Home Distiller

"fermenting since sunday night and its already slowing down"
yeast love AG..

Yeah I have never had sugar wash take off like these did that is for sure.

I use champagne 1118.
Ill have to go look it up.

They are on the cold side maybe 65F.
Basement is cold and dark,

um.... I dont want to bring you bad news. But wine yeasts are not good at chomping on Maltose. Fruit sugars all day long but they are prone to stuck fermentations and high FG when you feed them maltose, which is what your whiskey mash is.

Also, EC-1118 exhibits the 'killer factor'. Meaning it doesnt like other yeasts and kills them, so if you tried to add a malt yeast now, say an ale yeast, the 1118 will wipe it out.

Do some google researching on the keywords above.

What is a good yeast fort Maltose?
I have another batch almost ready to mash.

I could kill the old batches off and let cool and pitch again if they dont get down to a reasonable level reading couldnt I?
seems as though it would be easy enough to do.

If it went hard for 3 days youre prolly fine. I wouldnt sweat it. If its a really high FG and wont go lower then I guess you could do something like that. Or just run it and move on, corn is cheap.

I use US-05, its a 'high attenuation' ale yeast. High attenuation means it ferments to a low FG. Others on here have great luck with bakers yeast. Others still use distillers yeast, like a crosby and baker.

Edit: BTW dont feel bad, I made a very similar mistake once, I added US-05 and then sprinkled some packets of 1118 I had on top hoping to squeeze some extra ferment out, and the kind folks here on this forum pointed out the error in my ways LOL. We're all learning. I just created a battle in my hooch mash. Luckily all turned out well.

Ok ill keep and eye on it and check the hydrometer in the next day or so
thanks man

Ok its still bubbling every 3 to 5 seconds. so maybe it will be ok.

Yeast are strange things, they can adapt pretty well to harsh conditions

It has dramatically slowed in a few short hours.
the hydrometer reads 1020 down from 1060. I dont know how accurate my first was at 98 degrees.

I tasted it and almost no alcohol at all.
I siphoned off a gallon and a half of each and heated. dissolved 5 lbs of cane sugar/beet sugar and added it back in.
They are rolling again, for how long i do not know...

I will do this until there is at least something to get back for the thumb pot charge at the very least.

Live and learn.

This next mash I am leaving on the grain over night and ill use correct yeast

I am not upset really
Sitting here thinking about it, the whole thing was very cheap and I learned a bunch of stuff most of which I will never do again.
Now I know what to expect and how to prepare for it next time.

I made people angry and felt stupid! BONUS!!

Xnerd wrote:It has dramatically slowed in a few short hours.
the hydrometer reads 1020 down from 1060. I dont know how accurate my first was at 98 degrees.

I tasted it and almost no alcohol at all.
I siphoned off a gallon and a half of each and heated. dissolved 5 lbs of cane sugar/beet sugar and added it back in.
They are rolling again, for how long i do not know...

I will do this until there is at least something to get back for the thumb pot charge at the very least.

Live and learn.

This next mash I am leaving on the grain over night and ill use correct yeast

I am not upset really
Sitting here thinking about it, the whole thing was very cheap and I learned a bunch of stuff most of which I will never do again.
Now I know what to expect and how to prepare for it next time.

I made people angry and felt stupid! BONUS!!

Why don't you just sit on your fucking hands and wait to see how things turn out instead of constantly fucking with things...??? Is it really that hard to be patient...??? If you're going to ask for help then stop letting you own thoughts dictate your destiny...!!! I hope this sends a clear enough message...

I dont know about your experience but when i wash slows to one bubble a minute there is either hardly any sugar left or your yeast is dead or dormant.
I tested and tasted it. it was not going to do any better. I think that the reason why it bubbled a bit at 7 am is i bumped my wash racks.

The wash's were dead or almost dead. there is no booze in them. I might be a noob at grain washes but I have done 50 sugar washes and I know when they are dead or dormant.
I had the choice of either dumping them out and starting over or taking 30 cents worth of sugar and spiking them back to life.

