Distilling The Ultimate Beginners Bourbon (Safety Net)

are you keen to make bourbon at home you're in luck because i have a fantastic recipe and the best part is it's pretty much fail safe how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week i'm jesse this is still it and i am guessing that there is a bunch of you that are wanting to make your own bourbon at home and maybe you've tried it before and it didn't work out quite the way you wanted it to maybe you've done the sugar in essence thing and that wasn't quite what you were expecting or hoping for perhaps the idea of getting stuck into a all-grain mash is just a little bit it's a little bit daunting to you i get it trust me we're all new at some point in time and this hobby has a insane learning curve i think this is the best recipe i've ever made it's going to dip your toes in the water of all grain it's going to give you all of those benefits but you don't have to stress about it because we've got the safety net of sugar i get it i know sugar is a compromise but in this case i think it's worth it and we're going to combat all the downsides as best we can let's talk about equipment real quick uh and spoiler alert it's not that scary for this stuff the point of this recipe is to be easy for new people to the hobby so you're going to need a brew in a bag bag this is what happens when you don't clean it don't be like me clean your sack all right uh you're gonna need a pot a large pot if you have a stock pot or something similar that is perfect uh if you don't have a dirty grape big pot then uh multiple pots or you can batch things that's not gonna be a problem something to heat said pot width you're going to need something ideally to measure abv or proof this is a refractometer specifically used for testing abv or proof you can of course use an alcometer like the hydrometer kind of jobbies uh either is good and to be honest you don't absolutely need one you're also going to need a still this needs a clean but it's also the still spirits boiler with the still spirits copper alembic dome any still that is roughly this size with a large mouth at the top that can operate in a pot still configuration will work and lastly you're going to need a fermenter i'm using a dirty great big 120 liter fermenter you don't necessarily need one that big you can just use 20 liter buckets if you want to but you're going to need enough space for 80 liters of liquid with a decent amount of head space on each of those there's going to be more experienced brewers and distillers watching this saying why don't you just use a insert piece of equipment here completely agree if you have the means to do that and the experience to use it definitely just remember the point of this recipe is to draw people into the world of all grain uh it's a bit of a compromise i get that but the point is to just get people started with a pretty solid result i gotta say anyway uh the next thing is to start talking about the mash so let's talk mash ingredients first of all corn we're going to be using good old fashion cracked corn it's bourbon bourbon there has to be corn in it okay simple enough you could of course use torified flaked any of the cooked corn varieties malted corn and that would allow you to skip the boiling the corn stage if you want to do so go right ahead but i'm using 4.7 kilos of cracked corn by the way freedom units will be popping up all over the place as i talk in metric we do of course need enzymes to convert the starch into sugar so 3.25 kilograms of distillers mold 2.75 for the mash and we're reserving a little bit for uh you'll see next up wheat a bunch of bourbons have wheat in it it's not something crazy or different it's a standard bourbon ingredient but for this one i would suggest using a cooked wheat so taurified wheat flaked wheat flaked wheat any of the wheats that have already been gelatinized for you i'm using 500 grams or half a kilo of this stuff but remember we're going to be using sugar and technically that's well it's just straight up not good in terms of flavor at the end it's a compromise so we want to crowber in as much flavor and complexity as we can from the beginning enter shepard's delight this stuff provides a really amazing rich caramely flavor that bleeds over into like dark fruit pruning kind of things almost which is very very similar in my mind to some of the flavors that you'll pick up in a really well aged bourbon so we're going to use half a kilo 500 grams of this stuff and lastly grams of light chocolate malt this stuff's gonna give funnily enough like milk chocolate kind of vibes chocolate milky kind of vibes and some more kind of grungy flavors as well heading towards coffee a touch of burnt toast but mixed with all the other sweetness we've put in here that's going to come across kind of like sweet chocolatey espresso which once again is flavours that i appreciate in a well-maturated bourbon hey do you want some uh trippy astronaut art no all right this this what about wax stuff you into doing wax stuff what about literally a jar full of distilling easter eggs super comfy hoodies i'll stop being silly and cut to the chase thank you for sponsoring this video into the am in case you don't know super comfy shirts really cool art they do other things like hoodies and actually their boxes are insanely good and the best thing is this weekend 20 off store wide use the code in the description down below or right here and you get another 10 off our first order of business is to deal to our corn so grab your dirty grape big pot half fill it with water and get it boiling then we're going to keep adding in corn nice and slowly add a little bit of corn give it a stir but only fill it up to about a little bit over two thirds full that's important guys we're going to keep needing to add stuff to this so don't overfill your pots and once again if you've got corn left over that's fine use a second pot or do this in batches now do you remember that half kilo of distillers malt that we put aside we're about to use it now so sprinkle a couple of handfuls over the pot and give it a good stirring the enzymes in the distillers malt are going to help stop this turning into just a thick gooey porridge the enzymes in that malt are going to denature really quickly