Been Experimenting With Different Malts- Victory Malt

[honkey]

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been doing a lot of experimenting with various types of malt that you would typically find in a brewery. My goal has been to see what each different type of malt provides to the final product, post distillation. I had read online some information about malts that I thought couldn't be true. Essentially, what I had seen posted was that different types of malts don't have an effect on flavor and the only thing that mattered was the grain. I thought I would share my experience

I've done the more common malts like rye, wheat, 2-row, and Peated Malt, but the other day I decided to try something different. I wanted to see what Victory would add to a whiskey. In beer brewing, victory is known to give a nutty, toasty flavor. It is typically used in nut brown ales. It is significantly darker than base malts, although it is possible to use as 100% of the malt bill. My malt bill was a 50/50 split between 2-Row and Victory and I fermented with American Ale Yeast (Wyeast 1056). The ABV was 7%. I ran it through my pot still and the taste was completely different from anything I've had before. The nuttiness from the Victory really came through a lot. Distilling seemed to really intensify the flavor. I plan on using it again to get the nutty flavor, but I think I will back off the amount. I really like the nutty flavor, but there is a little bit of bitterness that seems to come along with it. I think next time I will do a 70/30% split of 2 row to Victory. I have it aging on oak spirals now and I'll be splitting the 2 liters I've got into smaller portions to experiment with more. I'll be adding hops to some of it, and steeping specialty grains in some of it.