Jimbo's Easy Half Barrel Bourbon

Jimbo's Easy Half Barrel Bourbon Recipe

• 10 gallons water
• 2 gallons backset
• 4 teaspoons gypsum
• 22 lbs cracked corn
• 5 lbs wheat malt, milled
• 3 lbs 6 row, milled
• A good ale yeast

Jimbo's Easy Half Barrel Bourbon is a recipe for creating an all grain bourbon. The recipe was created by Jimbo and posted to the homedistiller forums.

Ingredients

• 10 gallons water
• 2 gallons backset (to lower the pH of the mash)
  • Or sub with 2 more gal water and 15ml lactic acid
• 4 teaspoons gypsum (calcium sulfate, lowers the pH a tad and yeast like Calcium)
• 22 lbs cracked corn (washed and drained with warm water in a bucket)
  • OR 16 lbs corn meal (corn meal converts more efficiently due to much smaller crack size).
• 5 lbs wheat malt, milled.
• 3 lbs 6 row, milled (or 2 row, or use 8 lbs wheat malt total)
• A good ale yeast (US-04, US-05, Nottingham, Wyeast 1272, WLP023 Burton or similar) 2-3 packets, or a healthy starter.

Yeast

A note on yeasts, US-05, Nottingham, WLP001 and Wyeast 1272 are very clean fermenting and produce very little esters. They make a great whiskey. US-04, WLP023 Burton and many other English style yeasts produce more fruity esters that will come across in the bourbon. The cuts get trickier and the final yield might be slightly less for these estery English yeasts but it does add a nice interesting touch to the bourbon.

Process

1. Bring the water, backset and gypsum to a boil in your half barrel BAP.
2. Turn the heat off and stir in the corn.
3. Wrap it up in extra blankets and let it steep cook for several hours or overnight. Note the corn is pasteurized now so nothing funky is gonna grow in there. Helps to stir a few times as the corn will settle.
4. After 3+ hours (or overnight) remove the blankets, stir well and check temp.
5. Cool the mash to 146F (63.3C), stir in the 8 lbs milled malt and wrap it back up tight in blankets. Stir occasionally.
6. After minimum 2 hours, or up to several hours, cool to 80F (26.7C) or below and pitch the yeast.
7. Ferment at 65-70F (18-21C). Don't ferment beer yeasts in the 80's, it's too hot for them and they'll get pissed and throw too much crap in your drink.
8. It will be mostly done in 3-4 days, if you leave it to ferment out dry 5-7 days the yeast will add more fruityness (a good thing). Don't let it go longer than 7 days ever.
9. When it's done, squeeze out the grain through a large mesh grain bag. You should get close to 11 gallons to distill.
10. Let it sit overnight to settle out. The cloudyness is yeast. You don't want to distill that if you can avoid it, but if in a pinch for time it's fine.
11. Rack the clear wash off the top of the settling buckets into your half barrel still.
12. Do a quick stripper run where you pitch 6 oz (~1.5 dl) of fores. Run the stripper until the low wines average about 30%, or as low as 20%.
13. Optional: save the backset from the stripper for next time. It's sterile, so it stores fine in a sterilized bucket. You can also freeze blocks in gallon ziplock bags.
14. Run the low wines slower in a spirit run. Pitch another 6 oz fores.

Cuts and Yield

Make your cuts to taste. This recipe gives Jimbo 4 quarts at 56% usually, without feints added to the runs, or a higher yield if you have feints to add. Age on toasted and charred all around oak. Don't touch it for 4 months, at that point its damn good. And only gets better with more time. At today's grain prices $11/ 50lbs corn, $48/50lb wheat and $46/50lb 6row, This works out to $11.22 for 7 fifths of 80 proof. Or $1.60 a fifth.

A note on oak aging, according to Jimbo - Oak needs to be toasted at 400-450 for 2-4 hours AND then charred all sides exposed to likker. Lots of ways to do this. Raw wood baked and charred gives more sweetness faster. Used barrels are great. Take a little longer. JD staves from a half barrel planter work great. I cut them into 1x1x5 inch sticks, and char the unexposed 5 surfaces with a torch. They are already toasted so don't need that treatment. Soak charred wood for several hours in water to remove some tannins and grit. For the JD sticks 1 ea 1x1x5 stick per quart. This is 88 sq inches per gallon. A 55g barrel gives about 52 square inches per gallon. I haven't done the math on 5 gallon barrels yet but them used Balcones barrels sure are nice, I have 3.