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After strenuous straining, I ran some sour mash through my pot still and everything seemed to turn out fine. That is until I smelled the distillate which has a distinct burnt corn smell. As a relative newbie to distilling, I was wondering if there is anything I can do about this? Will it dissipate with aging or will it just stay there?

Several things.

1. Did you simply make a stripping run? I.e. ran it fast, and did not make any cuts?

2. If you filtered, then there should be little "corn" left to be burnt. Does your still contain an electric element, or is it gas fired? If electric, see if there is burnt material on the coil.

It is possible that the mash had not completed, and there were still sugar complexes in there which scorched.

Note, when I strip a corn wash, I do certainly smell corn. To me it is not burnt however. The way I produce a whiskey is to first strip the wash (I do not filter, but I do "clear" the wash for a couple of days to drop out most yeast). When I do the strip run, the mash is not clear at all (if I put it into a glass tumbler I could probably see through it, but that is about as clear as it is). I run this fast (but carefully), and collect about 1/3 of the starting volume. I then collect up several of these runs, and then rerun that and do so carefully, to produce my product. On this 2nd run, I make careful "cuts" so that all of the heads that I want out of it are removed, and all of the tails I want out are removed. One way to do this is to collect into smaller containers (say a pint or less, depending upon the size of the still). Collect them, and keep track of the "order" they came out of the still. Then let those jars air out overnight, and the next day, water down a tsp from each, and sample to find which of the center jars (the body) to keep, and which are the head/tails which can be dumped back into your next spirit run. The first jar is usually trashed (or used as a cleaning agent), as it contains a high percentage of awfuls.

H.

Husker wrote:Several things.

1. Did you simply make a stripping run? I.e. ran it fast, and did not make any cuts?

2. If you filtered, then there should be little "corn" left to be burnt. Does your still contain an electric element, or is it gas fired? If electric, see if there is burnt material on the coil.

It is possible that the mash had not completed, and there were still sugar complexes in there which scorched.

H.

Thanks for the advice.

As far as I can tell I did everything right. I did a good stripping run, I filtered thoroughly, and by all measures my mash was finished. For some reason the wash had a strong corn smell throughout the process and it carried over into the distillate. After a night of airing out the smell has died down some but it is still has a strong corn flavor. Hopefully, I can knock most of that down through aging and flavoring.

Do you think it's possible that I let the mash ferment too long?

I have never experienced that, and I do distill on the grain.

You have only done a stripping run, or have you done 2 runs (strip, then a spirit run) ? If you have done 2 runs, and the cuts were done well (I use smell and taste to make my cuts), then I am at a loss as to why you have an off / burnt corn smell. If it is ONLY a strip run, then it should clear up on the final spirit run (I would hope).

H.

I know the smell you are talking about, in fact, I posted a similar question on the UJSM thread not long ago. What generation sour mash is it? I found that my first 3 generations were too strong in corn flavour (although it did get weaker every time) and after that it came good. The flavour does mellow on toasted oak.
I think I fixed mine completely by mixing my first 4 generations together, it also helps with consistency.

If its scorched best to just toss it.

happent to me several time when making the mash and had to much heat and not enough strirring. burnt shine is only good for lighting fires and removing sharpie markings of your collection bottles

CoopsOz wrote:I know the smell you are talking about, in fact, I posted a similar question on the UJSM thread not long ago. What generation sour mash is it? I found that my first 3 generations were too strong in corn flavour (although it did get weaker every time) and after that it came good. The flavour does mellow on toasted oak.
I think I fixed mine completely by mixing my first 4 generations together, it also helps with consistency.

I'm going off the UJSM recipe too. This is only a second generation mash so hopefully it will be like you said and the corn smell and taste will lighten up. I've been distress aging that last run for the past few days and it seems to have lightened some but it's still there. Other people don't smell it or taste it as much I do (probably since I know what I'm smelling and tasting for).

Thanks for the help.

drunk2much wrote:happent to me several time when making the mash and had to much heat and not enough strirring. burnt shine is only good for lighting fires and removing sharpie markings of your collection bottles

I don't think it was too much heat since I'm heating with a small alcohol burner and I ran it pretty slowly. I hadn't thought of stirring. It didn't look like anything had settled and burnt on the bottom, but I guess it's possible. How did you keep yours stirred? Once I put my condenser on the pot it gets too hot to take back off until the runs done.

to prevent my mash from scroching i took a 55 gal drum and cut the barrel down to ~1.5-2ft left from the bottom and made a water bath which i stick my 15gal brew pot inside of this barrel filled with water. This works great for elimiating the scorting that comes with extracting starch for the corn and becomes so thick its lick oatmeal on CRACK but, it usually takes longer since you gotta heat up more water and then i'm lifting a beer keg full of ~10-15 gallons of liquid and grain 3 foot high since my burner in ~1 foot high. lodgic would suggest i take this matter out to the shop and use the jib crane but there no water and other requried items.