Home Distiller

If following the 80/12/8 ratio of corn,rye,malt. After Fermentation, what ABV% are you looking for before distilling? Or whats a good benchmark to shoot for?

try this, depends on allot of factors, what kind of malt etc etc
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator

Thanks, I used the same calculator when brewing beer. Guess what I meant is, should I shoot to distill 12%abv. From the mash or is 8% better. Assuming no difference, just means more alcohol volume that would be stilled.

It is very hard to get an all grain mash above 7 or 8 % when it contains 80 % corn. Having an all grain much higher than 8% may not even be a good thing. To get higher than 8% you would need to have more than 2.5 lbs of total grain per gallon of water. I think the main impediment is that the enzymes would have trouble converting the starches into sugar due to the thickness of the mash.

Per gallon of water I usually use:
2 lbs of corn
0.25 malted rye
0.25 malted red wheat

And I'm lucky to get 7 - 8%

6% to 8% is what most AG distillers shoot for. But unlike brewing beer. Most distillers down boil the wort. So that makes a difference.

That right Mr. P, I never boil the wort. Boiling the wort would destroy the enzymes, take more energy and just ain't necessary... For distillin.

Great info guys, it's the little things that are catching me up. Would have thought to boil the wort to sanitize before adding yeast. Thanks for that little tidbit. Prairie, is that for a 5 gal wash? Thanks again fellas

I aim for 7%, but rarely get it. Anything with a tolerance of 1% is okay with me...

They usually come out between 6 and 7%. I do not aim higher than that but rather go for a better efficiency from conversion...

Note: When brewers aim for a high alcohol beer > 8%, they convert their grains to the ratios above then boil longer for greater evaporation of H2o. This brings the SG up, hence, more alc in the beer...

I can't say what the best is to aim for, but when homebrewing it isn't a problem to hit an ABV of above 7-8% from all malt. You do lose efficiency of the sugar your are able to extract once you start to get a starting gravity over around 1.075 or 1.080. You also need to use more yeast to ensure that all that sugar ferments out to alcohol and control the temp to make sure you don't produce too much fusel alcohol. My experiences are based on a ~10 day fermentation.

The malt profile for beers with high starting gravity and low finishing gravity generally does include sugcrose. Belgian Triples and Double IPA's almost always use this to boost alcohol and ensure a low finishing gravity of below 1.010

The other thing that can affect this is the mash temp. There is an all malt triple that is VERY dry and the brewer told me they mash at around 140* F for 2+ hrs. Once you get above 152-154 as mash temps you end up with more complex sugar chains which are less fermentable

This is all based on malted barley as the primary source of fermentables.