invisigoth' "whatever" whisky

[invisigoth]

in preparation for my unmalted grain experiments, i wanted to grow up a stock of yeast, since liquid yeast isn't cheap unless you recover some. with that in mind i brought 2kg of rice malt extract to the boil with 30g tettnanger hop pellets and cubed it up in 2 x 10l portions. the next day i activated the yeast, wyeast 4134 sake #9, and pitched it into one of the 10l portions in a 15l fermenter. this has got to be one of the laziest yeasts i've used. the ph was right, the nutrients for most worts was fine, it was well aerated, but it was fermenting .... really slowly. :scared-eek:

after 8 days i figured that since id pitched enough for 25l and it only had 1kg to munch on, it should be close to finshed. i didn't take an sg. since it was still fermenting i racked it to a 25l fermenter with the other 10l and cropped the lees. it's still fermenting. (-|

i also had a small unmount of malt left over from a batch of dunkelweizen. "yeh what the heck, lets mash and when it's done, throw the rice malt extract brew into the still with the mini mash brew?" :handgestures-thumbupleft:

so the grain bill:
232g wheat malt
90g munich malt
90g vienna malt
270g carawheat malt
37g chocolate malt

after conversion i threw in 5g of saaz pellets, brought to the boil, let it steep for a while, rack into a 5l "cube" then sparged with a kettle to make up to 5l total volume. i did biahs (thats "brew in a hop sock" :)) )

used some of the cropped yeast to ferment that lot. that's also still fermenting.

some of you may have noticed that i hopped both of these brews. that was mostly just as a bit of preservative effect. crow has noted that this whole business of hop oils wreaking havoc with stills is a bit of a myth, and adds a desirable flavour to the distillate. i'm prepared to take him at his word ^:)^

i'll report back when it's run.

[invisigoth]

a comedy of errors indeed. 8-}

so... fermentation was going glacially slowly. after a number of weeks i decided to combine all the wort together into a single fermenter, throw in some other yeast to finish it off. i threw in some pot still yeast that has some nutrient with it (not the whole lot, just enough for the size of the wort). a whole lotta nothin. so i measured the ph and threw in some bicarb. up it fizzed, checked the ph again. maybe i didn't wait long enough. next day, still nothing, so i tried another yeast or two and nothing seemed to be happening. when i checked the sg, it was 1.010. too high even with the little bit of dark malts in there. i gave it another couple of days, still nothing so i figured "what the heck, there is probably still sugars in there, but i'll run it anyway". :handgestures-thumbupleft:

a bit of a taste seemed not sweet but not dry either. after 150ml of fors i collected 650ml between 90 and 72% abv. yeh well all my cuts had an ammonia smell in there and when i looked at my jars a little while later, they had a feint blue tinge. :scared-eek:

yeh, guess i won't be drinking that! but it was good experience running the bubbler. as i was dumping the backset it smelled wonderful and i'm still kinda wishing that maybe i should have kept it, threw in some sugar had another go. ah well ... live and learn :wtf:

[crow]

yeah there are 2 causes for that one is copper sulfide from either a new or oxidized copper and I can't remember the other cause but in both cases you can apparently safely re run the spirit :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[invisigoth]

as far as i know it's caused by the ammonia (alkaline) released from running a wash that's got too much nitrogen (probably from excessive yeast/nutrient) that was overdone with positive ph adjustment (when i added the bicarb and it didn't continue to ferment).

for what little i ended up with, i think it's not worth re-distilling. maybe i'll feed it to the weeds

probably would have been ok if i hadn't added the bicarb when i did and in the amount that i did.

[Sam.]

I thought the blue was from running an alkaline wash?

Did you get a ph reading? Might have gone a bit nuts with the bi carb?

[invisigoth]

I thought the blue was from running an alkaline wash?

Did you get a ph reading? Might have gone a bit nuts with the bi carb?

the ph before the bicarb was 4. after bicarb it was 4.5 *but* i suspect that it hadn't finished dissolving, and as you say, may have produced an alkaline wash. probably should have dissolved it in some of the wash and slowly added it back with testing along the way with enough time for those additions to react with the acid before testing and making any more adjustments.

guess this is also serves as a lesson for others. :naughty:

[crow]

Ah ha yep 4 is way to high for a fermented wash I would expect it to be some where around 2 and would add and alkaline adjuster at a reading nearing or above 3 but that's just me :handgestures-thumbupleft: