Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussion

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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby MtnMoonshiner » Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:44 am

EziTasting wrote:
MtnMoonshiner wrote:You'll have to forgive my misunderstanding. We speak the same language, but there's a pretty big language barrier between the US AND Australia sometimes. I could be flat out like a lizard drinking, and not even know it hahaha

In any case, what do you mean by "grog"? Grog for me is rum, lime juice and water mixed together. I'm assuming what you're asking, is why the gelatinized corn doesn't stay suspended in the mash? And why all your grain sinks to the bottom and you have mostly liquid and some bits of grain on the top?


Yes, spot-on. Grog is slang for just alcohol, where I'm from anyway...

Will need my computer to answer your next post... bear with me


If I don't reply for a while, the wife and I are headed to the beach for some fishing. I'll answer ASAP though.
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby EziTasting » Fri Mar 17, 2017 7:43 am

MtnMoonshiner wrote:I've been thinking about this all day, and there are several problems I can imagine....without actually being there or watching how you did it etc...

If I understand correctly, your grain never settled to the bottom. Leaving you with something that looked like what you started with....as opposed to ending up with grain on the bottom and liquid on the top?
Alrite, we did this recipe twice; first time we measured out the cracked corn into our FV, then we boiled the water separately in one of those urns (~20L, thats around 5 gal) and poured that into the FV, once we had enough water in there we started to mix it up with a paint mixer and drill. Once we got to three-quarters full we allowed it to rest while following your instructions on mixing in the rye meal (did that separately in another large bucket. Our FV is 220L and is insulated to hold the heat better. After lunch, we went back to it and added the rye and more water and mixed it more... Because of the insulation, the demp didn't drop very fast, which we thought was good... at first. Thinking it would do good to gelatinise the corn and do good things to the rye. In the mean time we ground the barley (barley mill, medium setting), added it (from memory the temp was approx. 60-65 degrees Celsius (140-150F) and mixed again... Couple of movies later the temperature of the wash was still in the 60C so we closed the lid and left it over night...

MtnMoonshiner wrote:Did you pour enough water into your mash tun after mixing and everything? Is your mash tun big enough to hold enough water?
yes, see above

MtnMoonshiner wrote:If you cut down the recipe size, did you use enough malt? Did you scald the yeast by pitching it while the mash was too hot?

Hopefully we can get this sorted out and have to making liquor instead of expensive porridge...
We scaled the recipe to 200L, and waited until the temperature was around mid to high 30C (86-95F) before pitching the yeast. We used simple bakers yeast and have pitched at this temperature on many occasions before without any real issues...

MtnMoonshiner wrote:If I don't reply for a while, the wife and I are headed to the beach for some fishing. I'll answer ASAP though.
Haha good luck, I can only answer before or after work anyways, so it'll be like sending a letter... if you remember those?! :D
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby EziTasting » Fri Mar 17, 2017 7:56 am

That was the first time and it yielded 8L @ 65%. I wasn't too excited about the yield as I found it to be an enormous workload, but I wanted to learn about this Likker I seen on Moonshiners! :laughing-rolling:

So, because of this outcome, we thought that the corn hadn't given up all its goods! So we now ground the Cracked corn (medium setting) and pre-boiled it in a open top keg with water. It started to thicken beautifully and we were celebrating our cleverness (a little too soon). These were then poured into the FV (200L again) and kept 'wet'. In-between boiling the next batch to add to the FV, we stirred it up to get a good rotation on the corn. It looked much more like porridge and we were happy about that as it fell more in line with your description...
added the rye, added the barley and some enzymes (amylase) as we malted the barley ourselves and weren't willing to waste this beautiful corn mash porridge because we were no good at malting... Temps remained high so we capped it and left it for the next day. Can only be good, right?!?! corn gelatinising, barley making simple sugars, rye doing its thing.... Took a day-and-a-half for the temps to come down... we added the yeast (same as before) and let it do its magic.

Because the first time we ended up with an infection (some noob kept opening the lid and gawking at the mash :angry-banghead: ) we decide this time to leave it unopened for the same period it took the other to stop fermenting, around a week and 2 days. No bubbling, no infection, all seemed good! spent the whole day separating the corn/Rye/Barley from the liquid in order to out into the boiler. Initial smells were of popcorn, but that was nothing new... and we got zip! Nada! Notink! not a drop of Likker... :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:
Haven't had a go since... Which is a shame because I'd like to have a successful go at this and enjoy it!
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby TasSpirits » Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:43 pm

Cant find any Rye meal, so I'm going to use Malted Rye, keen to see how this turns out :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby EziTasting » Fri Mar 17, 2017 5:09 pm

TasSpirits wrote:Cant find any Rye meal, so I'm going to use Malted Rye, keen to see how this turns out :handgestures-thumbupleft:


Just grind it up = meal!! :music-deathmetal:
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby TasSpirits » Fri Mar 17, 2017 5:51 pm

EziTasting wrote:
TasSpirits wrote:Cant find any Rye meal, so I'm going to use Malted Rye, keen to see how this turns out :handgestures-thumbupleft:


Just grind it up = meal!! :music-deathmetal:

Reckon ill just crack it like barley malt. :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby bluc » Fri Mar 17, 2017 8:23 pm

Ezi have you ever looked for background info on your grains? Have you ruled out preservative etc as a cause of dud ferments? Especially the second lot.