At least this way I will get some thumper charge out of the whole thing.

thumper wash? you said it dropped from 1060 to 1020. hell you got 40 points out of it. not bad for a wine yeast on maltose LOL. you went and took a nice AG and made a sugar wash out of it, shoulda just run it. or like rad says, quit dickin with it for a bit, prolly hit 1010 and then run it. haha, laughed my ass off at his response btw. definitely looks like youre getting in your own way some. haha. kinda amusing to watch tho lol sorry.

As I said I am not sure about the accuracy of my original hydrometer reading.
1060 was at with a shit ton of particulate matter suspended in it which in theory will change the density of the liquid and therefor the relative gravity reading.
Its not just sugar that cause a change in the buoyancy of a hydrometer
Resolve salt in water then test it!

You know as well as anyone that even at 40 pts you will be able to taste it.


Im done here. 2.5 lbs of sugar in 6 gallons is not going to dramatically effect anything in the first place.
I have read 100 mash recipes that call for a little sugar.
I have seen recipes that call for sugar at the end to raise the potential apv before pitching.

trust me there weren't shit in these, now there will be a little at least.

Im done here.

No worries mate, its all in good fun. Dont be mad at us, you cant flail around wildly in front of us and expect us not to be a little amused. haha.

Do up another AG, mash it well again, aerate it properly and pitch an appropriate yeast. Then promise us you'll leave your hands off it for a week at least!

jimdo64 wrote:No worries mate, its all in good fun. Dont be mad at us, you cant flail around wildly in front of us and expect us not to be a little amused. haha.

Agreed...

Ok so i stepped back and did two more 10 gallon batches of AG.

I cooked the corn a little longer and a little higher heat.
I mashed and in two hours a totally red Iodine test.
I left it alone over night anyway.
I wrapped it up in a blanket that kept it hot overnight.
I used US-02

Fermented for 5 days cleared for a couple more.

ran it all yesterday...
Ran it real real slow.... REAL slow.
This time I got lots of hearts and only a little heads detectable. (will know more when i temper it)
Even the tails on his stuff were good.

I can not believe the aroma and flavor that I got from this.
I can smell the barley in every jar,

I had to keep my self out of it! Its so superior to anything that I have done before!

try running fores/heads off slow then kick it up a bit.

Yeah that is good advice.
I just ran these two charges real slow because the first AG I stripped out to fast and everything mingled together.

Now that I know what to expect from this recipe I will ramp it up a when the heads clear.
I was real surprised how little heads I got out of this.

I wish I had a two gallon oak barrel, but they are fat to expensive for me at this point.
This stuff is premo straight out of the worm. I cant imagine how good it would be aged in oak.

Cool story about white oak.

A friend of my and former coworker lives on a couple hundred acres of hardwood forest in New Hampshire.
He had so send a machine that was being returned back to our company back to me.
He knew that I was a hobby wood worker so he milled up a bunch of his white oak and made a crate out of it to ship me the machine.
he packed it with boards! nice!

I still have a whole bunch of scrap, as well as some nice boards. Maybe what I need to do is roast or burn some of this to soak in a 5 gallon carboy full of AG.

MitchyB....that rolling pin idea may be a lot less messy if you put your malt/grain between two sheets of newspaper, in a shallow cooky sheet, and then roll the hell out of it. BTW - toss the newspaper after you've finished...it'll be tough to read anyway...

But personally, as usual I faced the problem the wrong way first, but never tried the rolling pin idea. I bought a hand grinder, and it works well but is time consuming to assemble and clean, slow, messy, and oddly out of place no matter where I try to store it. After two grinding cycles, I Then sprang for a grain grinder attachment to the wife's Kitchen Aid mixer, and am as happy as a clam in the bay now...Bought her the Kitchen Aid several years ago for her bread making...she rarely uses it now days, I attached the shiny new the grain grinder and simply leave it there, it is adjustable from a coarse to fine, and works just peachy for grain while on coarse. I've been cracking wheat, and barley malt, and mixing both whole grains with rolled oats for a new grain bill I've been working with and the process is easy, quicker, painless and easy to clean up after...

