Easiest Way To Sour Your Wash Before Distillation

souring a mesh that's what we're talking about today uh why would you do it different ways that you can do it and the absolute freaking easiest way to possibly do it how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick ass week i'm jesse and this is still it's the channel all about chasing the craft of home distillation and making it a legitimate hobby all right guys so uh staring your mesh you've probably heard people talk about this a bunch when it comes to distilling especially probably when it comes to sort of old-school uh american style whiskies or american style corn stuff it comes up a lot i want to talk about it today in a slightly different way so what i want to say right from the beginning is that what some people mean when they say a sour mesh is different than what other people say when they say sour mesh so i'm not really talking about mashing today what i'm talking about is souring your ferment before it goes into the still that's what i'm talking about so sorry if there's any confusion i know that this is a weird thing and different lexicons come up against each other so just wanted to to to say that so what some people will talk about when they talk about this sort of topic is taking the leftover stuff left in your pot after distillation and then adding it into the ferment next time that that's not what we're talking about here that's a different topic and i think it's got a slightly different uh set of reasons for doing it we can talk about that another time if you want and also a slightly different outcome it's going to add flavor but it's going to do it in a slightly different way what we're talking about here today is actually allowing your mesh or creating a mesh that incorporates wild bugs and when i say bugs what i mean is wild yeast bacteria fungi whatever it happens to be to get into the mash and to literally create acids in there so why the hell would we want to do that well basically it adds more flavor uh i would suggest you go back and have a listen to the podcast i did with the guys from iron root the red brothers licorice everyone knows guys black licorice is better than red licorice i mean come on but they talk about the process of estrofication so you end up with an acid in your fermented product you pop it into your still and in the presence of heat alcohol and copper it goes through the estrofication process and funnily enough it creates esters on the other side more often than not or quite often they'll turn into tropical fruity lighter sweeter more approachable types of flavors which is quite interesting which is quite interesting because we're creating this by creating something sour to start with now the reason i'm talking about this is because i've had a couple of people lately and a couple of patreons actually get in touch with me recently and ask about taking old grain from your last mash or the previous mash or the previous ferment depending on whether or not you ferment on the grains and then introducing it into the fermentation later on to inoculate the wash to start promoting these sort of wild critters i shouldn't say critters when i say critters or bugs what i mean is once again wild yeast wild bacteria so on and so forth you can totally do this i've seen people in the beer world talk about it and use it to create sour beers i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with it it's just that i i don't think you need to and here's why guys when we make a wash for distillation here's what we do crush the grains whack them into water at a certain temperature we mash them we let them sit and then uh if you're fermenting on the grain you call it back down you pitch yeast you're done if you're not fermenting on the grains you separate the grains in the liquid you cool it down you add yeast what we haven't done in any stage here is sanitize the bejesus out of this so that's what beer brewers do they'll normally boil for 15 minutes we don't at any stage boil the crap out of the liquid to sanitize it so what that means is that all the natural bacteria or the natural yeast or the natural fungus that's in there some of it dies sure some of it's going to die off at 65 degrees celsius for an hour but i guarantee you some of it won't so my super duper secret ingredient for souring a mash is patience i let it ferment i let the saccharomyces that i've pitched the the yeast that i've chosen to pitch into that wash do its job and then i sit and i wait and sometimes it's a day sometimes it's a week but eventually that wash is going to start to sour like we said before we didn't actually uh sanitize that wash there's still a few little things in there there's still a few yeast cells still a few bacteria cells whatever it happens to be that are gonna make it through and once that yeast dies down and it stops doing its job they're gonna come right back up and they're gonna take off as well the beauty of this is that it's kind of set up to really work perfectly for us first of all those things that are in the grain that are going to sour the mash are hugely hugely out competed by the amount of yeast that we pitch we pitch so much yeast in there that they just can't take hold at the beginning of fermentation because our yeast the stuff that we've thrown in there is going absolutely bonkers and just running them up all over the place in addition to that it's also got a longer lag time it's just going to take longer for them to kick off and get started so uh isn't there a bit of a problem in that the saccharomyces the the brewers yeast the baker's yeast whatever it is that we pitch first aren't they going to eat everything and leave the other guys with nothing to do their job with well no not quite there's always going to be something in that word that is uh unfermentable by the saccharomyces we're using it's not going to be able to ferment it and turn it into alcohol but the other stuff that's coming along behind it all the wild bugs that's still in the grain they will be able to ferment it so the beauty of this is that you're not losing alcohol to the sourness the simply coming in and cleaning some stuff up that our yeast wasn't going to eat anyway once this process starts how do you know when it's ready to distill well to be honest that's kind of up to you it's one of those things i've been experimenting with slightly different things the guys at iron root who i have learnt to listen to when they when they give good information like this they say that they just leave it go for a couple days they wait for it to turn they'll if they're checking it with a ph meter sure they wait for an indication that the ph is starting to change they're not looking for you know a huge difference they just want they just want to introduce a little bit of something into that wash i'm not using a ph meter to be perfectly honest i do it with my nose and with the old fingerometer you will 100 a day or two after fermentation be able to smell the difference or taste the difference and if you don't get it after two days wait for three days wait for four days uh if you want to push it and let that thing go really funky and sell up by all means that's fine i can't say exactly how that's going to affect things but i would be really interested for you to give it a go and report back on this video drop a comment let us know how it went so before i uh loop back around and make sure that i sum all this up in a relatively concise way i need to say a huge huge thank you dear lord to the patreons i almost knocked that over thank you so much patreons i didn't get to do this stuff without you so thank you it is very very very much appreciated it does not go unnoticed trust me if you out there in internet land are finding value in these videos and you'd like to help contribute directly to the channel as well you can go to chasethecraft.com support to find out all the different ways that you can contribute to the channel one of them being patreon if it's right for you there's a couple others there that they won't cost you a cent either so you can check those out too what i mean by souring the wash in this in this context is letting wild yeast while bacteria do their thing on the wash to eat up some of the stuff in the wash that's not fermentable by the saccharomyces that we're using to create acids which are then going to get put into the still along with the rest of the wash and go through the process of estrofication to add more flavor to our product literally all you need to do to make this happen is mash your grain don't boil it either ferment on the grain or don't because honestly it doesn't matter if the actual grains in there all that stuff can be mixed up in the wash it's slightly more likely to happen if it's on grain than it is if it's not i would say in my mind and then be patient let fine let primary fermentation finish out give it a couple of days and you'll start to notice it changing then exactly how far you want to let that go is up to you you make that decision as the artist in control of the product you're making but if you do something crazy if you do something different or if you've tried this a bunch make sure you report back let us know in the comments down below because i like it i like it when um the group the the community as a whole contributes to these things so it's not just this big hairy dude standing here yapping his face i think you get the point all right guys if you found this video helpful by all means please please please guys give me a thumbs up because it helps me out a bunch if you haven't subscribed yet please please do subscribe as well there's a bunch of you guys watching these videos out there on internet land that aren't subscribed so uh sort of out team and i'll catch you next time guys keep on chasing the craft see ya you

Channel: Still It

Views: 32,552

Keywords: sour mash, sour wash, souring, lactic, malactic, more flavour, distiling, home distilling, chase the craft, ctc, jesse, still it, sour, mash, wash, grain, bacteria, yeast, wild, wild yeast

Id: bJXaZ8kBIsM

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020