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Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:17 pm
by ThePaterPiper
Thanks guys, one of each lol. I think given the extra investment with the grain I will grab some water from coles just in case.

BTW, I have to give Steve at Brewman some snaps. Ordered grain yesterday, turned up today! Very pleased. Now to free up some time on the weekend to get mashing!

Thanks again

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:08 pm
by ThePaterPiper
Ok,

Finally, it's mash time!! :handgestures-thumbupleft: :dance:

8kg of medium cracked malt. 60% medium 40% heavy. (Forgot that part in why's today's mash section)

Heated 38l of coles spring water to 73°c and into the esky with my home made BIAB bag. FYI, no matter what the sewing lady at the shop says, muslin is NOT strong enough for this purpose :angry-banghead: , but more on this later.

Anyway, I have read heaps in the beer brewing world about BIAB with the full target volume of water in, plus a liter for each kilo of grain. Simplicity and very little difference in overall efficiency apparently, however, with all that water in the esky, both my mate and I thought hmm... anyway, with the hope of the grain absorbing a liter per kilo, we slowly added the grain whilst stirring. All good, no overflows, but next time, 25l max I think, then sparge.

So temp is at 66° for the mash, close the lid and open it up every 15min for a good stir. After an hour, did an iodine test and nothing but light brown. Very happy :happy-partydance:

Try to take out the bag and rrriiipppp! x_x :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: as I said before, muslin is not what to use. Anyway, we finally got enough hands on the bag to spread the pressure and lifted it out, lit it dribble for a while, and get it in the bucket. It dead set looked like haggis! And smelt AMAZING!! All that peaty, malty goodness, my hands still smell of it. :think: well enough of that!

In goes the immersion chiller, quickly down to 30° and we are now under the pump a bit because the storm is coming in. So pour out, through a sieve thanks to my dodgy home made BIAB :oops: and we collect about 35l of wort! So much for absorption of 1L per kilogram. Still more wary isn't something to get upset about is it???

Temp down to 29 by now and it was time to pack up and me to go home, so pitched at a bit warm a temp, but the yeasties were well happy in their starter so they should be ok. Used Safale US-05 as we couldn't source safspirit for today.

Now it's wait for the yeasties to do their thang! :happy-partydance: :dance:

Oh, and we froze 2 kg of the spent grain to capture some of hat peatie goodness into our NGW. But that's for another thread. :music-deathmetal:

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:26 pm
by ThePaterPiper
Oh crap! Forgot the photos!

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Home made BIAB. waste of time

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Just some of the spilt grain from the bag failure.

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Looks like haggis, but that ain't no sheeps stomach

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Little baggie, well, one kilo of peatie goodness about to be frozen for addition to gen 3 NGW

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The fermenters are starting to line up. Looking forward to some 'stillin'


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Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 6:18 pm
by ThePaterPiper
Lads and lassies! The day has finally come to run this through Nessie and Thumper. Big day for us, 1st all grain, 60% medium, 40% heavy peat and the ferment has been steady and strong. Smell was amazing. Gravity started at 1.051 finished at 0.991. So about 7.9% in 35l of wash.

Charged boiler and thumper and off we went.

Only about 150ml fores if that. We normally take about 250ml but no smell of fores at that point so straight on to collection jars from there.

Run at only 1.36l/h (avg) but didn’t want to push it as the temps were a little higher than we were used to and the ABV was a little low.

Jar
1. 70% @ 88°
2. 68% @ 88°
3. 66% @ 88°
4. 64% @ 89°
5. 62% @ 90°
6. 60% @ 91°
7. 56% @ 91°
8. 52% @ 92°
9. 50% @ 93°
10. 45% @ 93°

There were 5 more jars but I had to go home :roll:

Will report back after 48hours after making our selections for blending.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 6:26 pm
by ThePaterPiper
Oh, forgot to mention. This stuff carried heaps of flavour over into the product. Only tried the odd dipped finger under the parrot, but my gosh this stuff has some flavour. Can not recommend doing this too much. Hope the flavour stays through the oaking process. Plan to do one heavy toasted stick and one heavy charred.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 9:12 am
by ThePaterPiper
Selected our cuts for blending last night, kept jars 4 to 10. Seemed to be a lot of smearing of the tails despite such a slow run. Not worried about that though, kept 9 and 10 despite having a wee bit of the wet dog about it, but very tolerable compared to jar 14 and 15 which were horrible to he nose. :puke-huge:

So in a jar it went at only 55% with two sticks of American oak, one heavy toasted and the other mild toasted and medium charred. Plan on taking the heavy toasted out after a month. Does that sound right?

Also, we have just left the jar covered with paper towel, will that be fine, or will too many angels get in? o:-)


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It’s a big old bushels jar. About 3l I assume

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 7:50 pm
by EziTasting
ThePaterPiper wrote:Gravity started at 1.051 finished at 0.991. So about 7.9% in 35l of wash.

Wow, ours started about that low but never went below 1.000... good job!

ThePaterPiper wrote:Only about 150ml fores if that. We normally take about 250ml but no smell of fores at that point so straight on to collection jars from there.