Boom.....

Thanks boom.

I actually was looking at KitchenAid attachments. Sort of expensive but they seem well built.
I have been looking for a used mill on Ebay and Craig's list. Forget Ebay anymore people sell shit for what it costs new these days.

Craig's list is just so hit and miss.

Grind size is my biggest issue now. I seem to get everything so fine that no sieve will hold it back.
I have been resorting to the grain bed to a giant rubbermade tub and tilting it. It takes hours to juice out.
So I am adjusting 2 extra gallons into my recipe to compensate then the spent grain bed that is still very sugary goes into Batches if UJSM.
This salves two problems for me. One being that everyone always wants some of my shine and I am not about to give away my AG!!!!
It seems to add a LOT of flavor to UJSM. I have learned to keep the hydrometer reading a bit lower on sugar and thin washes. It makes them a heap better.

I think that is one problem a whole lot of people suffer from in the beginning. They want too much too fast and it all ends up being nasty when you pump up too much sugar and rush the ferment.

I am going to try the rolling pin idea this afternoon.
Thanks for the input

Xnerd wrote:Thanks man I think that I got it more or less.

I got an old family recipe that says

10 gallons of water
17 lbs of rough ground corn (not flour)
5 lbs barley on the root.
cook light and let set open one day.
let rest 10 days.

So that makes some sense to your formula

What I dont have any idea of is how to grind this malted barley.
Some things that I have read indicated just cracked.
As I do not own a mill and only need 5 lbs should I just rolling pin it?
Or should I toss it in a food processor?

I have a small coffee grinder and could turn it into dust a half cup at a time if that is best???

Thank you very VERY much for your help.

I have made real real bad whiskey.... I am now trying to take the next step

Coffee grinder or food processor will probably make the malt to fine. You really want cracked pieces, like three or four pieces per kernel, not powder. You can use a plate grain mill used for making flower on a really loose setting, but will still make some powder. The ideal mill is a roller mill, I have a Valley roller mill, not expensive, I've had mine for 10 years, don't think they still make them, but I'm sure there are others like it.

place it in a heavy plastic bag inside a cloth ,then between two boards, then run over it.

a snip from a web search about Roller mills for home use:

Commercially Available Mills
Valley Brewing Equipment
1310 Surrey Ave.,
Ottawa, ON. Canada.
K1V 6S9
Tel: (613) 733-5241
Fax: (613) 731-6476
This local (same province) mill is relatively new and I have received favourable reviews (2 total) against other mills. Adjustable, 2 roller design with good throughput and crush. $145 Can ($99 US) +shipping.

Jack Schmidling Enterprises
18016 Church Rd
Marengo Illinois 60152
Ph# 815-923-0031
fAX# 815-923-0032
Adjustable or fixed rollers, good throughput/grind. Concerns about the unequal adjustment of the rollers. The most expensive but viewed very favourably by most.

Glatt Manufacturing
P.O. Box 116
5 Port Way
Dayton, WA USA 99328
tel: 509-382-4356
Adjustable 2 roller mill. Considered a good mill. Concern about the plastic gears but not a serious problem. Most mills have a follower roller but this one drives both rollers.

Brewers Resource
409 Calle San Pablo #104
Camarillo, CA 93012
Ph# 1-800-827-3983
1-805-445-4100
A new 2 roller adjustable mill that I have not received independent comments on. Brewtek claims comparable/favourable results when compared to other rollers. $90 US+.

Listerman Manufacturing Company
1776 Mentor Ave.
Norwood, OH USA 45212
tel: 513-731-1130
Adjustable 1 roller/plate mill. Concern about the single roller have been voiced. $75-$80 US+ makes it the least expensive roller.

Corona Mill
Columbia, South America
A very common (not a roller) and inexpensive ($40-$50 Can) mill on the market. Quality and quantity of grind is a concern. I have actually seen one of these, believe it or not.

