Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Point of interest: I mentioned in another thread I was very worried about this last mash as it fermented out so fast. Well on tasting it I wondered if the pH was way to low so I added some calcium just in case , guess what it fired back to life. I'm thinking I need to cut back on the amount of back set I'm using

Huh no shit? Would have been interesting to see what the ph was before adding it?

Well lemons are around 2.3 pH and water is 7 so going by taste I would guess it somewhere between 3 and 3.5 pH , yeah not to scientific I know, must invest in a tester one day

Awesome thread...for some reason I am really keen to make some single malt whiskey...I am not even that big of a fan of scotch but for some reason this fascinates me. Go figure.

Lesson learned, don't get carried away with the amount of stillage ya use. The low pH really fucked me around as in it seems to have just finished fermenting several weeks after it should have :roll:

Ive been reading this thread alot here and on HD.... i want to give this a try with rolled oats , if i gelatinize in the temp ranges ,say 60-62*C , then add a enzymes like bread improver ? and step the temp levels ??? is this similar to what you did ???. i havent come from a beer brewing background so this is all new to me. any tips :think:

yes a bit similar , if you were going to do the method you described that would work just dandy whoever I used oat malt and some whole oat adjucts so my mash was rested first at a lower themp say same as rye on your chart and a few more rest in between that you will likely not have to deal with using solely steam rolled oats. your enzymes were probably extracted from wheat or barely so it won't quite be a single malt ;-)
PS neat chart BTW

yeah im not too worried about single malt atm, just want to practice on cheaper AG products so i dont feel so hesitant on doing a peated malt mixture ..... something along the lines of measure twice cut once lol .... i figure if i can get some techniques down pat with cheap oats and dwwg then ill be happy ,,,, if i get a product the worse that can happen is that i run it through the reflux and use it as a neutral :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Linny wrote: the worse that can happen is that i run it through the reflux and use it as a neutral :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Thats the spirit :handgestures-thumbupleft: (pun intended :laughing-rolling: )

Well after a little mishap filtering lees (just ran it though as is) the stripping is done might get the spirit run done tonight :dance: hope its worth it as I got maybe 20 kgs of oat malt to mash :pray:

Doing the spirit run right now just had a little taste as it came into hearts OMG last time I put my tongue into something this smooth.... well I was very happy indeed :whistle: . No seriously this is coming off at round 80% and really tastes great for hot out the still , bout time things going right :handgestures-thumbupleft:
Edit Well wrote that 15 min to early eh run out of gas :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:

croweater wrote:Edit Well wrote that 15 min to early eh run out of gas :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:

Mate, you gotta stop jinxing yourself :angry-banghead: hope your luck changes soon ;-)

raided the bottle out of the kitchen so all good shut it all down now. I'll report on what I got tomorrow, lot of tails as per standard for this still but as said the hearts well really very impressive for white dog hot out the still (lucky the coke was cold), reckon with some aging this could be really top shelve . The piggy back whiskey from this is ready to go to got a feeling that will be almost as good and will need less aging :handgestures-thumbupleft:

What temps did you rest at ??? For rolled Oats (refering to the chart i found earlier) i was thinking 15 min at 60*C for gelitinization , 1 hour at 63*C for Beta and 1/2 hour at 74*C for Alpha.... I will probaly use 125g bread improver, play it by ear.


"Beta amylase produces Maltose, the main wort sugar, by splitting 2 glucose molecules from the non-reducing end of a glucose chain. It is therefore able to completely convert Amylose. But since it cannot get past the branch joins, Amylopectin cannot completely be converted by beta amylase. The optimal pH range for beta amylase between 5.4 and 5.6 and the optimal temperature range is between 140ºF (60ºC) and 150ºF (65ºC). Above 160ºF (70ºC) beta amylase is quickly deactivated [Narziss, 2005].

Alpha Amylase is able to split 1-4 links within glucose chains. By doing so, it exposes additional non-reducing ends for the beta amylase. This allows for the further conversion of Amylopectin. The optimal pH range is between 5.6 and 5.8 and the optimal temperature range is between 162ºF (72ºC) and 167ºF (75ºC). Above 176ºF (80ºC) alpha amylase is quickly deactivated [Narziss, 2005]

Limit dextrinase is able to split the 1-6 links that are found in Amylopectin. It is therefore able to reduce the amount of limit dextrins (glucose chains containing a 1-6 link) which are left over by alpha and beta amylase activity. Its optimal pH is 5.1 and the optimal temperature range is between 133ºF (55ºC) and 140ºF (60ºC). Above 149ºF (65ºC) this enzyme is quickly deactivated [Narziss 2005]. Because of an optimal temperature well below the commonly used saccrification rest temperature for single temperature saccrification rests, this enzyme plays only a mior role in most mashing schedules. Extended rests in the lower and upper 130sºF (upper 50sºC) benefit a higer fermentability of the wort. " (HomeBrewTalk, http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Enzymes)

Also Found this site - http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/

Without a Hydrometer im hoping this will give me a basic idea whats going on to "guess" a recipe at this stage, it recons at 75% efficiency i'll need 7Kg of oats to 18L to get a SG of 1.080, so im gonna bump up the KG of OATS .

Yeah Linny look I'm a little worried about ya doing oats with just bread improver as it likely has just one maybe 2 enzymes . the enzyme listed on some is amylase mostly alpha. If I was going to try the no malt path reckon I would get down to the HBS and buy a glucanase enzyme, I think the AG beer mob use it for preventing cloudiness but i can't remember what the main one is called might be amylogucosidase but don't quote me on that ;-)

ok so finally done the cuts from my spirit run on this heres what I got : 4 small jars, say 2 jars of heads 15 jars mostly 600ml of hearts and 19 jars of tails I watered down the hearts to 66% ABV and ened up with 9 ltrs , keg 7 and am distress aging 2 ltrs to be put in the keg very likely tomorrow as I don't want to over oak this light whiskey. Initial Review ok well it has a honey almond, fresh baked anzac bickie fragrance and very pleasant. The taste is equally pleasant kind of like the smell but has an unmistakable single malt whiskey type flavour. Its one hell of a lot smoother than scotch and a little like the up market Irish whiskey's in the mouth feel but not really the same in the taste, although I have noticed a hint of this sort of flavour in some of them (if that makes sense) will keep ppl updated on how the oaking effects the flavour and texture of this whiskey

Anzac whiskey!

You better bring some arround. I'll supply the bikies, and we can dunk away all night

not sure a soggy old oat biscuit soaked in whiskey would be all that delightful could be wrong as I'm not talking from experience here :icon-lol: :icon-lol: :icon-lol:

Lets not knock it till we try it.

If its shit, we'll just use ice insted

one day of distress aging and this stuff really is incredable guys, one seriously nice dram. I think what really helps speed this up is using termite eaten timber as there is probably more than 10 times the surface area :handgestures-thumbupleft:
This stuff picture is Quircus robar (limousine oak/English oak) and what I do is burn it blow it out and drop it into 65% alcohol with a cap of maple syrup. I then put the jar into hot water, once warmed up I seal the jar and put it in even hotter water then after say 1/2 hr i put it in water that is 1/3 hot and 2 3rds boiling and leave it until it slowly cool . one yrs barrel age overnight ;-)