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Iv wondered what would happen if someone had a HERMS or similar system that was automated and slowly brought the temperature up over several hours.

You would think that it would be just like a step rest right ?

OK - first batch of rye in in the fermentor, keep your fingers crossed. I did run into a few problems here and there and I am gonna post them here so I can refernce and maybe help someone else along the way.

1) I had to cut my batch in half so I started with 3 gallons of water in my semi BOP brought it up to 105 or so and started to stir in my my rye/barley mix. this of course brought the temps down a little so I turned up the burner a bit until I had a steady 101 on the gauage and then shut the flame off.

2) I stired this about every 10 mins or so and I help the temp at 95

3) I held the temp at around 97 for 30 mins in the intial step rest

4) Then I brought the temp up slow and steady to 150 F and stired it every 15 mins or so

5) I let mine cook at this temp for about an hour and a half - had to cut the burner back on maybe once to hold the 147+ temp but kept it under 151 at all times.

6) I didnt have any Iodine and tried betadine instead - in theory it should have worked but I didnt see all the color change. Walmart fish/pet supply has the iodine - hindsight and now noted.

7) Problem #2 - broke my friggin hydrometer - so I wasnt able to get a SG on this which really pisses me off. I loaned my backup to a friend doing his first wash so lesson learned. I will take one tomorrow as soon as I can get by the homebrew shop and pick up another one.

So I then poured the 3 gallons plus the grain into my fermentor and added 3 more gallons of water to bring the volume to 6 gallons/10lbs of rye/barely mix.

9) Let it cool to below 95F and pitched yeast - its in there now and waiting on the first bubbles to start in the airlock.


The one thing I will add in to this - I know its long, is that I did take a spoon and taste the mash to see and it did have a sweet taste to it - nothing like a sugar wash but it had a sweetness. Also it was sticky once everything was mixed- again no sugar added. So now we have a mash. Hopefully with the cooking time and temps I converted starches to sugar and I will report back that I have a active ferment going in the morning. Batch #2 starts tomorrow evening.

Last update for a little while - woke up this morning and low and behold my rye fermentor was bubbling off like a rocket! So by this I would say I had conversion from starch to sugar. Damn it feels good.

This post really got me thinking. There are probably so many wonderful threads like this one that are buried in the millions of post. Wish there was a way to search without getting its too common phrase jargon back.

I agree, I decided to dig this one back up and post my adventures so I would have something to refernce moving ahead. And to helpfully help someone else who might want to venture into AG cooking, not so much my success but my failures as I am sure I will have plenty of those as I move away from washes to mashes. Not that I wont be doing anymore washes - because I still enjoy the UJSSM and others just trying to always learn more.

Dnderhead wrote:Iv wondered what would happen if someone had a HERMS or similar system that was automated and slowly brought the temperature up over several hours.

This is one of the big reasons I'm building a HERMS brew system. And looking at using a ramp soak PID so I can do or try to do step mashing. Mainly for rye and wheat mashes. Hoping it will help out with my fermenting shortfalls in the past.

Just another update - forgive me - really! I started batch number 2 this evening and all went well. working on a new worm stand so the time passed by quicker than watching a pot just cooki like yesterday.

Batch #1 is going off like a rocket and batch#2 has had yeast pitched and already starting to bubble a little - slow but she is young and I am hoping by tomorrow morning the same results will follow batch #1 and she will be rolling.

On a side note for anyone reading this - how does it all sound?

Dnderhead wrote:Iv wondered what would happen if someone had a HERMS or similar system that was automated and slowly brought the temperature up over several hours.

I run a HERMS for brewing and plan on a rye mash here in the next week or 2. Ill definitely keep the group updated!
In my experience with large amounts of rye, corn, oats etc in beer, using rice hulls will also help a ton. You pretty much cant use too much, so be generous with it. The hulls add no flavor or potential gravity, but they do add structure to the grain bed and allow for even flowing (important when using a HERMS so you do not end up with a stuck mash.)
I will probably plan on a dough in 90% rye/5% 6row barley at about 1-1.25gal/pound @~122F and slowly ramp to 151F. At 151F, add the remaining 5% barley and hold for ~60min. The second 5% barley at 151F is more of a fail safe since I am not 100% sure of the diastatic power of the rye by itself I will be using) Then mash out at 168F to denature enzymes and help with protein stabilization. I will then lauter and sparge off until I reach the volume desired (as long as the sparge gravity is not dropping too much)

its just me but id not do a mash out.id want the enzymes do all they can.

Dnderhead wrote:its just me but id not do a mash out.id want the enzymes do all they can.

Yeah good point. Was thinking of more for the protein stabilization, but thats probably just the brewer in me coming out. We dont care at all about clarity or protein haze for distilling, so you are right. Probably completely unnecessary

Well both buckets fermented out in about 3 days and I moved them to the shop last night to start clearing. temps were pretty cold last night so I am sure the clearing has begun.

This afternoon I will rack off into another container and let it sit for another 24 hours or so and then run once it warms up a little more tomorrow if its all looking good.

Couple of notes. I managed to taste a little last night and this stuff has another flavor all together from the UJSSM or any of the other sugar washed I have done. Spicy maybe? hard to put my finger on it. I did check the SG and with all the grains floating around it was hard to get but its as close to 1.000 as I think I am going to get it. No bubbling at all in the fermentors for 2-3 mins and DRY omg it will suck the spit right out of your mouth.

Tomorrow should be the day we see what we get - wish me luck! UPDATE .....

I transfered it from the fermentors to the clearing buckets and I can now see why off the grain would be a benefit! out of two 7 gallon fermentors I have about 7 gallons of mash to run. lots of the grain soaked up the liquid so I can see what UJ means about clean up. It seems to be a very thick liquid - Might even cut it with a few gallons of water once I rack it out of the learing buckets and into the boiler. Thank the good lord for strainer bags or I would have lost more liquid than I did!

Any updates Ghost!!!
Im watching this one like a hawk

Actually - yeah I have a couple. I will be scaling this one up in the spring. I ran this last weekend and it came out very nice, I only collected 5 pints of the cleanest product at about 250 mls per jar.

I sat down monday or tuesday after airing it out and it def has that spicy flavor that rye is known for. Very clean with a little hotness to it. I cut it to 90 proof and put a couple of pints on oak to see if that will mellow some of the heat it has.

Again I agree with UJ on fermenting off the grain now and I will try that method in the spring when I cook up another mash. I did add the backset of this into my fresh ferment of UJSSM. I am interested to see what that does for the flavor of the sour mash - good blend of rye and corn is what I am going for.

One more thing - as this was a rye with 5# of barley I will play around with the grain bill next time and probably add some corn and barley to the mash. Pretty interesting process doing a true mash - I would encourage everyone to do at least one or two.

Ghost

I suppose you are using a 5 gal still, just wondering to judge your collection.(i know there are a ton of other factors just wondering)
Also what type of malted Rye were you using do you know? The reason i ask we have a small homebrew shop here and ive slowly been picking up the 1lb sacks of rye they get in its Weyermann Rye.

Ive also wondered about the mix that large distillers use. like 51% rye 39% corn 10% barley. is it for taste? is it for sugars and enzymes? I would have to think that the corn would sweeten up the taste.

I will be trying this one as soon as i get my larger batch 20 gal +/-of UJSSM going.

No I run a 15.5 gallon keg for the boiler pot still. I didnt scale this up because I just wanted to try and see what the difference would be. I set up two 7 gallon fermentors and split the recipe to manage the size of cooking the rye - I dont have a big enough mashing pot to handle the whole 12 gallons yet.

As for rye - I used what the brew shop had - malted cracked rye and 5 lbs of 6-row malted cracked barley. I broke my hydrometer prior to mashing the rye so I didnt have a SG and just let it go to dryness. I will say this I made my cuts with smell and taste and some use of the proofing meter. but I will also add this needed to be run SLOW. when it first took off and I ran it the way I did a ujssm the product had a little smearing in it and I backed it way down and she was clean as a whistle then. The rye mash seems to be a little fickle when it comes to the speed of my still. Got to running 2-3 drops a second and it did fine.

You said
"Again I agree with UJ on fermenting off the grain now and I will try that method in the spring when I cook up another mash."
Why is that ? having to strain the grain to get your wash was a pain?

well yeah kind of - that and it holds a lot of the liquid when in the fermentor. I also think it will clear quicker and be easier to manage.

