Hi from Deryn in Brisbane
Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 3:17 pmHi everyone,
I started out a few years ago, I borrowed a mates airstill for a couple months and made some batches of neutral using turbo yeast, double distilling and making cuts. It was considerably nicer that what he had been making so I decided I would continue down the rabbit hole. I bought myself a T500 and then I found this forum and the TPW recipe. For a couple of years I constantly ran 3 x 25L fermenters of TPW, running the still about once a week (strip, strip, stip, spirit). I got very good and making neutral and could throw together a batch of TPW with my eyes closed. Somewhere along the line I pulled the trigger on buying the SS Alembic Pot Still too, with the intention of moving on to making the brown stuff. It wasn't great timing, life got in the way for a while and it sat there unused while i occasionally did a TPW in the T500. Then earlier this year I got back into it with a vengeance. Since then I've done a lot of research, 3 generations of corn flake whiskey (1st gen was UJSSM) and an AG peated whiskey (fresh wort that they make up and sell at my LHBS). I was ok with the amount of water wasted running the T500 but felt a bit too guilty running the Pot Still with tap water, so last weekend i set up a 200L drum of water with a fountain pump as a recirculating water supply. I will keep running the corn flakes whiskey for a couple more generations, but then, I'm not sure what my next step is. I bought a bunch of different ageing wood (Used Bourbon barrel, Used Red Wine barrel, Apple, Cherry, Peach, Madidamia, etc) from a smokers supply store online and would like to keep pumping out something to be putting on wood while I'm still getting my head around all the finer details of malting and mashing. The fresh wort from the LHBS was great but a little expensive, I was thinking maybe there are some unhopped beer kits I could distill? Does that sound like a good idea? Or should I just keep doing corn flakes whiskey until I'm ready to make my own AG wort?
Deryn
I started out a few years ago, I borrowed a mates airstill for a couple months and made some batches of neutral using turbo yeast, double distilling and making cuts. It was considerably nicer that what he had been making so I decided I would continue down the rabbit hole. I bought myself a T500 and then I found this forum and the TPW recipe. For a couple of years I constantly ran 3 x 25L fermenters of TPW, running the still about once a week (strip, strip, stip, spirit). I got very good and making neutral and could throw together a batch of TPW with my eyes closed. Somewhere along the line I pulled the trigger on buying the SS Alembic Pot Still too, with the intention of moving on to making the brown stuff. It wasn't great timing, life got in the way for a while and it sat there unused while i occasionally did a TPW in the T500. Then earlier this year I got back into it with a vengeance. Since then I've done a lot of research, 3 generations of corn flake whiskey (1st gen was UJSSM) and an AG peated whiskey (fresh wort that they make up and sell at my LHBS). I was ok with the amount of water wasted running the T500 but felt a bit too guilty running the Pot Still with tap water, so last weekend i set up a 200L drum of water with a fountain pump as a recirculating water supply. I will keep running the corn flakes whiskey for a couple more generations, but then, I'm not sure what my next step is. I bought a bunch of different ageing wood (Used Bourbon barrel, Used Red Wine barrel, Apple, Cherry, Peach, Madidamia, etc) from a smokers supply store online and would like to keep pumping out something to be putting on wood while I'm still getting my head around all the finer details of malting and mashing. The fresh wort from the LHBS was great but a little expensive, I was thinking maybe there are some unhopped beer kits I could distill? Does that sound like a good idea? Or should I just keep doing corn flakes whiskey until I'm ready to make my own AG wort?
Deryn