at the temperatures we're cooking at so don't add it in all at once add a couple of handfuls every now and again throughout the next 45 minutes just to keep it thin keep stirring over medium heat until it gets up to a gentle simmer and this is going to be a game of adding a little bit more distillers every now and again adding a little bit more water every now and again to stop it from getting too scarily thick we want that corn to simmer for about 45 minutes now about part way through that 45 minutes grab a quick break from stirring get your distillation pot and fill it with five liters of water we want that boiling when the corn is finished once the corn simmered for 45 minutes and the water in the pot is boiling kill the power to the pot pop your brew in a bag bag into the pot and secure it around the top so it doesn't fall in and add all of the corn mixture into the brew in a bag bag you're going to want a total volume of water and corn mixture in this pot to reach 20 liters that's going to be kind of important in a little bit pro tip if you haven't done it already it's not a horrible idea to measure out certain amounts of liquid into it this kind of still and then scratch on the inside with a nail or something or a little engraving tool to to have measurement units on the side of your pot i need to jump in real quick and say a huge thank you to the patreons thank you team for supporting the channel day in and day out and everyone else say thank you to the patreons too because you guys were the ones that uh kept asking for this video so here we are if you're enjoying these videos and you find any value in them feel free to sign up on patreon if you'd like to if you don't like patreon i get it i understand you can have a think about becoming a channel member right here on youtube all right let's get back to it once the corn and the water have been combined they're going to be sitting at roughly like 85 to 95 degrees celsius and we're going to let it sit and chill for a half hour or three to get down to 69 degrees celsius 69 degrees celsius is the temperature where we want to start adding all of the rest of the grain in on top so add a little bit in give it a good stirring add a little bit more give it another good stirring we don't want to put too much in it any one time and let it sit for too long because it will get stuck together and things aren't going to be as efficient once all the grains have been mashed in check the temperature and we're hoping for a temperature of 65 to 66 degrees celsius now this recipe was specifically designed to leave a bit of headroom in the top of our pot so if it is too hot if it's above 60 like if it's at 67 degrees celsius put a little bit of cold water in if it's below put some boiling water in don't stress about it too much guys it's not the be-all end-all and please please add a little bit of water give it a good stirring and check don't go just dumping a bunch of water in there because you might overshoot now it's time to insulate the pot up really well and forget about it for an hour and a half if you want to for bonus points you can pop the top at about 45 minutes give it a really good steering and close it all back up again the upside is that it kind of agitates everything and just helps with efficiency in terms of making sure that the enzymes get in contact with everything everywhere the downside is it's going to let out a whole lot of heat really really quickly so that's up to you honestly uh i'd take it or leave it either way remember at the beginning i called this bourbon not bourbon that's because we're adding some stuff in here that regardless of where you make this stuff you can't technically call it bourbon white table sugar that's our safety net so regardless of what happens with the mash this thing's going to ferment now you could if you want experiment with substituting out table sugar for brown sugar it's entirely up to you if you want to try it but we're going to need 5.8 kilograms clean out the pot that you used for the corn add in five liters of water get it to a boil add the sugar in stir it until it is all dissolved and add in a teaspoon or two of whatever acid you like really citric tartaric lemon juice they'll all work and we're going to boil this for 45 minutes bonus points if you want to boil it for even a little bit longer and start getting just a little bit of color on that sugar next up honey and i am substituting sugar for honey because once again we're trying to crowbar in complexity and flavor from the beginning so i'm using a local wild honey that has some really cool dark kind of funky flavors for honey it's got like lots of dark fruit in it and it has dark caramel kind of flavors once again flavors that i like to find sometimes not all the time but sometimes in a really well maturated bourbon once you're finished simmering the sugar kill the heat and add in 250 grams of honey until it's dissolved and all of that mixture can go into the fermenter anyway now it's time to get back to our mash once it's sat there for an hour and a half it's time to strain the grain from the liquid and i find the easiest way to do this is to sling a rope over something nice and tough above you and just use that to hoist the grain bag up don't however hoist it all the way out of the pot yet you'll make a giant mess trust me ask me how i know instead let it drain for about 15 minutes before it goes above the top of the pot and then lift it up quickly in one fluid motion up well above so it can sit above the pot and drip down into the pot once it's dripped out for a little bit you can squeeze the bag if you want or you can twist the bag to help squeeze it all of those squeezings or drippings whatever you want to call it is going over into our fermenter as well now you don't have to do this but once again bonus points if you want to we can sparge those grains obviously we're doing this in a really weird way for people that know all grain brewing but here we go that bag goes back into the pot you were using or back into a different bucket top it up with some hot water ideally at about 75 degrees celsius let it sit and steep for a little while agitate it move it around stir it and then do the same process again hoist the bag let it drip squeeze it put that stuff