Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Sounding good, the yields from corn are usually less than barley and more work but worth it if that's your preferred drink.
You can drastically increase cooling by wrapping a wet towel around the mash vessel and putting a fan on it. Cheap and effective.
The yanks tend grind very fine and to boil for 1 to 2hrs which seems to increase the yield but makes separation harder.

Manchestershine wrote:

ultrasuede wrote:Don't expect a huge yeild mate. Especially if you used feed corn (unless it's sweet feed) my first 50l batch yeilded one and a half bottles of 50% greatness. The corn from the feed shop contains more protein than convertible starches on purpose.

It's feed corn, the people I bought it off said it was 71% carb about 9% protein (with some worm and moth larvae thrown in for free). I know popcorn is higher about 77% carb, sweet corn is 76% carb. Couldn't find sweet corn supplier but could get popcorn in 15kg bags but I didn't want to wait for delivery so settled on the feed corn, plus the feed corn was already cracked.

What does this mean to convertible sugars? I don't know. I boiled the shit out of it and it stayed over 80'c for about 10hrs, I'm hoping for more than 1.5 bottles! Will let you know how it goes.

Care to share where to get 15kg bags popcorn? :D

bluc wrote:

Manchestershine wrote:

ultrasuede wrote:Care to share where to get 15kg bags popcorn? :D

popcorn.com.au

I didn't know at the time of initial searching but they also have a depot in Brisbane:

66 Neon St, Sumner QLD 4074
popcorn.com.au
(07) 3712 0222

They do a 15kg bag, I'll ask my HBS if they will crack it for me when I next buy the malted barley. It's bound to be a lot cleaner, less husk pieces, slightly higher carb content and hopefully no worm things.

coffe addict wrote:Sounding good, the yields from corn are usually less than barley and more work but worth it if that's your preferred drink.
You can drastically increase cooling by wrapping a wet towel around the mash vessel and putting a fan on it. Cheap and effective.
The yanks tend grind very fine and to boil for 1 to 2hrs which seems to increase the yield but makes separation harder.

If I had only thought of that!

I pulled the corn mash this morning SG 1.005 and strained it out. I originally added 50l of water and managed to strain out 46l. I just put 25l through my still and came out with 4l at 37% ABV (stopped collection at 20%) on a stripping run. I've got to head out soon so will do the second run later tonight.

This looks like it will yield about ~7.5l at 37% on stripping runs, I had a bit of taste test around mid way and yeah the corn really carries over but much sweeter than I expected, nothing unpleasant from the wild yeast exposure.

I'm not finished yet but I'm calling it a success, no added sugar a really long boil, wild yeast start and finished with bakers yeast.

When I get time to do spirit run, I'll put it on heavy char American oak for a couple of months (if it lasts).

I found a supplier in Bris that does flaked maize (no need for the boil) and manuka smoked malt, will try that next week.

Congrats sounds like decent yield and a sucsessful mash :handgestures-thumbupleft: ..