Gladfields Peat Smoked Malt

[WoodyD40]

I have finally taken the plunge - only 2 weeks behind Bryan with starting my Peat Smoked Malt mash.

I have followed (mostly) Bryan’s advice - taken a few liberties ( :laughing-rolling: ) as i went along

As i have recently purchased a BrewZilla (sorry Stig) I started with 30 litres of water and turned the heating elements upto 75degC.
Once it reached temp, I got my son to help me adding in the Peat Smoked Malt that i had already ground/Crushed/Milled.
This is where i had a slight difference to Bryans recommendation. As the milled Peat filled 3 x 20 litres burning buckets, and the most i could fit safely was about 10kg, i decided this was sufficient for my first effort.
So i got the drill going with the paint miser at full speed whilst the boy slowly added all the Malt in the ‘Zilla. No balls of malt, so happy outcome.

Shortly after this happened, i phone Bryan up and had a good long chat, and whilst on phone he got me to use my brand new Refractometer and it was clear that the malt was converting quickly in the hot water. I never got to do an iodine test (too keen, and i forgot).

After approx 1 hr 15 minutes i used the inbuilt pump to discharge all the liquid (wort) into a 60 litre fermentor.
As i added the wort to the fermentor, i also tossed 2 kg of white sugar in to melt with the hot wort.
I initially got 22 litres of liquid. I then put the fermentor up on the work bench in my still room, and using a 1 litre measuring cup, transferred the hot malt across also into the fermentor.
Bryan is adamant that this will help carry across a lot of the flavours during fermenting.

The temp was still up in the mid 40’s, so some cold water was added and that brought temp down to high 30’s.

I took out approx 100ml of the liquid to rehydrate the US05 yeast sachet. That was starting to go really nice, when my wife got a phone call offering 2 free tickets to the movies in 1 hour,
So into the fridge went the yeast culture, and off i went to the movies (yes, i was included in the free movie ticket offer). :laughing-rolling:

Got home from movies at 8:30, checked the fermentor, it says under 34 degress - so the yeast culture got tossed in and the lid locked on.
I am hopeful that when i get up tomorrow morning to run the next WBAB wash through the 5tstar neutraliser the airlock will be going off like a machine gun.


So, this is the intended recipie i am hoping to follow:

1st wash:
30litre 75deg water with 10kg of malt. For one hour (min)
Add 2 kg sugar and toss everything into a 60 litres fermentor
Cool with water to reach 52 litres.

2nd wash
Keep all the malt from wash 1
Use 6 kg of sugar with approx 4 litres of Dundee from the boiler. Wait until cools, add to malt in fermentor and top upto 45 litres.
Should reactivate with the yeast left in the malt.

3rd wash
Remove 1/2 the malt from the fermentor
20 litres of 75 deg water with 5 kg of fresh malt for at least one hour.
Add 2 kg sagar at end. Wait to cool - then add everything to fermentor. Add 30deg water to bring upto 45 litres.
Hoping yeast will reactivate.

4th wash
Repeats 3rd wash.

5th wash
Repeat 3rd wash.

That will be the first Islay style whiskey that i have ever done.

Running the still:
I intend to run the still with only 3 plates, and no mesh in the reflux column.
Ill run the still slowly and do cuts.
Keep only hearts.
Toss out the fore shots every time.
Retain the feints to through in the next wash.

Once all 5 wash’s have been done - I’ll carefully blend equal portions of each spirit run hearts, and water down to 65% in order to put on oak for an undetermined period of time. :music-deathmetal:

Footnote:
It takes effort to do a full grain mash.
Then you need to clean everything after - especially if you make a mess of it. (Like i did).

