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If you like a really smooth whisky you need to try this recipe I have run it several times. It is easy and so far I have never had a ferment stall. If you try it let me know what you think. I have some that has aged on oak for about 2 months and it is really smoothing out. I oak at 55% ABV.


this is for 6 gallon wash

4" of sweet feed in the bottom of the bucket
7 pounds of white sugar
5 packets of bakers yeast or 8 tablespoons

heat 2 gallon of water to good hard boil then pour the water in the sweet feed add your sugar and stir for about 15min. the let stand for 90min. fill to 6 gallons with cool water after waiting 90min., your temp should be around 90F sprinkle your yeast in and stir gently. cover with lid and add your airlock. Mine is normally bubling away in about 4-6 hours. will run pretty good for about 2 days then will slow to a very slow rate. leave it for 5 days or untill you see it trying to clear sometimes it is 6 days. after that set it a cool place for about 24hours then rack it off and distill it. I normally get about 4 qaurts of low wines. sometimes my quart in the middle taste good enough I keep it aside and drink it just as it is.

after I run this through a pot still I use about half of my backset while it is still hot I put 7 pounds of sugar in the hot backset and convert my sugar. Let that cool to about 90F pour this back into your fermentor on your grain and yeast that was left in your bucket. add enough water to make 6 gallons normally my yeast wake up and are bubling away in about 4-5hours.

It seems very easy to me. I have really had good success with it. you can normally get your sweet feed at any farm supply store 50lbs for 7 bucks. It will last a long time

Mod edit to help with different size vessels:
Thanks Prairiepiss for the extra time on the calculations
So NIN posted that 4" in a 5 gal bucket is 7.69 lbs. It doesn't need to be exact. So let's break it down here.
You could go 1.5 to 1.75 lbs of sweetfeed and 1.5 to 1.75 lbs of sugar to a gallon of water. With no problems.
Or for the metric guys. .180 to .210 kg of sweetfeed and .180 to .210 kg sugar to 1 lt of water.
Or easier terms. Equal parts sweetfeed and sugar to end up with the SG you want.

Here is another one from parent site A "genuine" moonshine recipe, as still being used by Deb Brewer is ...

* 5 gallon bucket all grain horse feed (we use MannaPro Hi Grain sweet feed)
* one package of yeast (using bread yeast now--others will increase quality and ferment time)
* 5 pounds sugar
* water
Put enough feed to cover bottom of 5 gallon bucket a good 4 inches deep Add 5 pounds of sugar. Fill 1/2 full with warm water--warm enough to melt sugar but not so hot as to kill yeast. Mix until sugar is dissolved. Add yeast and mix some more finish filling with warm water--again not so hot to kill the yeast. Cover with lid--our lid has a little cap that screws on, leave it loose to breathe.

4-5 days later it's ready to run! This is an old-timer recipe and works quite well. Our liquor is always 170-190 proof. You can substitute corn meal for the grain (horse feed) but I don't recommend this for pot stills cuz you can't filter it well enough. The meal will settle and burn in the bottom of your still. The old-fashion way of making corn liquor--with real corn--just is not feasible time wise.

hey there Tater that is where this recipe came from. I just bumped it up a little to get more alcohol from a run. It is just so good and easy I could not believe more people aren't using it. everyone that has tasted this stuff loves it. I am not trying to claim this as my recipe i just think it is a really easy and cheap recipe.

Yep about every recipe that's sugar and fruit or sugar and grain was probably from a shiner.Just have to put your touch to it and make it your own .

Doing a stripping run on this recipe today. I have found that distillers yeast works a little better I think. After I do this stripping run I will see if the flavor afected.

just finished the stripping run. I got 6 quarts of low wines from 80% abv (3 quarts) then started dropping off down to 40% ABV. very pleased.

Kentucky shinner, is there any ingredients that I need to stay away from in the sweet feed? I purchase this stuff all the time from my local feed store and they have several different ones to choose from, molasses/corn, canemolasses/oats, etc...I will try one batch of your recipe and post my results. I will be running it through a pot still.

what I have been using is corn, oats, and molases . Let me know how it goes for ya.

mine also seems to finish quicker when i use distillers yeast. If you have any you might want to try it that way.