into the fermenter i did this twice and i think it was well worth it well worth doing it twice after that you're going to get really diminishing returns once again it's not 100 necessary if you don't want to do it now it's time to top our fermenter up to somewhere between 80 and 90 liters in total that volume is somewhat flexible but what you're really aiming for at this point is 25 degrees celsius that's the temperature we want for our yeast once you've got to that point if you have the equipment take a gravity reading with a hydrometer or a refractometer a rough ballpark figure here is you want to be somewhere between 1.055 and 1.070 i don't personally think you're going to need to add any yeast nutrient into this the grain is taking care of that ourselves but what we do obviously need is yeast now this is up to you you can use whatever yeast you like i am going to use m1 by angel because i think it adds some really cool esters up front in a young whiskey i enjoy that i like it but i get that using certain kind of yeasts you know some places you can't get them um buying other yeasts can get really expensive especially on larger ferments like this i understand so if you want to use baker's yeast by all means go ahead and do so just understand that it will it really does make a difference it's not bad it's just going to be different in any case you're going to need roughly 40 grams of yeast pitch that on in there if you can keep the temperature at a constant 25 degrees celsius and let it do its thing my ferment fermented out completely dry don't stress out if yours if it finishes at 1.005 or something like that it's it's not an issue at all don't worry about it mine took five days to ferment and then i left it for another three days i would suggest doing that if you can it really can add some extra flavor now this recipe was specifically designed with the t500 in mind when it comes to volume so it'll fit three pretty much perfect stripping runs into the t500 what that means is you fill the pot up with roughly 20 liters you can probably squeeze a little bit more in there if you want to and you distill it in pot mode we're not worrying about cuts we're not worrying about taking four shots none of that will deal with that later run plenty of water through the condenser at the beginning after about 15 minutes you can drop that back down a little bit to sort of a trickle ideally you want the spirit to be coming out the spout at about 20 degrees celsius and the water coming out of the condenser to be quite warm run all the way until the spirit coming off the end of the spout drops down to about 10 percent collect all of that stuff that's called low wines then empty is still out fill it back up again from the fermenters and rinse and repeat you're going to do this three times in total the stuff that you've collected from those distillations is generally called low wines clean the pot out put it back into the pot and start distillation again now we're doing the spirit run if you can at this stage i would highly recommend dropping the power going into the still i ran mine at around about 60 power for this if you're not able to do so and you just have to run it at full noise that's fine don't worry about it it's still going to work but i would suggest getting the ability to control power is probably the first upgrade you want to look at in any case 60 power i like to distill with four or five glasses i call this rolling cuts and it just gives you the ability to go back in time basically and not be pressured to make cuts on the spot whole different topic there's a video in the description down below if you want to check it out the first order of business is to take our four shots now you're going to want to take around about 100 mils of this stuff we're not going to use it we're not going to reuse it chuck it out or use it as fire later that's what i do next up we're going to collect the heads and this is where things start to get a little bit artsy and the reason being is that your process and your ferment is going to be slightly different to mine so we are probably going to end up with different optimal cut points i'm going to give you some pointers though so first of all i would collect around about 400 mils off the still and then once you get to that mark start tasting what's coming off the still if you're not used to tasting at high abv be very very careful with this because you can blow your palate out instantly you won't be able to taste anything for hours proof it down to 40 before you taste it what you're looking for is the spirit to start subtly changing it's going to start losing that fake floral like cleaning product uh often like really weird fake apple all of those sort of aromas are gonna start disappearing it's gonna stop feeling so volatile in your mouth and it's gonna be less prickly on the side of your tongue when that starts to happen it's a pretty good indication that you're starting to head into hearts but like i said i am going to give you some numbers as guidelines definitely get to 400 mils don't take less than that i ended up cutting from heads to hearts at 650 mils that is not a magic number it's not a magic bullet by any means necessary that's actually slightly less heads than i thought i was going to take but on that run i just it just seemed to be right if you want to when you know you're into hearts you can switch over to a larger vessel if you want so you're not juggling the smaller jars if you've only run the still a few times it's not a horrible idea just to have a butt load of jars laid out so you can just keep collecting and sort of sampling and not be rushing it's time to kick back and let the still do its thing at this point in time i will often bump the power up just a little bit and move from kind of a drip drip drip up to a drip drip spurt if that makes sense and at this point in time i do actually use the thermometer on the top of the still not to alter things not to change how it's running nothing like that i use it simply to give me an indication of when i should start looking for tails to show up so as soon as i hit 90 degrees celsius i know it's time for me to be on my game especially with a run like this because we're hoping to age this a lot faster if you want to age this