[RobMichelle]

So the big question woody, … what was the movie

[WoodyD40]

So the big question woody, … what was the movie

LOL - got to keep some secrets Rob. :laughing-rolling:

[The Stig]

Probably something like The Notebook :laughing-rolling:

[WoodyD40]

I just need to say, the aroma's coming from the fermentor (even sealed) is very smokey indeed. I did happen to have a chat with Bryan about the fact early on the weekend. I cant wait to be able to run this through the still.
Earliest i will have time will be Sunday 22nd - but i suspect it will likely be Monday 23rd instead - if it is ready to run that is.

[RobMichelle]

Sounds like it gonna be a nice drop I know it’s early days but sounds very promising. Looks like I’m back to fooling mash tuns :handgestures-thumbupleft: and drooling over fsd stills sighs

[WoodyD40]

Hello all.
I did the first run yesterday of my initial fermentation.
I may have been a few days premature, but I feel like I'm under a bit of pressure trying to get a few down whilst on holiday break.
But anyhow I have got about 4 litres as a stripping run run after fore shots thrown out.
I did collect in 250ml jars, but I left the jars overnight to breath and woke up with a head cold. That means I cants smell or taste good today. Safer to throw everything into a demijohn and keep going with fermentation and generations and hope for a good spirit run at the end.
I did keep the still going and got down to about 15% ABV before I shut everything down.

[WoodyD40]

I collected some of the Dunder from the still and threw in 12 kg of sugar. Had problems with it fully disovling in the Dunder so brought it into the kitchen asnc put on stove to keep heating it up.
Then I thew 20 litres of cold water on the grains left in the fermentor and slowly added the dissolved sugar. Fermentor slowly came up to 30 degrees.
With only small added extra water I brought the fermentor upto a total of 60 litres with a SG of 1080.
Not sure about the yeast in the fermentor, I added 100grams of lowans bakers yeast.

Well the fermentation is going off faster than any I've seen to date. Still going very strong after 36 hours.

[Wellsy]

Merry Christmas Woody
Was it a stripping run you did or a spirit run mate ?
If it was a stripping run, don’t do cuts mate as the smearing will be massive due to the speed stripping runs are done at. Stripping runs re simply to get the alcohol out and the spirit run is to seperate the the good, the bad, and the ugly :)

[WoodyD40]

Howdy All

Wellsy - I intended it as a spirit run, but due to having a cold i could not determine the correct cuts. So I thought it best to keep the lot (except the fore shots) and change my whole process for the rest of the generations to be stripping runs (means less time in the still room for the next few weeks, until its time to do the final spirit run)

I took the lid of the second fermentation (the one with 12 kg of sugar) and had to knock back a huge grain cap back into the liquid just before mid-day today. Once that was done, I took a gravity reading - its down to 1005 (from 1080 initial).

So now its going to be a game of patience to see if it will drop all the way down to 990.

I am hoping that by next week Friday I'll be able to put fermentation 2 through the still in a stripping run.

[RuddyCrazy]

Well mate I did check my last fermentation a few times and it did settle on 1000 :handgestures-thumbupleft: so yours won't be far away mate. It will be interesting to see if that grain cap returns as with mine after punching down the cap it has stayed down and as the ferment finish's the grain will settle to the bottom of the fermenter.

Now if your going to strip each one just set your still up as a pot still as that will keep all the flavour in the low wines where over 3 plates some will get refluxed out.

Cheers Bryan

[WoodyD40]

Well I am home after 4 days visiting friends and popped the lid off the fermentor.
Grain cap was back.

Pushed it down again and gave it a good stir.

Dropped hydrometer in, and it appears to be sitting at 995.

[WoodyD40]

Forgot to add photos.

[WoodyD40]

Here is the grain cap

[WoodyD40]

howdy all.

Took the lid off fermentation early this morning.
The grain cap stayed down.
Dropped a hydrometer in and SG reading was 992.
There still seemed to be some occasional bubble action so I've decided to wait another day.

Yup. I'm learning patience.
:laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:

[WoodyD40]

Howdy all

Took the lid off fermentor again this morning. SG Reading was 990. Bingo.