Thats pretty much all I use, superstart distillers yeast, have had great results with it and it is very temperature tolerant.

Hey, Mud.... sounds we fixin' to try thisin' out!!!

This one sounds really good, can't wait to run off the Birdwatchers that is in the fermenter so we can get this one started.

The last couple of days it will really slow down but will still be working. when it is finished it looks like a dark beer, I think the wash taste pretty good when finished also. Good luck and let me know what you think.
Kentucky Shinner

If you have tried this recipe let us know what you think. I had a old timer who has been sippin shine for years said this was some of the best he had ever drank. I let him try some that I had stripped then ran through my bokakob. I was really happy to get his vote of excelence. I know he was being honest becuase he did not know who made it until after he tasted..

Please forgive my ignorance but what actually is 'sweetfeed'?

It might be called something different here in the UK.

Grain feed for the livestock.
It has molassas in it.

ty-tek wrote:Please forgive my ignorance but what actually is 'sweetfeed'?

It might be called something different here in the UK.

http://www.google.com/search?q=sweet+feed" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

It's part of your ongoing research... Don't be afraid to Google before asking...

rad14701 wrote:Don't be afraid to Google before asking...

I did and thought I was looking at the wrong thing. I wasn't expecting to be making whiskey from animal feed!!!

"" wasn't expecting to be making whiskey from animal feed!!!""
We do that all the time, form making rum out of animal molasses to mashing with their grains.
the same as you mite eat just not as refined more like you'd fiend in a health food store.
the molasses is filtered ,bottled and sold as "black strap" the grains are polished and sold
as "barres" or ground into "whole" flour.also some are steamed and flattened then you have
things like "oat meal".corn is ground and germ removed and sold as "corn meal"
Iv eaten a bunch of it over the years,I save some "trub" and that goes grate in bread
gives bread a flavor like "multigrain" probably better for you as it is true whole grain.

Dnderhead wrote:"" wasn't expecting to be making whiskey from animal feed!!!""
We do that all the time, form making rum out of animal molasses to mashing with their grains.
the same as you mite eat just not as refined more like you'd fiend in a health food store.
the molasses is filtered ,bottled and sold as "black strap" the grains are polished and sold
as "barres" or ground into "whole" flour.also some are steamed and flattened then you have
things like "oat meal".corn is ground and germ removed and sold as "corn meal"
Iv eaten a bunch of it over the years,I save some "trub" and that goes grate in bread
gives bread a flavor like "multigrain" probably better for you as it is true whole grain.

I feel a bit daft now

What ingredients should I look for and avoid?

all animal feed is made from is corn, wheat and oats with molases added. You can buy it for about $8.00 for a 50# sack. If you buy cracked corn your also buying animal feed. The other grains just kind of round out the flavor and the molases just kind of adds a sweat finish to it. It has a totally different flavor than pure corn whiskey.

one change I have made to my recipe is I have started using only distillers yeast. I seem to get higher abv in my wash.

I have been told to ask for sweetfeed for horses. It does not have anything added like antibodies. Horses cant tolerate many things that other animals can, so they keep it very pure.

What about pellets in the feed?
Must it be pellet free feed??

what we get here has no pellets, only the grains and molasses. I dont know what the pellets are.

Kentucky shinner wrote:what we get here has no pellets, only the grains and molasses. I dont know what the pellets are.

That's the point I'm making, pellets could be made of anything.

I'll just have to be careful when selecting which one I go with.

What sweetfeed brand/product do you use?

I have searched for horse feeds in the UK and couldn't find any sweetfeeds - they might be called something else here maybe?

sweet feed is not generally given to horses they do not digest sugar well. but some times given as a treat/training as horses love sweets. sweet feed is more of a cow/goat? thing.

I've been searching for MannaPro Hi Grain sweet feed and keep getting hits on distilling sites (here included).

There doesn't seem to anything like this product here in the UK, I'm searching for alternatives.
I could always make my own but I'd need the recipe...

My Dad raised horses for years. He fed Sweetfeed everyday along with extra corn. I know of many that feed it to there horses around here.