Home Distiller

Hello all, it's Saturday night, I'm watching the Mtl-Tor game and reading HD. My name is Paul and I am a hobby moonshiner. I grew up around shine with my family and community.(descendants of county Monaghan Ireland.) The standard mash here has always bin sugar and molasses, strip run in a pot still and drank at 60%. Although great tasting I also wanted to do a corn whiskey.( dukes of hazard influence.) Over the last couple of years my internet searches kept taking me to HD. In the last few months this forum has become my home so I took the plunge and joined. Still working on the "holly Grail" of corn whiskey, but have already learned so much more. Great site and some very Intelligent people. look forward to continue learning from all you!

Ps: Mtl won in shoot out.

Welcome Paul,
Glad to have you onboard. There are many great recipes here for Whiskey. One of the most popular is UJSSM or Sweetfeed in the "Tried and True recipe" section. They have great flavor for a sugar head. Another is Booners All Corn, which is a little more difficult, but one of the more simple "all grain" recipes. Be sure to do your homework first and start with the links in my signature below:

Welcome from another Canadian. And shameful Habs fan (this year . . . damn they need Price back.....one more month they say). You've been given some good advice. UJSSM is a standard around here, makes a good sipper and mixer very easily. And booners is just pure corn goodness. I've made plenty of each. Along with Hookrum (if you like your molasses, check out hookrum in T&T.

If it's a pure corn recipe you want, without liquid enzymes, the dukes of hazzard stigma type thing, start reading up on malting corn. Before the days of using sugar, there was only malts. So if you want pure corn, malt yourself some corn. It's one of the easier grains to start with for malting. Just try a small batch at a time, maybe 5 or 10lbs. That's about all i can help with that. I've malted some feed store barley with fair success, but never tried corn (this summer is my goal). If you don't want to malt corn, and don't want sugar or enzymes, use malted barley. It has the best DP typically and you won't need much to get good conversion with a corn recipe.

Best of luck!

P.S.
Hope you weren't any of them guys on "that show" when they "portrayed" the Canadian side of things lol.

Thanks for the welcome guys.

Like I said I spend alot time on here lately. I start reading one thing and end up an hour later learning about something completely different. It is a little overwhelming by times! A few things a have learned on my quest is that there is no one answer to what real corn whiskey is. It's different for everyone. So I just me to inform myself the best I can looking at all the info on HD, and come up with my own definition. I also learned that I have ALOT to learn yet, about all aspects of this hobby.

I have done the sweet feed before, cracked corn and sugar(I will be trying UJSSM in the future). Lately I've done a few mashes with corn maize and malted barley. At moment I am in process of trying to malt some corn. If that goes good then I might head to the mash and ferment forum for advice. after that I am thinking about trying the enzyme route. I am starting to think making the shine is more additive then the alcohol it self!

Hey Moosemilk, better a habs fan then that other team to the west!!
By "that other show" do you mean Trailer park boys?

Noreaster wrote:

Hey Moosemilk, better a habs fan then that other team to the west!!
By "that other show" do you mean Trailer park boys?

That team to the west almost bested us a few nights ago! Shameful!
And nope, not Trailer Park Boys . . . but the other one that makes our hobby look so bad . . . "Moonsh***rs"

Welcome Paul, good advice has been given. enjoy the forum. @ Michigan Cornhusker, I wish I had about 50# of that right now! your making me thirsty.

MichiganCornhusker wrote:

image.jpeg

Show off

firewater69 wrote: I wish I had about 50# of that right now!

I do enjoy the process of malting corn.
Noreaster, I think one version of a "real corn" whiskey is one of the simplest: just malted corn, water, and yeast. I've done several of these runs and they all turned out great.
Right now I'm malting about 30# of corn as an experiment. I'm stopping the malting process at different sprout lengths, and using different methods to dry the malt.
I'm hoping to do some comparisons to get some idea what the DP of my home-malted corn might be, and also the effects of different heats when drying on the enzymes.
Good luck with your search, I think you'll enjoy the adventure.

Are you gonna do some in dark and in sunlite?Once sprouted I was taught to keep in dark to keep shoots from turning green when drying.

Tater wrote:Are you gonna do some in dark and in sunlite?Once sprouted I was taught to keep in dark to keep shoots from turning green when drying.

I try to keep everything in the dark now.
The first time I malted, I got a lot of green sprouts and it definitely had a more grassy, sharp flavor.
I was in a pinch, and had to travel when the corn was ready to dry, so I bolted the drying rack to the top of my van and drove around for 3 days while the corn dried on top.
It did get a lot of sunlight, though, and I think got rained on at least once.

MichiganCornhusker wrote: To make snow malt whiskey, you must wrench the kernels from the cob, lovingly malt the corn in small batches by hand, wait for a brilliant Michigan snow storm, and harvest the snow by moonlight, melt it, and use it to make a nectar worthy of the Gods.
A simple stripped down recipe, corn malt, water, yeast.
The finished bottle, as with all of our bottles, will be filled with love, sweat, experience, anticipation, and accomplishment. I believe that essence is impossible to steal.

This is how some do it. Traditional enuf.
When I think traditional corn, I think malted corn, water and yeast. Just my two pennies.

MichiganCornhusker wrote: I was in a pinch, and had to travel when the corn was ready to dry, so I bolted the drying rack to the top of my van and drove around for 3 days while the corn dried on top.
It did get a lot of sunlight, though, and I think got rained on at least once.

Dammit, I wish I could have seen that!

Kegg_jam wrote:Dammit, I wish I could have seen that!

Well, I never got a good photo of the tray on top of the van, but here it is in the back.
I originally thought I could just put it in the back and keep the windows down to get air flow back there, and it would dry out. But there wasn't enough airflow, and I was afraid of my first batch of corn malt rotting.
So I stopped off at a Lowes, got a few angle clips, and screwed it down to the roof of the van. Then I stapled window screen over the tray to keep everything from blowing out. Worked great.
From street level it just sort of looked like a redneck roof rack, but from above it looked pure awesome.

MichiganCornhusker wrote:

Kegg_jam wrote:Dammit, I wish I could have seen that!

Well, I never got a good photo of the tray on top of the van, but here it is in the back.
I originally thought I could just put it in the back and keep the windows down to get air flow back there, and it would dry out. But there wasn't enough airflow, and I was afraid of my first batch of corn malt rotting.
So I stopped off at a Lowes, got a few angle clips, and screwed it down to the roof of the van. Then I stapled window screen over the tray to keep everything from blowing out. Worked great.
From street level it just sort of looked like a redneck roof rack, but from above it looked pure awesome.

road corn.jpg

Are you Positive you are not from KENTUCKY or WEST VIRGINIA???
Some strange genes in the pool there.
Malting corn is not hard, but getting the rest of the process perfected is more difficult.
Listen what these fellas say; they helped me a lot.

jedneck wrote:

MichiganCornhusker wrote: To make snow malt whiskey, you must wrench the kernels from the cob, lovingly malt the corn in small batches by hand, wait for a brilliant Michigan snow storm, and harvest the snow by moonlight, melt it, and use it to make a nectar worthy of the Gods.
A simple stripped down recipe, corn malt, water, yeast.
The finished bottle, as with all of our bottles, will be filled with love, sweat, experience, anticipation, and accomplishment. I believe that essence is impossible to steal.

This is how some do it. Traditional enuf.
When I think traditional corn, I think malted corn, water and yeast. Just my two pennies.

That sounds like what I am trying to make. I had to snowmobile to a neighbours back forty to pick corn he left last fall because of a wet spot in the field.(Hard to find corn not gas dried this time of year) Got it home and shelled it by hand till my hands bled. Soaked and sprouted it in the basement. So all I need now is to melt some snow and mash it in
Seriously though, I am pretty excited to see my hard work start to sprout. Now I need to decide my next move. Like when and how to dry, and a mashing process. If possible I would like to ferment whitout yeast. Back to the books for more research!

Picking from standing stalk by snowmobile does take it up a notch!
Sounds like you have a great batch going.
I would air dry your corn malt to protect the enzymes produced.
If you want to experiment, you could try toasting or roasting 20% of your malt to give the whiskey another layer of flavor.
You will need yeast. You may open it up to the world and wait for some wild yeast to drift in and take hold, but there will be yeast.
Thanks for the update, looking forward to hearing how this turns out, good luck.

Hello Michigan Corn husker. I was just reading your thread on malting and drying. I am thinking about placing my corn on top of my wood boiler and maybe blow a little air over it with a Small fan. Air temp is some where between 70-80f. As for the yeast, I will add after mashing. I know little to zero about wild yeast.
It's snowing tonight so I juess I should go out and collect that for my snow malt whiskey.lol

Be careful putting your malt over the boiler, those fresh enzymes are fragile.
Maybe put you tray up on blocks to get air under it. Would hate to have you denature those poor fellas before the could get to work.

If you are collecting tonight, keep in mind, 20 gallons snow = 1 gallon water!
I don't think a gallon of snow has fallen on me this year, very strange.

The real corn recipe?

Water, corn, malt and yeast.

(had to give a smartass reply considering the forum we are on )


How/ what amounts you add and what you do to combine those ingredients is the magic!

Worm_Drippinz wrote:The real corn recipe?

Water, corn, malt and yeast.

(had to give a smartass reply considering the forum we are on )


How/ what amounts you add and what you do to combine those ingredients is the magic!

Thats ok Worm Drippinz. I know this is not a"how to" thread but a welcome-introduction one. My goal is an all corn mash and a single run through my pot still and doubler. I am going save the hearts for me and a few close family and friends! UJSSM and Hook rum for everyone else.

Listen to me: "save the hearts, UJSSM, Hook rum." Already I am started to sound like a Pro! Anyway back to the basement. On my 4th gen of UJSSM and starting to play around with white oak flavoring using hot and cold cycles.

Your going to have awesome results and I look forward to your personal findings.


Its always fun experimenting with stuff as long as the house doesn't end up burning down.


Welcome to HD, time to pull up them boot straps!