Everyone,

I am new here but I have been making wine, beer and Spirits(mostly Whiskey and Gins) for sometime. I'll try to remember to use Imperial units but I use exclusively metric. I have just started a new batch of Straight Rye. Its about 1.722lbs/gallon(about 20.6% grain to water at 100%). Just looking for some overview opinions at this point for fermenting on and off the grain for sprits production. I always distill a clean mash anyways. Just have never fermented on the grain. Kind of old school and sounds like it could be great or terrible.

I also will start a thread for pressure infusing oak to get a finished bottle ready product in days not months.

Thanks all

Looking forward to hearing about your pressure infused oak project. I like the idea of quick "aging" if it can be done with good taste.
Highlander

Would induction be a good way to cook grains and maintain a certain temperature?

Any new updates on this ?

I am planning to do an all rye batch tomorrow. From reading this over and combining some information from the How to Brew book it looks like with malted rye only a protein rest is needed, and that rice hulls should be added for good lautering. Here is the plan.

20 lbs malted crushed rye, 2 lbs rice hulls (from what I've read the rice hulls should be about 5-10%)
Mash in BOP at 150-155 F for one hour with 12 gallons water
Ferment with two packs Wyeast Eau De Vie liquid yeast (because that's what I have)

I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, I'm just combining what I read in this thread with information on all grain brewing from the book by John Palmer, How To Brew. I think all I'm doing that is different from the original post is the use of rice hulls, and of course the yeast is different. It looks like one can use unmalted rye as well but then you need to add an additional temperature rest which I think is a beta-glucan rest at 113 F.


I just edited this post and now I guess I'm not really doing anything different other than the rice hulls and yeast. Oh well I'll still post results. I intended to do it differently but the more I thought about it, this seemed like the way to go, and now I just realized that someone already mentioned the rice hulls, so I have nothing new to add to the discussion I guess other than to say I'm gonna try it.

I have got a few questions on this thread,

I understand that folks are sparging, folks say they prefer not to ferment on grain.
No one really says why, as I can see.

Pardon me for my ignorance, but if you are looking for all the flavor you can get out of the grain, it would seem to me that you would want to
ferment on the grain. I have got to ask why?

Is this because your getting too much flavor?

I have been playing with rye for a while and know it can be excessive hot at times, Is it too hot ?

being a brewing as well,I can also understand , that the process just feels correct when mashing.

Could someone please explain?

An update on my rye mash, out of the 12 gallons of water I added I only got about 6 gallons out, I think the main problem being that instead of a false bottom I used a bazooka screen. The screen was all I had, but I will buy a false bottom for the next batch. Also for the next batch I will sparge rather than do the no sparge method.

I really do not know if there is any advantage or disadvantage to fermenting on the grain. I did a sweet feed batch that I fermented on the grain and found it to be messy to clean out, that's the only thing keeping me from doing it again. Please note I have little experience so someone else may want to chime in on the fermenting on the grain thing.

Over that last 2 hrs I've read evey post in this thread and have found it vey helpful. even the F-up posts. I think not-on-the-grain-fermenters do so for a couple reasons
1. its a pain in the ass, and 2. at the end of your ferment period it soaks up a lot of your beer. I have a handful of ag mashes under my belt, 2 of which were on the grain, and can attest to both of these reasons. heres my tread on my 1st one. http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 34&t=38933 also I can attest to the post UJ made about using flaked rye. it does make the mash a lot thicker because my 2nd ag ferment on the grain consisted of 4 lbs 6row 4 lbs 2row (brew store messed up and mixed them) and 2 lbs flaked rye. 115F 45 min 135F 45 min brought up to 150F dumped it ion my fermenter and let it sit overnight. next day sg 1.08 pitched yeast at 85F. fermented like crazy for 3 days. no airlock used. fermenting ags in a cooler. sg 1.04 after all activity stopped. drained and squeezed grains got me 2 firkin gallons out of 5 gallons. sparged with another 2 gallons water and added to beer cuz why not. with 2 lousy gallons don't really care if I dilute. all that will fit fine in my boiler. rinsed the grains as best I could with the 2 gal and tossed it. now have this 4 gallons in my regular carboy with airlock will let sit another 2 day to clear and then distill if no further activity.

laughing waters wrote:An update on my rye mash, out of the 12 gallons of water I added I only got about 6 gallons out, I think the main problem being that instead of a false bottom I used a bazooka screen. The screen was all I had, but I will buy a false bottom for the next batch. Also for the next batch I will sparge rather than do the no sparge method.

