!

Islay June!

Monday I'll run my mesquite cob!

That is wonderful news Honest Liberty. Congratulations to you and your wife.

Otis

I was offered some blue Agave, (not tequilana unfortunately), and had my first try at Mezcal in the bottle a couple of days ago. Of the people who have tried it, half loved it and half didn't like it. I need to find a bottle of commercial Mezcal for comparison as I've only ever tasted Tequila.

Yesterday's run was Gin Mare. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=73654

Sampled it today and I'm very happy with the result.

NZChris wrote:I was offered some blue Agave, (not tequilana unfortunately), and had my first try at Mezcal in the bottle a couple of days ago. Of the people who have tried it, half loved it and half didn't like it. I need to find a bottle of commercial Mezcal for comparison as I've only ever tasted Tequila.

You need lots of tails. I know that doesn't make sense down under.

ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:

NZChris wrote:I was offered some blue Agave, (not tequilana unfortunately), and had my first try at Mezcal in the bottle a couple of days ago. Of the people who have tried it, half loved it and half didn't like it. I need to find a bottle of commercial Mezcal for comparison as I've only ever tasted Tequila.

You need lots of tails. I know that doesn't make sense down under.

I never got cardboard, but I did run until stuff I just couldn't bring myself to include in the cut.

OtisT wrote:That is wonderful news Honest Liberty. Congratulations to you and your wife.

Otis

Than you kindly!
I bought the heavily peated Bruchladdie MRC:01 to celebrate. I should have went with the trusted lagavulin 16. Either way, great day!

I'm really looking forward to running this mesquite C.O.B.

NZChris wrote:I was offered some blue Agave, (not tequilana unfortunately), and had my first try at Mezcal in the bottle a couple of days ago. Of the people who have tried it, half loved it and half didn't like it. I need to find a bottle of commercial Mezcal for comparison as I've only ever tasted Tequila.

My take on mescal: smells like burnt rubber with a charcoal briquet after taste, at least this version anyway:
Ilegal joven. It's unimpressive and supposedly light on the smoke. My cousin introduced me to pechuga and it reminded me of this.