I transferred the ‘wort’ into the boiler by using jugs and poring into a rice colander into a 10 litre fermentor that also had a brew bag to catch first the grain and then the finer stuff so it didn’t get into boiler. That worked fantastic, although labour intensive.

I believe i got between 45 to 50 litres into boiler. I remembered to add 250ml of olive oil before sealing it up.

Turned on all 3 elements for a total of 3500 watts heating.
Once boiler was at 80 degrees, i turned off the largest element and kept 1500 watts heating going.
By slowing down the boiling rate early, there was absolutely no puking at all for the entire run.

Started taking drips as fore shots when boiler was at 90deg.
Switched over to large collection container once first 250ml fore shots collected.

Parrot started at approx 92 abv, and i kept STRIPPING RUN going until parrot was down to approx 20 abv.
I was happily surprised to collect approx 8 litres of low wines.

I consider that a successful morning. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Waiting for Still to cool down so i can take lid off and collect some Dunder for next generation. I already have the fermziller going, to heat up water to boil the next lot of grain.

[WoodyD40]

almost 3 full 5litre demijohns after 2 generations

:music-deathmetal:

[RuddyCrazy]

With my last mash for the third generation I did find I didn't need to use sugar at all to raise the SG so mate don't be in a hurry to just include it :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Now what you may find by stripping is the overbearing peat taste may just tone down some :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Cheers Bryan

[WoodyD40]

The time has come to confess that on Saturday which was a long hot day in the garage - I stuffed up mashing the grain for the 3rd generation of this whiskey. :angry-banghead:

I put 40 litres of water into the BrewZilla, when I probably only needed 25 litres for the amount of grain I needed to mash. This lead to a very low SG reading of approx 1035, even with 2kg of added sugar. By the time I dumped everything into the fermenter and added some back set from the boiler, the fermenter was overfull at about 62 litres.
After sleeping on the issue on Saturday night I knew the only was to fix it was to add sugar, but I had no more room to do so.

Thankfully with the number of fermenters I have at hand I have a few options.
I inverted 2kg of sugar and put into my smaller fermenter (10 litres) - and then transferred some of the wort across from the overfull 60 litre, which dropped the level down to 54 litres. This gave me room to invert another 4KG of sugar into the large fermenter, bringing it back up to just under the 60 litre mark. The large fermenter SG reading increased now to 1070. :happy-partydance:

Sunday was also a very hot day in the garage.
I rehydrated some US05 yeast for about an hour using some of the wort in a SS jug. It frothed up very nicely.
I poured a small amount into the 10 litre fermenter, and the remainder into the large fermenter.
All this was done first thing in the morning, and the temp of the fermenters was 33 degrees. Towards the end of the day, the heat of the day (especially in the garage) meant that the Fermenters rose to 36 degrees. :angry-banghead:

I have checked the fermenters this morning, and the grain had risen to the top of the large fermenter - so I mixed it, and pushed it back down again.
The small fermenter temp has dropped to 28 degrees, but not seeing any 'action'.
The larger fermenter temp has dropped back to 33 degrees, i have a heat belt on it set for 29 degrees and don't have it wrapped (yet). Lid is now screwed down tight to see if the bubble air lock will work.

Melbourne weather is so fickle. Heat wave over the weekend saw temp's in the high 30's and today it will struggle to get up into the low 20's.
I have today off as a sick day - so I'll keep an eye on the fermentations and i might pitch more yeast if I'm not happy with action.

[WoodyD40]

I had a check of the fermenters last night.
I opened the 60 litre fermenter, the grain had dropped to the bottom. The original SG was close to 1070 and now the SG reading was close to 1005, didn't seem to have any airlock action left. I added a sprinkling of bakers yeast and closed it back up again.
I opened the 10 litre fermenter, there is only sugar and wort in there, no grain. The original SG reading was close to 1095, and has dropped to 1030. I also added a sprinkling of bakers yeast and closed it back up again.
I'll check both again at the end of this weekend, and see how they are going.
:handgestures-thumbupleft: