First large batch mash

[venkman]

Well, last week I got my keg mostly built out for use. Got a nice 1" drain, a 2" tc ferrule down low, with a Dernord 5500watt element, and some nice casters. Using a basic cheap 220v SCR controller for now. I'm going to put a larger ferrule on top and a fill port at some point, but for now the Sanke 2" serves my purposes.

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I have all the 2" column/condenser/defleg parts to run this as a CM Reflux or a Pot, so I put everything on and did a full vinegar cleaning run. Then I used an old bottle of Everclear cut down to 30% with water along with some feints I had left over from my last two Vevor runs to do a sacrificial ethanol cleaning run.

I decided now with a clean system, I would use the ideas I got from SCD's Easy Large Batch Mashing and make a slight twist on Booner's Casual All Corn because of what I had on hand.

This past Saturday I did a keg charge of fully boiling water over 25lbs of cracked corn into a blue HDPE barrel. I let that sit while I heated up the next charge. I did a second charge over another 25lbs into the same barrel, then stirred everything real good with a drill mixer. When the temp hit about 185F, I added 3lbs of flaked rye and 2lb of toasted Quaker oats. That comes out to 90% corn, 6% rye, and 4% oats. Then I put in SebStar HTL at the recommended application rate.

I let that sit all day and overnight with the barrel wrapped up in blankets. Sunday morning, the temp was 148F. I added the recommended amount of SebAmyl GL, let it work for about two hours and then unwrapped all the blankets to let everything cool.

It was late afternoon on Monday before temp came down to 90F. At that point I added about 2 Tbsp of DAP, stirred. The PH came in at 4.9 and SG was 1.052. I pitched about 100g of bakers yeast. Now we wait... I saw some bubbling starting up when I checked it before bed. Tuesday morning it was roaring away. I checked it again this morning and the floating grain/yeast cap had sunk and it looked to be clearing a bit, but still very actively bubbling. I checked SG and it's at 0.998 (temperature adjusted - it read 0.996 at 80F) and still bubbling away.

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Excited to see how dry it gets and VERY excited to do my first run on the new keg. It tastes dry and bitter. I plan to do this batch in two stripping runs and then a pot distillation spirit run of the low wines. My focus this time around is going to be on making the best cuts I can, using smaller sampling jars. Any and all feedback/advice are welcome.