Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

So I thought I would let you guys know what I have been working for the last few weeks.

I decided that I would like to have a go at making a scotch style malt whiskey. I decided on all grain because why not.
I didn't want to spend up on brewing equipment so I made do with what I had.

I insulated my pure distilling 30 litre boiler with some stuff from Clark rubber and filled it up to 23 litres. I put 3 kilos of distillers malt and 2 kilos of peated malt into a grain bag and once the water in the boiler was up to 69 degrees I threw the grain into the boiler.

I let it sit there for and hour and a half then pulled the grain out rinsed it off with some water from the kettle and i boiler my wort for ten minutes.

Once the boil was finished I threw the whole lot into a 20l container i got from bunnings and sealed it up real tight.

I did this twice and now both containers are sitting in the shed waiting to be fermented which I will hopefully do next week.

I was surprised how straight forward the process is and how little equipment you really need.

I'm not expecting a huge yield from what I got but it will be all grain malt whiskey which has been a goal for a while.

Maybe we need a no chill BIAB recepie in the tried and proven section.

What is your gravity before fermenting? 5kg seems a bit light on..

1.058.

Yeah next time i will try more grain. This was an ssxperiment to see how I would go with the equipment I had.

Fermented right out you may get 8.8% pretty darn OK in my books.

I hope it goes right out. I thought I could only expect it to go to about 1.014 or so. Hope it goes lower

Cool. What be interested to hear final gravity and hearts collection volume. I only kept a smidge over 2l 45l wash sg about 1.067 fg 1.015ish.
Maybe my ferments are just crap and need to look at temp control etc

Should get to around .990 unless unfermentable carbs and holding it higher. .990 would give you a yield of just over 8.5% , pretty respectable

So I have progressed my all grain experiment.

I put both of my no chill cubes into fermenters along with a packet each of still spirits whiskey yeast(guy at the HBS assured me it isnt anything like turbo yeast). I wacked them in my temp control fridge and in about 3 days the hydrometer was reading .990 on both which should give be about 8%. I was a bit impatient and run it today after it had only finished fermenting a few days ago. During the stripping run I had huge problems with puking. I ended up throwing some distilling conditioner in and using my power controller to drop the heat to about 50%. At the end of the first run i had about 4l at about 35%.

I think I will let the other one sit for a few weeks before I run it. I'm planning on doing a few more washes until I have enough low wines for a spirit run.

I was thinking I will make up some more wort cubes and just throw each one onto the trub from the previous ferment(does this sound ok)

Put it in the fridge for a week to settle if too big a quantity of yeast is used i think it can strip flavor but reusing the yeast is a good idea or do a small batch and pitch into a bigger batch like a yeast starter.

Ed do you temp control your ferment? I have had one down to 1.008 but that was with american whiskey yeast malt yeast lowest I have had is 1.015 8-}

I don't usually for whiskey washes but this one I did. Usually the temp controlled fridge is reserved for beer but I had a gap so I put it in

Temp control is probably a good idea as far as keeping the yeast happy but i think it needs a higher temperature then when making beer but not heat wave temperature but at a higher temperature is going to ferment quicker then beer at a lower temperature.

It's important to remember that the final gravity is restricted mostly by the grain that goes into the wash.
Anything darker than a distillers or pilsener will keep your final gravity higher.
I usually added some brown ale malt and some caramalt to my otherwise ale malt ferments which has unfermentable sugars as a result of the kilning to achieve a different flavour profile. As a result my fg is usually around 1.015 with a starting gravity around 1.070

With straight distillers malt .990 is easily achievable. Brewers friend has calculators for this.

With using distillers yeast the temp is less critical and through most of the non summer months doesn't need any temp control.
I try to run all my whiskey in the cooler months and This time of year is the perfect time to run rum as it likes it hotter