My Peat Came In! And Peat Questions.

[Beerswimmer]

I ordered some peat online to hopefully make Scotch with. It's Irish peat, not Scottish, but close enough? I plan on doing an all grain wash with some 6 row barley that I'm going to heavily smoke with the peat. Also I plan on adding some peat to the water as it's heating up to get a lot of peat flavor in the wash. Anyone do this before? How have you used peat? Anything I need to know before I start doing this? My life goal with this hobby is to make something similar to a Southern Islay scotch, my favorite!

[Hawke]

Smoke the malt, but the peat in the water is not going to have the same taste as the smoke.
Weigh the dry grain, then soak it for a bit. Smoke it until it is back down to the starting weight and mash away. Keep the heat down so you don't neutralize the enzymes.

[Beerswimmer]

Smoke the malt, but the peat in the water is not going to have the same taste as the smoke.


Keep the heat down so you don't neutralize the enzymes.

Yeah, I'm trying to get as much peat flavor as possible in the final product. The distilleries all say that their water is so loaded with peat that it's brown like tea. That's what I'm trying to duplicate. The smoke flavor is just for, well, smoke flavor

Yep, I plan on smoking the grains at a very low temp for a long time. I have a cold smoker for smoking my salmon that I plan on using. Should keep it in the low 100'sF. Should I go lower? I just want as much smoke flavor as possible without using additives. I'm going for a pretty much "all natural" whisky.

[Hawke]

Sounds like you are on the right track.