No connection blah, blah, blah. If I had bought one it probably would have been the valley roller mill. Cost, quality, US exchange, local product, etc etc. check them out yourself.
Other Roller mill designs:
Home roller mill makers have been known to happen. Some were nice enough to feed my thirst for knowledge, here in short are there designs.

Terence Tegner(tegbrew@iaccess.za)
Yep, this is the guy from Africa. Terence engineered a 2 roller mill that will handle 10kg/min. Obviously motor driven it has 2 unknurled 6" diam X 10" length rollers made of mild steel. It spins one roller at 350rpm while using a different sized pulley (driven by the back of the same round pulley belt) to give the second roller a slightly diferent speed. This rolls/turns the grain as it is being crushed.

Andrew Keegan (akeegan@averroes.helios.nd.edu)
Forwarded me 2 roller designs but omitted his own as "experimental". Either a great loss of ideas or a plot of some kind, I'm not sure which. They are(in short):

Chris "Barny" Barnhart's (clbarnha@lettterkenn-emh1.army.mil)
Made a roller with 2" diamond knurled rollers. He feels that around the 4"-8" mark a smooth or only roughened roller is necessary. This seems reasonable to me and of important design consideration.

Tom Clifton
Made a roller mill of hard maple that were 4" in diameter with axial grooves to provide grip. He also noted a give in his bearings when crushing and would consider simple brass bushings considering the infrequency and low rpm's of use.

Will Self(wself@viking.emcmt.edu)
Forwarded me a design for a non-centered roller mill. This design used 4" diam, 40 schedule PVC tubing held in place by furniture casters fastened to the frame. A simple hand crank and cog(screw head + hole) system was used to drive both rollers. Knurling was applied with a Knife and a quality grind was the end product.

Wellington County Brewery(Guelph, Ont. Can)
Obviously not a homebrewer(Micro) but the only other mill I have Knowledge of(and have actually seen). This agricultural mill is best described as 2 wagon wheels which run against each other. Good crush, Good beer the final product tells me this design works.

This is the one I bought and it works perfectly. Chewed through hundreds of pounds of grain. Its 2 roller, adjustable and I have a drill mounted on the shaft. They put it on sale once in a while. Paid 89 for mine.

http://www.homebrewing.org/Cereal-Kille ... ?AffId=160" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

thats the brew shop that I go to Jimbo!

Well the one IN michigan

Xnerd wrote:thats the brew shop that I go to Jimbo!

Well the one IN michigan

cool! I grew up in Detroit, east side. Not much of a neighborhood, that, anymore, unless shoppin for crack. Sad. Live across the big lake now.

Yeah I grew up in the inner city but now live in the middle of a corn field in mid Michigan

Xnerd wrote:Yeah I grew up in the inner city but now live in the middle of a corn field in mid Michigan

Wow, Whiskey Maker's paradise, or what?

haha, you'd think huh, but them $11 bags of cracked corn are hard to beat at $0.22 a lb. Even if you could get a pile of corn dirt cheap off a local farmer, Just busting up that rock hard whole field corn alone is a ROYAL pain in the balls (dont ask me how I know).

Yeah big time. cracked corn is on sale 10 bucks today.

On a related topic:

I attempted to malt some corn that did not work well at all.
I got about 60% to sprout but it wouldnt convert shit.

I will try it again as soon as I can get my hands on some corn that I am SURE has not been kiln dried!

In the mean time, does anyone know of any sources for buying pre-malted corn? I cant find crap.

What I want to do is do an ALL corn mash!
I do LOVE the taste that barley imparts, and the aroma of the barley is great but I really really want to do an all corn mash!

Any thoughts?

Ok I just did another 10 gallon mash same grain bill.
I got terrible conversion for some reason.....

1.042 at about 105F degrees.
that is 20 points lower then I got last time. I am not happy with this right now.
I used backset at about 20% dont know if that could do anything...

Can I bump the sugar content using Dextrose? Or is that bad?
I hate to mess with something so low.