for two or three years then maybe you want to go a little deeper into the tails but i'm going to cut this pretty clean once again there's no magic bullet here the best way to do it is with your senses unless you're making exactly the same thing over and over and over again then you can distill by the numbers but for tails there's going to be a very subtle but definite change between fun flavors and nasty flavors the more grungy grainy stuff is cool that smell of like when you open up a bag of corn and stick your head in and smell it that's nice i think in a whiskey the darker chocolates and coffees and stuff like that can shop near the tails as well but they're actually very close when you think about it to flavors like wet cardboard or maybe even like stinky wet dog in the car on the way home you don't want that stuff so make sure you're on your game and watching things at this time of the run once again this isn't a magic bullet i decided to cut at 56 abv coming off the spout you can if you want keep running the still all the way down to about 10 coming off the spout and collect all of those tails combine them with the heads that we had before called them faints and save them up to use for your next run not necessary and it's not going to affect this product at all it's just going to potentially make stuff in the future a little bit better and give you a little bit more product in the future outside the scope of this video but if you want to save it to learn about it in the future there's an option now it's time to proof your hearts down to maturation abv or maturation proof i am personally going to do this at 55 abv or 110 proof if you want to follow along exactly i would suggest you do the same if you like a little bit more spice and pepper in your whiskey you could go a little bit higher maybe 60 120 proof if you like a really smooth mellow easy bourbon maybe you want to go down closer to 50 abv or 100 proof if you're making bourbon then you don't really have a choice you're going to use virgin american white oak i strongly strongly suggest that you use seasoned oak six months out on the elements at least ideally 18 months or more this stuff that i've got has actually been seasoned for four years and i would suggest toasting this in your oven at 320 degrees fahrenheit or 160 degrees celsius for 45 minutes and then putting a light char on it once again if you really like the sweeter side of things maybe toast and char a little bit lighter if you really like the more grungy spicy out there almondies sort of almost accurate flavors in bourbon toast and char a little bit heavier that's up to you that's up to you but if you're just not sure follow along with the recipe it's going to do you great i know people use all sorts of other products for this these are the things that i found the absolute best results with much better than chips or the spirals or anything like that it just does a really really good job if you're wanting to age this really quickly i would suggest using probably one of these staves per liter maybe two liters of whiskey you can split these sort of things really easy with an axe or something like that it's not going to be a problem if you're wanting to age for three to six months i'd suggest one of these for two to three liters of whiskey or if you're wanting to age it for a decent amount of time one of these for like five to six liters of whiskey now i am kind of in the mood to experiment with this and see what happens when you age it for a decent amount of time even though i made it specifically for you guys to age relatively quickly so i've put this into a bad mode barrel thank you thank you very much badmo barrels for sending me this i absolutely freaking love these things i i'm gonna do a video on these soon but the general breakdown is that with a barrel like this it's really hard to age it for ages because the the ratio of wood to liquid is so high that you just have to get it out of the barrel relatively quickly this because it's wood on the front metal around the outsides it's kind of the best of both worlds it's actually a barrel there's actually breathing action going on through the wood but you can you can age it for a long ass time so that's my plan but in addition to that i also have this here which i'm going to age a lot faster i'm going to age aim for three months for this one and i did a wii sample where i uh held it at 66 degrees celsius with a piece of the exact wood treated in the exact way that i'm suggesting you guys do it and i have a couple of samples here to taste so this sample is at 43 abv and this one is at 55 still so let me taste this the first thing i know right off the bat is corn slightly caramelly and chocolatey but with dark fruits like kind of plums prunes dates maybe a little bit of fig and almost none of that piercing cutting like sugar bowliness because it's all covered up with those sweet flavors that you don't normally get in a sugar head i'll be real with you at 55 percent it's still a bit brash which is why i proofed this down to 43 and i've let it sit for a couple of hours just to mellow out as well you lose the nose that's just what happens with lower proof whiskies it's not as uh in your face and bold in terms of flavors but now the full flavor palette is coming out a little bit better because it's not so jaggy i gotta tell you i think i nailed the specialty malts and the honey in this you can get little pieces of them and they contribute aged barrel-like flavors to the whiskey but you kind of can't tell that it's honey in here does that make sense i don't know anyway i really hope you guys try this one i think it's one of my best recipes i've ever made if you do try it make sure to come back and drop a comment here and let me know how you did so if you've enjoyed this video guys please please please do all the youtubey things and help me out like comment share subscribe so on and so forth but more important than all of that i'll see you next time keep on chasing the craft see ya

Channel: Still It

Views: 706,709

Keywords: distilling, home distilling, how to make bourbon, how to distill bourbon, whiskey, Jesse, Still It, safety net, Safetynet, CTC, chase the craft

Id: Vy8NbMpAnGA

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 02 2022