by xcvator » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:07 pm
Just an update as I've been travelling since late April :teasing-neener:
In late Feb I did a run of wb, no allbran, 120 litres, 1st run was as fast as the pot still condenser could take, ran it down to about 20%, dumped the 1st litre of foreshots, 2nd run was at half speed, dumped 1st 500mm of foreshots, ran the next 3x500ml into jars, next 3 litres straight into a big jar, then back to 500ml jars down to 20% , left it sit for 3 or 4 days.
Then I did the smell test on the 1st 3 jars and kept the 3rd, did the same thing with the tail end jars, but kept the 1st of the "off" smelling jars and included that into the hearts.
These were then combined into 5litre jars, a combination of French and American dominoes , heavily charred, were added to the jars, along with a full vanilla bean , sliced open length wise. Abv was set at 65%
Each jar was then plugged with a tightly rolled up paper towel, and aerated for 8 weeks.
In early April I removed sufficient liquor to water down to 40% and place into 2x20 litre food grade jerry cans ( yeah I know, :o but glass doesn't travel well on outback roads) again with a vanilla bean in each container.
The result was for a confirmed whisky drinker (me) very good, so it was then tested ( neat)on various random unknown travellers around camp fires and invariably the question was " I don't know what it is, but geeze it's good, can I have another 1 " when they were told it was home brew no-one quite believed me until I produced the jerry cans with the whisky in them.
I managed to get the 20 litres to last around 4 months :)) the last 5 weeks has been pure hell having to buy 2nd rate booze :angry-banghead:
This recipe can, with care , produce an excellent whisky, different,yes, but non the less excellent, in a very short time