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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Allt om whiskey/whisky
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rkr
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av rkr »

Hello all,

I was asked to write a short description on how to make drinkable whiskey, so here it goes.

Whiskey making can be divided into three stages, mashing and fermentation, distillation and aging. I'll give a short description of each stage to allow you to make your own whiskey.

Mashing, the traditional way is to use malted barley, water and ale yeast. Nowadays a lot of people use readily available malt extracts. Malt extracts are OK, but for best results you should use one without hops (most brands are hopped) and use no sugar (usually means two packages of extract). You can use corn flakes to make bourbon as well, but that's a lot more work and I won't go into that in this text.

For mashing the old way I use a large kettle (more than 10 liters) and 25 liters picnic cooler + thermometer. I heat 10 liters of water with adjusted Ph around 6 (2ml citric acid to 10 liters of 7.5-8 Ph water) to a temperature of 74 degrees C and pour that over 5 kg of crushed malt in the cooler. Mix thoroughly check that temperature is ~65C and close the lid for 1.5 hours. After that the conversion to sugars has happened and I can proceed.

I pour the porridge into a fermenter and fill to 25 liters with cold water. Check that temperature is below 30C, pitch the yeast and let it ferment untill dry or up to 4 days.

After 4 days you have 25 liters of sour smelling mash that you should distill. At first you should do a stripping run. This is to avoid burning the grains during the next phase, or just to reduce the amount of mash and get % higher if using potstill. For stripping I've used amazing still (plastbrännaren) and collected half the amount of mash. Nowadays I've made a potstill from fermentation bucket and use 2kW element covered with mesh to avoid burnt mash.

With potstill type stripper just fire the still up and collect everything untill the head temp is 98-99C.

Now you can make the actual whiskey run with reflux still or pot still. For light bodied whiskey you can use reflux still as described in Ian Smileys book. From my experince it produces very light whiskeys with a bonus side of little to no hangovers. For regular full bodied whiskey you either need a potstill or lots of experience with reflux still. A good way to determine proper juts is to use alcohol meter and do the cuts by ABV. A good range for pot still is to start the middle run at 75% and start the tails phase at ~55%. This will produce medium bodied whiskey. After you get used to the tastes and smells in different phases you can do the run by using just your nose to smell the stuff. Heads and tails should be added to the next run to provide additional flavor.

Now the aging and diluting part. Aging is best done at 63-64% alcohol. If the single malt is too strong flavored for your taste you can cut it 50/50 with neutral spirit before aging. Aging is best done with somewhat burned oaks shavings. In my latest batch I used 50% of shavings toasted at ~150C and 50% toasted at ~200C which resulted pretty good flavor. I usually toast them in closed container in the oven for 1-2 hours. Put the whiskey in to jar, add oak (~2dl shavings for a gallon jar) and let it soak. Shake the bottle every now and then. After ~2 weeks you can take it out, but the longer it soaks the better it gets. You can dilute it down to 40-43% before drinking. Enjoy!

Greetz, Riku
Gäst

Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Gäst »

Grymt bra instruktion Riku. Den tackar man för.

//MaSTeR
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Ford-p
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Ford-p »

Tack för den kanonbeskrivningen. Den hjälper nog många.
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byggarn
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

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Tackar Riku. Ska snarast möjligt göra en sats eller två och lagra den på min ektunna efter lagring med ekspån. Suveränt.
Har du köpt färdiga ekspån eller spintat upp en ekplanka?
Gäst

Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Gäst »

Jag klistrade tråden nu.

//MaSTeR
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rkr
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av rkr »

I've used both shavings bought from homebrewing store and sticks made from plank of oak. Shavings are faster and you need less of them. Sticks can be used 2-3 times.

I think I should talk a bit more about distillation before everyone starts blaming about whiskey without taste. The alcohol% based cuts are for double distillation in a pot still. The low wines for the second distillation should be at 25-30% for this to work well. Personally I end the run at ~50% which gives fuller bodied whiskey. If you use plastbrännaren for the stripping the low wines may only be ~15% depending on which type of system you have. In this case I'd rather recommend triple distillation.
Here's some hints for using you nose and tongue to determine cuts (with potstill).

Heads: At the start there's a strong ethyl acetate smell that gradually fades. It's a bit harsh and stingy to smell. While it fades away a beautiful malt aroma starts to appear. This gives a very nice flavor to the main run, but the ethyl acetate present will cause headaches next morning. It's up to you to choose whether to collect or not. Personally I collect the stuff, unless you drink excessive amounts you'll be quite OK. When the malt aroma start to fade you should start collecting the main run at the latest, unless you are aiming at light bodied late cut whiskey.

Tails: At the end of the main run propyl compounds start to appear. At first they have a very pleasent, a bit "darkish" smell. After a while they start to become more harsh and at the end your hair will stand up from smelling it. You should collect at least a little bit of that harsh stuff, when it blends to main run it gives a very nice aroma to the whiskey. When you get used to the stuff you'll propably start ending the middle cut later. Rule of thumb for beginners, when you think that the stuff that comes out will ruin the whiskey collect 50ml more and switch to tails.

You can also run by the thermometer, but variances caused by differences in starting alcohol procent in mash and low wines make it pretty inaccurate method.

With a reflux still the separation is much clearer, it takes continuous monitoring to be able to make precise cuts. Also you'll loose some of the whiskey character as some of the lower and higher boiling point alcohols are not collected. I'd recommend reading Ian Smiley's book (making pure corn whiskey) if you want to use reflux still. That's what I started with, and although I no longer agree with all of his text it's a very usefull book.

One more tip, if you don't like the product, combine it with heads and tails and redistill. Practising is essential in this hobby and you learn by doing.

Greetz, Riku
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Draggen
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Draggen »

Mashing, the traditional way is to use malted barley, water and ale yeast. Nowadays a lot of people use readily available malt extracts. Malt extracts are OK, but for best results you should use one without hops (most brands are hopped) and use no sugar (usually means two packages of extract).


vad menas med hops (hopped)
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Mr_P
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Mr_P »

hops = humle
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Draggen
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Draggen »

ok
tack och bock
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Bugblatter_Beast
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Bugblatter_Beast »

Kan man använda spiral-brännaren till destilering?
Eller måste man ha kortare längd på stigningen?
I'm a rambler, I'm a gambler, I'm a long way from home
And if you don't like me well leave me alone
I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I'm dry
And if moonshine don't kill me, I'll live till I die
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rkr
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av rkr »

There's one huge problem about spiralbrännaren and whiskey, the grains will burn into the heating element and the burnt taste will carry to the whiskey. Even if you cover the element with mesh or similar some small particles will get through and get burnt (tried that). The problem lies in the long duration of distillation with spiralbrännaren. Even if you take the grains out there will still be some burnt smell.

If that can be solved spiralbrännaren will work well. Shortening the reflux side is a good idea, but some reflux should be present to emulate the swans neck design of whiskey stills. I'd guess 50-100cm of reflux spiral is good starting point for experiments.

Greetz, Riku
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Ford-p
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av Ford-p »

Menar du att det är problem med bränd smak i alla apparater som har värmeelement i mäsken?
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rkr
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av rkr »

No, a brief (1-2 hours) stripping run with shielded element works OK. After stripping it doesn't matter what heating method is used. I use 2kW element with shielding for stripping and it works pretty well, requires cleaning after use though (some solids get stuck in 2 hours run). So this is one thing to consider when building a pot still.

Greetz, Riku
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deejay
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

Inlägg av deejay »

Riku, (eller någon annan)
Vart köper du/ni Malt?
Eller köper du/ni Korn och mältar själv?
Lantmännen? Eller finns det "billigt" i någon bryggbutik?
/dj
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Farbror_Plast
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Making Whiskey, short description of precedure and gear

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www.humle.se har både malt och maltextrakt
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