I really do not know if there is any advantage or disadvantage to fermenting on the grain. I did a sweet feed batch that I fermented on the grain and found it to be messy to clean out, that's the only thing keeping me from doing it again. Please note I have little experience so someone else may want to chime in on the fermenting on the grain thing.

The problem wasn't the bazooka screen it was that I should have used more like 16 gallons of water, figured this out from using one of the brew calculators available on different homebrew websites. Anyway this ferment with the eau de vie yeast smelled like rotten meat then stalled out, so what I did was mix about 6 gallons of water with 6 lbs of wheat/barley malt extract then top off the fermenters to about 6 gallons each and added Crosby baker distillers yeast, the ferment took off nicely. The final wash was about 70% rye, 20% wheat, 10% barley. Finally had a chance to run it today but some how messed it up, just a bad day where everything went wrong, the little bit I was able to salvage has some nice flavor to it so I will try this again some time but will stick with a sweet feed recipe until I have the operation of my still down (lots cheaper), I did a sweet feed for my sacrificial run and couldn't help but take a tiny little sip from the middle of the run, tasted nice, but spit it out just to be safe. Tractor supply had only two bags of feed left so I bought both, 100 lbs of Producers Pride All Grain should give me plenty of practice with the still, ha.

So anyway sorry it turned out I had nothing much to offer this thread but maybe someone will learn something from my experience, anyway I think the final recipe I ended up with seems good, just don't use yeast that smells like ass and know how to run your still.

I ferment my rye mashes on the grain . Ive mashed off the grain also. I find a significant flavor difference. i have actually ferment on 5 gal batch off and one on. even the color difference is pretty significant. I use 85% malted rye 10% corn 5 % barley. 10% corn for the extra sugar 5% barley for the added conversion.

I will ferment on the grain once fermenting is complete i will let it settle out then rack then settle again ( i don't think its necessary for the second settle but i don't always have time to run the same day i rack off the grains). I find it actually easier to ferment on the grain . once your mash has cooled to pitching temp i transfer to the fermentor grains and all, pitch, then ferment once your ferment is done the grains have settled , then you rack off to the still and all thats left behind is a settled out bucket of grains. instead of having to strain and make messes. the only down fall if you call it suck is you loose a small amount of wash thats left in the grains. but i use a 6 gal bucket for fermenting and the grains usually take up about a gallon of that and i use a 5 gal still so it all works out right. darker is on the grain lighter is off the grain. i lost a little of the off the grain do to a mis-hap lol

After a bit of a break to tend to some life issues, I decided to take some of UJs advice and start on my journey of learning various flavor profiles of individual grain. Having done several UJSSMs. I figured I'd move on to Rye.

This has been quite a learning experience. I just started my mash last night. The preparation process looked like something out of Laurel and Hardy or a Buster Keaton short. Last night I learned that I'm no match for the strength of rye through a mill. I've read about the experiences of trying to mill your own rye with manual hand cranked roller mills. "Oh it can't be that hard". Famous last words. The Mill slipped twice from on top of the pail, the hopper flew off while trying to brace the mill and hit my wife in the face, all in all, utter chaos ensued.....oh and lots of swearing too. The Barley Crusher took a beating and came through quite well once I had the rollers adjusted properly.

Things look successful thus far In testing the mash this morning as I let it cool. It seems like we have a winner to start fermenting tonight. This was a 100% malted rye. I didn't do a beta-glucanase rest at 95 degrees, but have had no thickening issues (probably since it was a malted rye) While my povidone-iodine solution didn't seem to react (it did with straight cornstarch), a taste test this morning showed it to be decently/naturally sweet.

Nice job njscofflaw

Ive most definitely found my poison with Rye... I have a 50 lb. sack of rye and 20 lb. sack of malted rye and 20 lb. sack of 6 row just waiting for me to get back from the oil field.

Uncle Jesse, thx for all the great info, I'm new at this and was curious, what is the purpose of the strainer in the bottom of the BOP?