Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

All I can say is wow!

I have just sampled a couple of drams of my WBAB. And wow.

By way of background:
18 January 2015 I put down 2 x 25 litre batches per recipe (using lavlin EC1118 yeast). These were both run 21 February 2015 as a stripping run on a 2" pot still.
21 February 2015 put down second generation (used 1/3 backset). These were both run on 3 April 2015 as a stripping run on a 2" pot still.
4 April 2015 put all four above stripping runs together and ran through the 2" pot still as a spirit run.
Ended up with 30 jars and ended up discarding first 6 jars.
Put 5 litres watered down to 65% with 48g french oak dominos medium toast.
Put 2 litres watered down to 65% with 19g american oak dominos.

Sampled 8 August 2015 at 40%. Light colour, slightly woody/oak taste, quite mild, not punchy, light fragrance with slight vanilla.
Sampled 17 September 2015 at 40% and it had improved. My wife didn't like it as much as me.

Today (13 August 2016), some 16+ months after initial bottling with french dominos I checked the ABV and it had gone down to 60%.
Pulled out 480mm and added spring water and made a bottle up to 700ml at 40%.
Drinking this neat and it is very very good. The colour compares to my single malts, the smell is a touch woody, but the taste is great. It is extremely smooth, a long finish with a malty taste but not too strong. This is not a mixer, but to be enjoyed neat. Waiting for some of my single malt snobs to come for some tastes and will slip this in to see comments.

I love this hobby!!!

:)) welldone mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Nice!

Hoping to follow in your footsteps soon, Roger!

Good stuff Roger. You obviously keep good notes, too, which will only improve your craft!

Thinking of doing a single run of this tomorrow through the pot still instead of stripping and spirit run.
What do you think? Too much flavour carried through or would it be ok?

id say go slowwww to avoid smearing and keep ABV up but i reckon it will be nice. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

i found it light flavoured on my 2" bubbler so singe run might be better, or maybe it was just the 2" i made

Definitely give it a go. You can always run it again if you're not happy with it.

Cheers,
Prof. Green.

:text-+1:

ill be doing some 200l batches of this soon enough (again) so i guess i will experiment also with less/more plates. Was planning on getting an olive drum to do bulk runs, mostly vodka but will do the whisky too.

WBAB makes real nice vodka mate. I much prefer it to TPW.

Cheers,
Pror. Green.

Cheers, I've got some double pot distilled on oak which is showing potential but agree that it's a very light flavour.
Don't know if I'll get the chance tomorrow but will definitely try a single run and oak it.

WJ have you tried stripping one wash and then putting the low wines in the boiler and then top up to the full line with the regular wash for a single run + low wines from one (or two?) wash.

should be higher ABV after the run and perhaps a better hearts cut? i wouldnt know, havent pot stilled just used the 2" bubbler a few times before i got rid of it

No, only got one pot spirit run under my belt and that was all wbab low wines.
But you might have something there regarding abv.
The strip runs I barely manage 60% abv and run it to 30/20%
The spirit run I did I managed more like 80% through the whole run. Didn't really drop until I ran out of time and cranked up the amps and stripped the tails off.

Still got 2 Demi's of tails actually, might throw them back in too. I'm sure there's still hearts there.

:handgestures-thumbupleft:

sounds like a plan, wonder if going slow, like real slow will be good, like 1l/h or slower :think:

:shock:
If 1L/hr is considered slow my current run of 4.5L over 9.5 hrs is nearly a stand still.
50L o tpw low wines through the t500. But that's a little off topic.
Definitely would run it as slow as possible, just at an unbroken stream. I have my controller so that's easy to achieve. Running slower would increase my abv output as well I believe, as I'm not over boiling the water that's in the wash.

Just an update as I've been travelling since late April :teasing-neener:
In late Feb I did a run of wb, no allbran, 120 litres, 1st run was as fast as the pot still condenser could take, ran it down to about 20%, dumped the 1st litre of foreshots, 2nd run was at half speed, dumped 1st 500mm of foreshots, ran the next 3x500ml into jars, next 3 litres straight into a big jar, then back to 500ml jars down to 20% , left it sit for 3 or 4 days.
Then I did the smell test on the 1st 3 jars and kept the 3rd, did the same thing with the tail end jars, but kept the 1st of the "off" smelling jars and included that into the hearts.
These were then combined into 5litre jars, a combination of French and American dominoes , heavily charred, were added to the jars, along with a full vanilla bean , sliced open length wise. Abv was set at 65%

Each jar was then plugged with a tightly rolled up paper towel, and aerated for 8 weeks.

In early April I removed sufficient liquor to water down to 40% and place into 2x20 litre food grade jerry cans ( yeah I know, :o but glass doesn't travel well on outback roads) again with a vanilla bean in each container.

The result was for a confirmed whisky drinker (me) very good, so it was then tested ( neat)on various random unknown travellers around camp fires and invariably the question was " I don't know what it is, but geeze it's good, can I have another 1 " when they were told it was home brew no-one quite believed me until I produced the jerry cans with the whisky in them.

I managed to get the 20 litres to last around 4 months :)) the last 5 weeks has been pure hell having to buy 2nd rate booze :angry-banghead:

This recipe can, with care , produce an excellent whisky, different,yes, but non the less excellent, in a very short time

Yes it is rather nice, i used 45% backset once, same just weetbix no all bran and it was alright. My favourite would have to be the half CF and half WeetBix mix.

For your next trip around Oz, get yourself a couple of 9L 'Water' fire extinguishers to cart the whiskey around. They're made of stainless, just remove the tap and find a stainless bung that fits (or a stainless tap) :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Zak Griffin wrote:For your next trip around Oz, get yourself a couple of 9L 'Water' fire extinguishers to cart the whiskey around. They're made of stainless, just remove the tap and find a stainless bung that fits (or a stainless tap) :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:laughing-rolling: love that idea! Haha needs some skull & crossbones otherwise some shuck will try to out out a fire with them... :laughing-rolling:

Or clean the paint off and polish them up ;-)

Zak Griffin wrote:Or clean the paint off and polish them up ;-)

:text-+1:

I reckon a nice polished clean fire extinguisher would look cool pouring spirits out of in front of company. It would have the wow factor :handgestures-thumbupleft: