Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

After doing an 80 litre all grain wash of Maris Otter and peated malt and letting it ferment out for a week I did my first stripping run last weekend. I put 16 litres in my 18 litre pot still but it puked everywhere so I took out 3 litres. On the next few strips I used my voltage controller and started with 16 litres but kept the voltage down and gradually turned it up as my volume decreased.

I had some puke get into the collection jars but as it was only a stripping run it didn't bother me.
Ended up doing 4 stripping runs in total for a volume of just over 15 litres at around 45%. A perfect volume for my product run which I hope to do this weekend all going well.
Anyway it was lots of fun and I'm looking forward to the product run. I brought some oak barrel staves from a local wine supplier and will cut them up to a suitable size. They are medium toasted and the shop guy said he's used them to age spirits its good results. From what I've read I should be using bourbon barrel chips or staves for scotch whiskey but I can't get any so medium toasted barrel staves will have to do.

BTW: Why can't I add pics to my posts anymore. I tried uploading one for ages and it just timed out. I even resized the pic in case it was too big.

Just water it down to under 40% before you rerun it mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

They've been making Scotch for a lot longer than they've been making Bourbon ;-) Only relatively recently have used Bourbon barrels become the norm.

Zak Griffin wrote:Just water it down to under 40% before you rerun it mate :handgestures-thumbupleft:

They've been making Scotch for a lot longer than they've been making Bourbon ;-) Only relatively recently have used Bourbon barrels become the norm.

Cheers Zac, will do. One of my jars is only around 35% so Im thinking it may avarage out under 40% anyway. But will check it when I have it all mixed together in the pot.

Guppy wrote:I brought some oak barrel staves from a local wine supplier and will cut them up to a suitable size. They are medium toasted and the shop guy said he's used them to age spirits its good results. From what I've read I should be using bourbon barrel chips or staves for scotch whiskey but I can't get any so medium toasted barrel staves will have to do.

The staves will be better than chips. You don't want too much end grain of the timber.

Unfortunately I didn't read about that until after I had bought a heap of wood chips and chunks from the local HBS. Avoid making the same mistake as I did and stick to staves.

Cheers,

Richard