G'day Guy's,
Well about a month or two ago decided to have a go at malting 5kg's of barely to have a go at a single malt mash. Well ended up with 6kg's of home made malt and bought a kilo of Joe White malt, off the calc I got on another forum for 8kg's the strike water at 77C will be 68C after the malt goes in. Taking readings it was bang on the money as the strike temp was 68C. Now I was using my green can burner as the heat source and my mashtun had the setup for the PID so for temp sensing it did the job. I let it go to 64C then I put the heat back on until 68C for close to 3 hours. Kept checking with a iodine test until it did show a full conversion.
Now with only 20 litres deiced to so a sugar bump to get enough to do a full run using my bubbler. Well what a surprise running this wash as my still went on a totally different path with all four site glass's fogging up and the ABV still at 85%. Now I found I'm getting 90% after a good reflux where I let all the plates load. My cooling water is so cold I have water vapour coming out of the 1/2" breather under the PC. :scared-eek: With this first ended up with 4 litres @65% to age and used 20 grams off my big domino which weighed 2.2kg before trimming. The story behind this domino is a few years ago my forklift mechanic mate said the boss at this wood drying joint would love some of your moonshine. So I decanted a CFW and about a month later I got a package of French and American toasted oak to last me a few years to say the least. My mate said he put a 5kg french oak slab in the dryer to see if it would fully toast. So that where my big domino came from.
After the first run I got 10kg's of sugar and took close 1/2 a bucket full of spent grain and replaced it with 5kg's of cracked corn and the starting sg was 1078 and the ph was bang on 4 so that oyster shell is still doing it's job.
So last Monday did a sg check and it was on 1000, checked on Wednesday and 1000 then checked again on Friday and got the same reading. Now it was still bubbling away so I guess thats a sign the yesties are still alive and waiting for a new feed. :laughing-rolling:
Did a run today and got 4 litres to 85% so very happy with that :happy-partydance: :happy-partydance: :happy-partydance:
I finally fixed that surround on the car rim to stop extra flame coming out, all it took was one tek screw :angry-banghead: and got still upto temp 1-1/2 hours later, now I do find running my home made luxford burner around 4-5 psi as that is enough BTU's to load all four plates. Well the first litre taken was using my 200ml glass's and on the 5th one noticed the flow stop and go back to a drip. Looked at the plates and total reduced activity then looked at the gas bottle to find it freezing up. Gave the gas bottle a shake and my burner came back to life but :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead: gotta shut it down and get a new bottle.
So off to the green shed to get a bottle and stopped in to get another 10kg of sugar and soon after the gas bottle was connected the bubbles returned in the still. It ran for a few hours between 88 and 85C so I did put it back in reflux a few times to see the plates clear and get another 600ml cut. I use moccano jars for the cuts whre the standard sixe is just 600ml and the big ones are 1200ml. Which makes it handy when only had 6 standard ones.
With the generation scooped out 1/2 a bucket full of grain and added 2 icecream container of cracked corn and the same of cracked unmalted barley which I ran thru my corona mill and did 2 off runs of sugar bump with water while the still was still running. When I shut down the still I added the last 2kg's to it inverted it.
The starting sg was 1083 so another good yield is expected on the next run. I am thinking with this generation of making enough to fill a oak barrel where I can just leave it for a few years and forget about it, the only crux will be I do need a tap on the keg please Mr. Cooper :laughing-rolling:
Cheers Bryan