You malted your first lot of grain but got a lacto infection correct? Maybe your not as bad at malting as you thought you still got about half of the expected yield. Just random thoughts..
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby EziTasting » Fri Mar 17, 2017 8:29 pm

bluc wrote:Ezi have you ever looked for background info on your grains? Have you ruled out preservative etc as a cause of dud ferments? Especially the second lot

we bought it in bulk, so first lot and second lot came from the same bags...

bluc wrote:You malted your first lot of grain but got a lacto infection correct? Maybe your not as bad at malting as you thought you still got about half of the expected yield. Just random thoughts..
Thank you for your kind words; its what I was hoping for but I'm untested! Been rereading Sams post and watching a lot of Youtube vids just to improve my efforts... But I will be testing all my findings in smaller batches so as to test myself. No good being a wizard once and then absolutely RS the next... its all about repeatability!

Which is why I was asking about this recipe and open the discussion on the proper or best method for doing this (and thereby, any other corn based recipe), if that makes sense!?!
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby Sam. » Fri Mar 17, 2017 9:01 pm

Any of my posts only relate to barley, I don't use corn ;-)
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby EziTasting » Fri Mar 17, 2017 11:30 pm

Sam. wrote:Any of my posts only relate to barley, I don't use corn ;-)


Yes, my reference was towards your Barley malting posts, which is the ingredient we were discussing. Sorry if I confused the discussion.
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby mooks » Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:55 pm

Your malt may not be any good. We will all be having low yields following this recipe because our two row malt doesnt have the enzyme strength of the American six row. Ive had more success using malted rye (and barley)but that gets a bit expensive. Anyone tried this recipe with malted corn?
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby spoonjab » Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:07 pm

I realized a few weeks ago my corn whisky i made 3yrs ago is down to my last 5L. :scared-eek:
Its at 65% on oak still ageing.
Went to the produce store and grabbed another 20kg bag of cracked corn and via brew shop for some rye and pilsner malt.
Into my final wash now and should be ready to strip this weekend.
I use 6.7kg corn, 1.5kg rye and 1kg pilsner. Achieve SG1.072
Try and squeeze in the spirit run before xmas
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby bluc » Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:18 pm

Do you squeeze discard or sparge the corn mash :-B(by discard i mean leave pudding in fermenter)
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby spoonjab » Fri Dec 01, 2017 9:16 pm

Corn and malt end up in the fermentors.
Once fermentation is over i strain through laundry bags 3L at a time and squeeze the grains dry. Takes me about 30mins to get through 50L of grain wash.
Grain ends up in the compost.
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby vossy » Sat Jan 27, 2018 10:17 am

Hello Legends,
For anyone whom does this in smaller batches (25 or 50L) can you advise if a 50L (65L capacity) fermenter will be ok? IE not not foam up to much and make a mess? Or am I better of doing a 25L batch in that fermenter?
Cheers
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby bayshine » Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:18 pm

vossy wrote:Hello Legends,
For anyone whom does this in smaller batches (25 or 50L) can you advise if a 50L (65L capacity) fermenter will be ok? IE not not foam up to much and make a mess? Or am I better of doing a 25L batch in that fermenter?
Cheers

I used to do 50 lt batches in a 60 lt fermenter no probs :handgestures-thumbupleft:
You just need to keep an eye on it for the first few hours and stir the cap down if it foams up, and then it should settle down :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby DingBatDC » Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:38 pm

Gday Mttnmoonshine

Followed your recipe to the letter minus some 1kg of sugar piece of cake it bubbling away for three days now...

Quick question what is your recipe for this but sour mash? That’s where I see the future
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby woodduck » Thu Jun 14, 2018 6:11 pm

Hi dingbat, welcome to the forum :greetings-waveyellow: It's customary to pop into the welcome centre and tell us a bit about yourself like what still you have and what you like to drink.

As for generations, a quick explanation, usually you would remove a small amount of trub from the fermenter once you've taken the wash out and replace it with fresh grains, add some dundar with the new sugar and top it up with water. If your after more info on generations I would look through the bwko or cfw thread, there's a bit in there about it.
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby DingBatDC » Fri Jun 15, 2018 1:05 pm

Hi There woodduck ive done the welcome ^:)^ i do understand the sour mash i was just hoping to hear Mttnmoonshines recipe for sour mash
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Re: Traditional Appalachian Sweet Mash Corn Whiskey Discussi

Postby Plumby » Fri Jun 15, 2018 5:26 pm

Should be the same recipe but replace 20% of the water with backset/dunder and use 75% of the grain bed and trub from the previous ferment.
That's what id do anyway :handgestures-thumbupleft:
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