Bourbon mashing

[MaxTT]

Hi all, my other thread was accidentally deleted so here's take 2.
For those that do, how do you mash your corn, barley/rye? I have been boiling for about 30 mins, then letting sit until t correct mash temp for barley, then leaving for 1 hour. I then bucket through a strainer into fermentor. I still think I leave a bit of high of wort behind. How do you do it?

[Sam.]

Yep that would have been my bad everyone :violence-smack:

Have you thought about using whats left to chuck in a fermenter with more water and add some sugar for a sugar head wash?

Or don't you want to be fermenting on the grain? :think:

What sort of quantities of grain are you talking and wash volume?

[Hill]

Id say your doing it backwards if your trying to get fermentable sugars out of that, by boiling you are stopping the conversion that you want to take place, generally you would mash at between 60 and 70 for conversion, if you go over 73 and right up to boiling you would stop the conversion, my guess would be that once the mash has dropped to your mashing temp you would have denatured a lot if not most of your enzymes that you wanted to convert.

[MaxTT]

To clarify, I simmer (not boil..my bad), the corn and mash the grains when the temp is at 67. I had not thought about reusing the grains..good idea, although I am not sure how much more I could extract after a decent strain/sparge.

I am using About 7kg corn, 4kg barley, 1kg rye. I crush my own grains. I will consider further crushing the cracked corn.
I make up about 40l wash.

[Hill]

Did you take any gravity readings?? if you will get more fermentables out will depend on what gravity you got in the first place, lets forget for a sec the fact I think you have lost a lot/ majority of fermentables by boiling/simmering (same thing) first, you should be using a water to grain ratio of about 3 : 1 grain to water, conversion should take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours and I'm guessing you will get a gravity of about 1070 max, now sparging can give you more volume but might just bring your gravity down to 1065 or 1060 depending on the all the numbers. Crushing the corn/grain more can give you a little more fermentables (0005 OG) but is more likely to give you a stuck mash, I would start by getting your mashing down and listing the water amount put in and also take some gravity readings then you can work out where to go from there.

let me If any of that doesn't make sense I can elaborate.

[MaxTT]

Are you saying you shouldn't simmer the corn? I have always worked on advice from sources such as this http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=17750 which is NC hooch's carolina bourbon.
I have been mashing beers for almost 10 years so I know all about saccharification and how the sparge works with barley, but corn is a new player for me.

[Hill]

Sorry mate I was mainly talking about the any grains, iv read from a few sources you slowly bring the corn to a boil and then drop to mashing temps. From what you listed down I was really trying to work out what you were trying to achieve, maybe a bit more info needed. Originally you were saying you might be leaving wort behind, so why are you worried about leaving wort behind?, Did you not get enough gravity? If you sparge you are only going to bring your gravity down as the second runnings will be half or a quater of the first runnings. I'm limited in experience mashing corn as well mate but from everything iv read a finer mill is the last thing I would be doing.

[MaxTT]

What's the issue with issue crush.

[Hill]

You mean the finer crush??

Corn is already thick to mash, by crushing it up finer it's just going to be even thicker, I also don't believe you will get much more in the way of fermentables by crushing it up.