Scarecrow’s Bourbon Sour Mash

[scarecrow]

Scarecrow’s Bourbon Sour Mash

Recipe is as follows:

Cracked Corn 10 kg
Wheat 6 kg
DME 4 kg
Sugar 8 kg
Yeast 3 tablespoon
Backset 10 litres
Water to 60 litres

Procedure

My corn comes cracked, so I don’t need to crack it further for this recipe. I don’t crack my wheat.

I don’t add extra yeast every batch. The initial dose is all I add.

Add the corn, wheat, sugar and DME straight into the fermenter. I don’t invert the sugar. Don’t bother pre dissolving the DME. When you mix the mash it all dissolves quickly anyway. A 20kg bag of DME will get you 5 ferments, just long enough to get a nice flavour profile happening. I usually call it quits after 10 runs and freeze the backset for later.

If you have fresh, hot backset from the previous run (see side note below), add that now with enough water to make a good mix, and belt the bejeezus out of the mash. It should only take 5 -10 mins to have everything dissolved and get some air into the mix. The grains will grind the sugar down very quickly.

Top up the fermenter to 60 litres and give it another quick mix. At this stage my pH is about 4.5 and temp is about 32°C. SG is about 1.09+.
I hydrate 3 tablespoons of yeast in a litre of 35°C water and after about 20 mins I add it to the fermenter, beat the crap out of it for a while, then airlock it.

Ferment is finished in about 7 – 10 days. I let it settle a few more days.

I get about 35 litres of wash from this. I do a single spirit run through my CM.
Product is aged on charred oak and diluted to 42% for drinking.

Side note:
One trick I do is not to add DME or backset on the first 2 mashes. Ie, you just make a grain flavoured sugar head. I strip both batches down to 10%, then fire up the reflux column.
This does 2 things.
Firstly, through a packed column, it gives me some neutral and secondly, it juices up the grains ready for my Bourbon. By the 3rd mash it will produce better Bourbon, ready for your DME and backset.

smile.jpg

scarecrow

[r.c.barstud]

eerrrr whats DME? :think:

[unsub]

Dry Malt Extract?

[tipsy]

Dried malt extract

[tipsy]

Beaten to it

[r.c.barstud]

aahhh haaa :doh: