Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Can I please get some help from the AG masters. I want to have a crack at AG. I have watched heaps of vids, read heaps of threads and done a fair bit of research. I'm not overly worried about the process (although I'm sure to stuff something up) but where to start with my first grain bill and what yeast to start with has got me stumped. It seems the more I read and the more I see whats on offer at the local HBS the more I have no idea where to start. My go to whiskey is Irish so I would like to start somewhere in that direction. I was thinking roughly 33%malted barley (no idea which one) 33% Unmalted Barley (no idea which one) and %33 Corn. Yeast, I was going to use an ale yeast (but again have no idea which one). Hopefully the brains trust can tell me if I'm picking a good spot to start or if I'm way off the mark. TIA

Pick a yeast that will work with your current fermenting area's temps (ie its cold right now)

Do what you want with the grain bill, provided you have enough conversion power in the malt used, you will be fine. Comes back to personal tastes after you work out the malt ratio

If you have never done an AG before, I would start with a single grain to make sure I had the process down. Make sure you are getting your OG and FG so you know your doing it correctly. If you start with malted and unmalted and multiple grains, when it doesn't work exactly to plan it is harder to work out where you went wrong. Few people get it right first go, myself included.

Mad Home Brewer wrote:If you have never done an AG before, I would start with a single grain to make sure I had the process down. Make sure you are getting your OG and FG so you know your doing it correctly. If you start with malted and unmalted and multiple grains, when it doesn't work exactly to plan it is harder to work out where you went wrong. Few people get it right first go, myself included.

Any suggestions on which sing malt grain to start with?

RC Al wrote:Pick a yeast that will work with your current fermenting area's temps (ie its cold right now)

Do what you want with the grain bill, provided you have enough conversion power in the malt used, you will be fine. Comes back to personal tastes after you work out the malt ratio

So that I don’t need to heat the fermenter?

I would suggest an ale malt such as Marris Otter or Golden Promise. But any ale malt is good.
Those to are used to make scotch whiskey.
See how you go with the mash and the run and go from there.

Knackerbag wrote:

RC Al wrote:Pick a yeast that will work with your current fermenting area's temps (ie its cold right now)

So that I don’t need to heat the fermenter?

Pretty much, generally they are all just fine if wrapped in a blanket, but it depends on your micro climate where you live. The yeasts that do ok in the cold do take longer on average though. Nothing wrong with external heating, but it all adds up with equipment costs and the near negligible power. Once you get into the swing of things, you will work out which products to make in what season - many of us slow right down during winter time, especially after you start to build up aged product to consume. Some of the "interesting" yeasts like it colder than our summer so winter is the time for them

Mad Home Brewer wrote:I would suggest an ale malt such as Marris Otter or Golden Promise. But any ale malt is good.
Those to are used to make scotch whiskey.
See how you go with the mash and the run and go from there.

Awesome thanks for that.

RC Al wrote:

Knackerbag wrote:

RC Al wrote:Pick a yeast that will work with your current fermenting area's temps (ie its cold right now)

So that I don’t need to heat the fermenter?

Pretty much, generally they are all just fine if wrapped in a blanket, but it depends on your micro climate where you live. The yeasts that do ok in the cold do take longer on average though. Nothing wrong with external heating, but it all adds up with equipment costs and the near negligible power. Once you get into the swing of things, you will work out which products to make in what season - many of us slow right down during winter time, especially after you start to build up aged product to consume. Some of the "interesting" yeasts like it colder than our summer so winter is the time for them

Ok great, any thoughts on making a mash and not fermenting straight straight away?

I would suggest using a yeast like Nottingham or US-05 and keeping this above 22C, preferable 25C to get a good result after all the time spent doing AG. You can pick up a heater belt for under $20 and use the blanket idea as well. Add in a temp controller for $50 to hold a constant temp and you will be sorted.
It all depends on your finances and how much you want to control the whole process for repeatability.

In industry they are pushing time and $$ and having a batch go south from an infection is bad cause your making a specific product, for us at home a random infection usually isnt that much of a drama and can lead to exciting drinks :obscene-drinkingdrunk:

If your fermenters are reasonably sealed, the co2 will keep things golden for quite some time

If you are going to do a mash and not ferment it straight away, I would boil it for 15 minutes and hot cube it.

For a first attempt AG grain bill, think I'd avoid corn, and don't over think the grain bill.
Marris otter is a fine base malt

For yeast there's plenty to chose from.
I have SafSpirit M-1 in the stockpile for whiskey
https://fermentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SafSpirit-M1_EN.pdf

bluess57,
I can only seem to find M-1 in 500gm blocks. Do you know of anywhere you can get smaller qtys?

If you are going to use unmalted grain like corn or barley would suggest adding some of the malted barley at a higher temperature like 72 c to convert the starch first as can be very thick and will liquefy quickly and only need a cupful in a couple of kilo of grain to make a big difference.

Thanks guys. Thinking of going with Golden Promise. Would be correct in thinking I would need 100g per litre to achieve an og of 1.090?

10kg in 40l gives you about 1.065÷1.070 if your good enough to extract it. What mash method you using?

bluc wrote:10kg in 40l gives you about 1.065÷1.070 if your good enough to extract it. What mash method you using?

My maths must be up the shit. I was planning on the decoction method. ( I think that’s what it’s called)

What are you paying for the unmalted grain because doing malted grain is a lot easier then unmalted and buying grain in small quantities can be expensive and not save a lot of money and that is why they use these other grains to save money.

Hey Knackers,

If you're looking at making an Irish whiskey then the 'traditional' grain bill is 50% barley and 50% malted barley. Most Irish whiskeys are triple distilled, to give it a nice clean taste.

As for yeast, you want a yeast that will allow you to operate in a region that will bring over the flavours of the grain, but I think for Irish not too over the top. There's a couple of ways you can manipulate the yeast's environment to enhance the flavours.

First is the fermentation temperature - generally if you increase the temperature outside of the yeast's normal operating zone you will 'encourage' the yeast to bring over esters which will increase the flavour that comes over. For example, if you use a yeast that has a 'neutral' point of 25C, then raising the temperature to 30C will bring over more sweeter flavours.

Secondly, is the pH. Adjusting the pH to make the wash more 'sour' will also encourage the yeast to bring across more esters and hence, more flavour. So if a yeast's 'happy' place is at say, 5.5 pH then raising the pH to like 3.5-4.0 will release more sour type (rooty, earthy) flavours.

So you can manipulate the fermentation environment depending on the flavours you want more predominant in your drink.

A very good yeast for whiskey is good old baker's yeast. It's 'neutral' temp is 30C, so if you want some more sweeter flavours to come over then run your ferments at 33-35C. If you want more 'sour' flavours coming over, then increase the pH to around 4.0. If you want a more complex mix of sweet and sour, then increase both temp and pH.

Once you've worked out your fermentation process you can then round out your drink by cutting either a little closer to heads if your want a slightly fruitier flavour, or going a little deeper into tails if you want something a little more earthy. I'm not a big Irish whiskey drinker, but from my research an Irish generally has a pretty tight heads and tails cut.

Hope this helps...