We found the same... very little forshots (what we’re used to from to Tried & Proven recipes anyway!) and almost no heads!
Clearly we are inexperienced, but I was surprised how little there was!! :-B

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for tails... nearly as much as what we decided to keep! :angry-banghead:

Good write-up.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 6:24 am
by wynnum1
"Try to take out the bag and rrriiipppp! x_x :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: as I said before, muslin is not what to use. Anyway, we finally got enough hands on the bag to spread the pressure and lifted it out, lit it dribble for a while, and get it in the bucket. It dead set looked like haggis! And smelt AMAZING!! All that peaty, malty goodness, my hands still smell of it. :think: well enough of that"



I do not put the bag in the mash tun put the biab bag in a big stock pot and scoop it out with a jug and do it in batches .

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 6:24 pm
by ThePaterPiper
EziTasting wrote:
ThePaterPiper wrote:Gravity started at 1.051 finished at 0.991. So about 7.9% in 35l of wash.

Wow, ours started about that low but never went below 1.000... good job!

ThePaterPiper wrote:Only about 150ml fores if that. We normally take about 250ml but no smell of fores at that point so straight on to collection jars from there.


We found the same... very little forshots (what we’re used to from to Tried & Proven recipes anyway!) and almost no heads!
Clearly we are inexperienced, but I was surprised how little there was!! :-B

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for tails... nearly as much as what we decided to keep! :angry-banghead:

Good write-up.


Thanks Ezi. We both found tails a bit hard to pick up clearly because of the peat, but working backwards helped. We figured that the oak will sort it out eventually anyway!

wynnum1 wrote:
"Try to take out the bag and rrriiipppp! x_x :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: as I said before, muslin is not what to use. Anyway, we finally got enough hands on the bag to spread the pressure and lifted it out, lit it dribble for a while, and get it in the bucket. It dead set looked like haggis! And smelt AMAZING!! All that peaty, malty goodness, my hands still smell of it. :think: well enough of that"



I do not put the bag in the mash tun put the biab bag in a big stock pot and scoop it out with a jug and do it in batches .


Thanks for the tip wynnum1. I had a disaster with my washing machine, so I have a shiny stainless false floor made out of the drum now. What do they say about clouds having “silver linings??? :laughing-rolling:

Anyway, here’s a pic of it after a week on oak.

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Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 9:08 pm
by EziTasting
That’s looking awesome!

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 6:38 pm
by ThePaterPiper
I can’t wait to get a sample. We don’t have anything other than plastic lids for those jars, will the paper give too much access for the angels to take their lot? o:-)

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:17 pm
by EziTasting
ThePaterPiper wrote:I can’t wait to get a sample. We don’t have anything other than plastic lids for those jars, will the paper give too much access for the angels to take their lot? o:-)



Depends on the ambient temperatures ... we have mid to high thirties already so our angels are thirstier than those in cooler climates! I'd stick with the paper towel lids as the plastic could/can/will leach undesirables into your spirit!

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 7:38 am
by ThePaterPiper
Thanks Ezi. Definitely wanted to avoid the plastic. I probably need my angels to be happier than most anyways! :laughing-rolling:

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:07 am
by Beerswimmer
Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I have 2 questions:

1. You just did a single run with a thumper ? No strips?
2. How was it?


Planning to do an all Bairds Heavy Peated myself.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 2:27 pm
by Westshine
Beerswimmer, I'm glad you dug this up. It's given me the courage to do a 100% heavy peated AG, I just picked up 25kg of Bairds Heavy Peated.

I'm a big Ardbeg / Laphraoig fan but I'm a bit worried that I may be overdoing it a bit if I ferment on the grain as well as use 100% heavy peated malt.

Anyone have any comment on this?

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 4:36 pm
by Georgio
I have done 100% Bairds heavy peated. Nowhere near Ardbeg mate.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 6:17 pm
by Georgio
I would estimate it at 25% of the peatiness.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:29 pm
by tipsy
Westshine wrote:Beerswimmer, I'm glad you dug this up. It's given me the courage to do a 100% heavy peated AG, I just picked up 25kg of Bairds Heavy Peated.

I'm a big Ardbeg / Laphraoig fan but I'm a bit worried that I may be overdoing it a bit if I ferment on the grain as well as use 100% heavy peated malt.

Anyone have any comment on this?


If ya running peat through plates I reckon the plates will strip your smoke.....I turned a bag of heavy peated malt into nuthing by running it through plates

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Sat Nov 16, 2019 6:19 am
by Georgio
Definitely run through a pot. I double distilled through a 4" pot. I went in to tails to get the more peat through. Its been on oak for 18 months and the tails are still noticable.

Re: Peated malt whisky

PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2019 9:33 pm
by Westshine
Thanks Georgio, I'll be fermenting on the grain without fear, will be using 4" pot still to run it through.
However if using 100% Heavy Peated Bairds malt doesn't get anywhere near Arbeg level of smoke then what else can be done?
I can buy peat and use it to heavy smoke other ingredients at home, or maybe even make some liquid smoke and add it to the mash.