g'day all :)
due to a family member taking a liking to apple pie, i thought i'd make some more. figured i'd start off with a good base, so i thought to start off with a modification of mtnmoonshiner's "traditional appalachian (u.s.) sweet mash corn whiskey". not wanting to make a suger head, i thought i'd give ag a go. i scaled down his amounts for a 25l batch:
7 1/3kg cracked corn
3 2/3kg rye meal
1.93kg malted barley
then i thought "hmm... lets malt it up a bit and round things off". so i went with:
5kg cracked corn
2.5kg malted corn
4kg rye malt
2kg distillers malted barley
i've done a 5 gen bko before, but never dealt with corn in a mash before :shifty: . most of my beers are 5-15l, so i've never dealt with this much grain before! 8-}
i don't have a proper mash tun, but my beers have turned out just fine using a heater meant for bottling fuit. it's about the same size at a 30l commercial keg with an element inside, covered by a round stainless platform with holes for the bottles to sit on.. it acts a bit like the false bottom on a mash tun. it has a dial thermostat, a bit like an electric frying pan.
well.. first step, gelatinization of the unmalted corn. i soaked over night the 5kg with 17l of water, and used 3l to soak the malted corn to be used later in the mash.
i put the cracked corn into my vessel, added another 5l of water, then got the element going and slowly got the temp up to 90... it took several hours and i just kept stirring. eventually it got really thick and goopy and expanded a lot. i soon realised there was no way in heck i'm gonna get the rest of the grains in there!!!! ~x( . i took the goopy, globby mess out of the canning vessel (i had it inside a brew bag :handgestures-thumbupleft: ) and emptied it into a clean 20l bucket.. which it mostly filled. there was only one thing for it.. two mashes and dump them both into a single fermenter.
this was starting to get complicated 8-} . marked off the hight of grain in the bucket, measured it, worked out where half way was and scooped half out and dumped it back into the bottling vessel in a brew bag, and added another 2l (there was still 5l in the vessel). i waited till the temp had dropped to about 50C, then added half the malted corn, 2kg of rye malt and 1kg of malted barley. the mix was thickish, but movable enough to stir...slowly.
my aim (haha) was a stepped mash.
15mins @40C
30mins @50C
2h@60C
1h@69C
erm.. yeh, tell 'im he's dreamin :wtf:
it had dropped to 40 after i added the grains and stuff. took an hour to get up to 50C with stirring ever 10 mins and keeping an eye on the temp. another 2 hours after my 30 mins to get to 60C, and another hour or so after the 2hour rest to get to 69..ish :)) . i was taking refractometer readings along the way and could see it going up .. and finally getting thinner and easier to stir. i took my final reading, 23 brix, tapped off what fluid I could... all 10l :laughing-rolling: . some of that i put in a jar to check refractometer and hydrometer. next day refractometer reads 22.4 brix, hydrometer reads 1.080 temp corrected.
more or less the same for the second batch, but at one stage the temp went up to 84c, but not sure for how long. mixing dropped the temp and i persisted. the sugar readings were still going up so i guess i hadn't completely denatured the enzymes. final refractometer reading was 24 brix. it hadn't gotten as thin as the first batch. the sample jar the next day had 17 brix and a hydro reading of 1.070.
a reading of the two batched after combining was 1.080 and 20 brix. there was only 15l there, but i knew there was more fluid to be had amongst the grains. i'm fermenting on the grains so when i dumped the grain into the fermenter the whole lot takes up 40l. 35l of water went in, so i'm hoping to get 20-25l back out.
i threw in a couple of teaspoons of citric for good measure (my beer ph paper doesn't work any more, so i'm kinda flying blind). i threw a 50/50 mix or wort and water into a jar, chucked in a packet of still spirits distillers whisky yeast. once it was foaming up, i pitched.
a couple of hours later and the airlock is slowly bubbling away :handgestures-thumbupleft: .