by renedox » Sun May 08, 2022 11:52 am
Heard some good things about Angel yeast's yellow label so got some while they were on sale. Turns out, it does live up the hype and is quite magic. What I've done is in no way scientific but it may help provide some sort of data point for others in future.
Oat
Ingredients:
~10L hot water (~50C)
3kg oats split in to
- 1kg jumbo rolled oats
- 2kg instant rolled oats
30g Angel yellow label yeast
10g Angel bakers yeast
Method:
Put all the oats into hot water (~50 is what I got from the tap and boiling a 1.7Ljug), give it a stir to mix everything, and check for doughballs
Wait till pitching temperature (35C) then add yellow label yeast and give everything a vigourous stir
Sprinkle bakers yeast on top - this part is probably not necessary but I wanted to give the yeast some help
Stir twice a day for the first four days then once the next three days after
Wheat:
Ingredients:
~10L hot water (~50C)
3kg kibbled wheat
30g Angel yellow label yeast
10g Angel bakers yeast
Method:
Put all the kibbled wheat into hot water, give it a stir to mix everything, and check for doughballs
Wait till pitching temperature (35C) then added yellow label yeast and give everything a vigourous stir
Sprinkle bakers yeast on top
Stir twice a day for the first four days then once the next three days
Corn/Polenta:
Ingredients:
~10L hot water (~50C)
3kg polenta
30g Angel yellow label yeast
10g Angel bakers yeast
Method:
Put all the polenta into hot water, give it a stir to mix everything, and check for doughballs
Wait till pitching temperature (35C) then add yellow label yeast and give everything a vigourous stir
Sprinkle bakers yeast on top
Stir twice a day for the first four days then once the next three days
Results - fermentation
Oat:
Almost everything broke down, all that was left after filtering was yeast, some hulls, and oat fibre.
Wheat:
Didn't break down as well as the oats did, but conversion and fermentation did happen. After a week, it didn't seem like it had done very much so, I filtered it and saved the liquid. With the solids that were left, I cooked the wheat, brought it up to 10L again, pitched the yeast, and left it again for another week - stirring every day for the first four days
Corn/Polenta:
Similar to the wheat, it didn't look like it had broken down much in a week either so, filtered, saved liquid, cooked remaining solids, pitched yeast, and left it to ferment for another week - stirring every day for the first four days.
Results - distilation
Oat:
Everything went smoothly, yield is a little more than if I had properly cooked the oats then added enzymes.
Wheat and corn/polenta - second fermentation:
Distillation went smoothly, got half as much yield as I would normally get
Wheat and corn/polenta - first fermentation:
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how much alcohol there really was. Going by the yield that I got from the cooked stuff, my guess was that there was some in here. So added both liquids together and distilled it.
Turns out, if I added everything that I got from both fermentations of the wheat and corn, the yield was about 25% more.
Learnings
Angel yeast yellow label is (science-y) magic. If I had left the wheat and corn for another week or two, it probably would have fermented out just fine. Again, my methods aren't entirely scientific - more proof of concept - and my yields were intentionally left out because it'll depend on whoever is distilling and I'm still learning to use my still properly. I stopped at ~10% coming out of the spout.
If everything had been cooked properly at the start, fermentation probably would have been even faster. Would probably add nutrients to the corn wash if I was to do it again with just corn.