My first UJSSM

[Bstillin]

Okay so at that the end of my last post I talked about how I got so excited about this hobby and rushed out to start my first UJSSM. Well I got it done and its now on Generation #2. So heres what I put together.

2-5gal buckets
12 cups cracked corn, each
12 cups sugar, each
4 gal water, each
2 Tb baker’s yeast, each

First I warmed up my water to 90F. Put the corn, sugar and water together in my buckets. Gave it a stir to help sugars dissolve. Pitched the yeast and covered it. Let it sit for 4 days and checked it. Still some bubbling but this was my last day off and wanted to get it moving forward to a sour mash. I syphoned both buckets off into my 36qt pot. Filled it up pretty good but left it with around 3in of head room. Fired it up and waited. It took 2 hours to get it up to temp. It was cold outside that day. Now I was running through my pot still again and letting it go a 3-4 drip/sec rate. Im still trying to get used to running my equipment. I tossed the first 250ml then collected in 100ml batches. Collected around 2500ml total. Is this too much? I could definitely notice a difference in smell and taste as things went along. I still don’t have any equipment for measuring sg and abv, so im not sure where I was at with any of that. But it was getting kinda late and my wife was on my case ab stuff. So I covered each jar with a coffee filter and let them sit for a day. Things do change when u let them sit. Decided not to keep the first 750ml, it had a smell/taste I didn’t care for. The rest of it seemed pretty smooth and tasty. I think. Never had stuff like this before. I drink Pendleton a lot so this was a whole new flavor to me.

So after syphoning I scooped up ab 2 cups of floating corn out of each bucket, and replaced it with 2 more. Added 3 gal of water to one, as I had read to do. And 2 ½ gal to the other bucket. Now one bucket I decided to play around with. I picked up some rye the other day and wanted to put that in one bucket so I took 2 cups of rye berries and coarsely chopped them up, tossed them in a half gallon of water and warmed it to 160F. Covered it, turned the heat off and let it sit until it cooled down to about 80F, then added it to the bucket. Added 12 more cups of sugar to each and gave then a stir. After I was done running my still I let the backset cool down to about 80F and added it too each bucket. No real measurement just filled to where the last batch was at. I figure that was good enough. So now it’s another waiting game.

So when I was getting close to the end I tried to turn up the heat and run it hard. Well my still lid started to bounce a lil and it was making a heavy huffing sound out of my liebig. Was this too much liquid to have in my pot? I tried adjusting the flow of water in my liebig to see if anything would help. My last batch was a lil more than half of this and I had no problems running it hot and heavy. After I disassembled I checked to make sure all was clear in in my column and condenser. And it was. After this I am considering finding a stainless bowl to make as my new lid.