How to Make Tequila w/ REAL AGAVE LEAVES! Total Game Changer!

I'm gonna make some tequila if you don't like it why don't you just leave [Music] all right so a while ago I made an Agave Spirit it didn't have as much grunge in and Smoky flavor as I really wanted to get because I was using exclusively agave syrup I tried a couple of different ways to to boost the flavor and it came out pretty good but it was pretty far away from what you would consider a real Mezcal or tequila it just didn't have that kind of grungy earthy flavor the complexity that you get in really good spirits that are made from whole Agave Pinas so we're gonna do a couple of things to try and bump up the flavor profile so that we can have a little bit more complexity and get closer to what it would be like if we had some real Agave Pinas if you don't know the agave plant is one of these things and the Pina is one of these things and it's basically after you cut all the leaves off now to make tequila they take those Pinas and they split them in half and they roast them or they steam them for like a day or more and then you press that and you get this pulpy stuff and you get all the juice out of it and then you ferment it and distill it I've got to try and do something with ingredients that are accessible because honestly I've never found a source for actual Agave pulp or the penis so uh we're gonna try and fake it whether this works or not I have no idea I have not tried this before it is brand new there may be some unintended consequences this is just blue agave nectar I got it on Amazon I'm gonna put a link for it down in the video description if you want to get some but I've made it with the syrup that you can get from the grocery store one of the things that I've read is that the roasted Agave Pina tastes kind of like roasted sweet potato so we're gonna roast some sweet potatoes in the oven until they get nice and sticky and the other thing is in my area there are Hispanic grocery stores all over the place and one of the things that they sell are these giant ass leaves these are Mage leaves it's a type of agave they're not from the blue Weber Agave that makes this stuff I couldn't tell you what species this is from I have no idea but they're massive they're about three and a half foot long and about a foot wide the reason why these would be for sale in a grill grocery store is because you can use them for wrapping Barbacoa barbacoa's pork or beef or both seasoned heavily wrapped in these and then you bake it nice and slow a lot of times in a big pit in the ground and it's absolutely falls apart and it's delicious and starting to get a little sweaty thinking about it so these things are cast offs from Mezcal manufacturers they cut the leaves off of the Pina they only want the Pina a lot of times they'll dry these and use them for firewood or they'll just sell them to grocery stores while they're still fresh so there's got to be a reason why they don't use them in production of tequila and mezcal now it could just be that they don't use them because there's no sugar in them I'm fine with that I got plenty of sugar it could be that there's some chemicals in there like saponins that don't come out after you roast them I talked with Adam over it still behind the bench he did a video kind of expanding on some tips and tricks to to increase your flavors and get closer to the flavor profile of an actual tequila if you want to dig deep into the variety of bacteria and the variety of yeast that you can use to approach the flavor profile even better then I highly recommend you check out his video I'm going to put a link for it down in the video description so you can check them out when you're cutting this stuff up wear gloves because a lot of times it'll have I think it's oxalic acid and that will just burn the crap out of your hands trust me I found out the hard way we got to do a little prep before we can actually ferment anything in my ready Bucket over there so we're going to get our sweet potatoes chopped up and toss them in the oven then we're going to chop up our leaves and do some stuff with that [Music] foreign [Music] so now I'm going to make my house smell probably pretty bad I'm going to turn on my burners here and Char these guys to get some roasty chard flavor on them and then we'll go on from there [Music] [Music] all right so now that I have made the house smell really bad and irritated my wife and my dog it's time to finish processing these so I didn't go crazy on the Char because you know I want some flavor in there other than just burned I tried to get them all you know some some caramelization on them but still have some soft areas so what we're going to do is chop this up into just some little cubes and then throw them into our insta pot and pressure cook them I think it's going to be in stages I'll do four hours and then see how they look and see how they smell now again this may be completely pointless these might have some undesirable chemicals in them that are just going to give us some off flavors and I won't know that until I'm done cooking them but what I'm mainly after is the terpenes terpenes are the big flavor compound you can use orange terpenes for cleaning stuff like that it's a common compound and it's very volatile very strong tasting that's going to give you a lot of the flavor now this almost sweet cooked plant matter kind of smell hard to describe if you ever cooked Cactus or anything like that on the grill it's kind of like that we're just going to chop this up throw it in the instapot and then we'll see what happens [Music] oh so as you saw I took all of the leaves after I had charred them cut them up threw them into the old instant pot and I added about a cup and a half of water and just turned it on for four hours at Max Pressure Max temperature we've got about an hour left on that and on the sweet potatoes after they cooked for a little while maybe about 20 30 minutes or so I went ahead and wrapped up the aluminum to make little foil pouches and that way they'll keep the the moisture in and just kind of gets sticky and delicious all right so while that's finishing up before I get too deep into the recipe I just want to thank today's sponsor into the am these guys right here that make this awesome t-shirt I love having into the am as a sponsor because they keep sending me all these really cool t-shirts they're super comfortable they've got amazing graphics on them and the prices are fantastic especially right now they've got a big sale coming up here in March and I think they're going to have about 40 percent off so if you use my link down in the video description plus the little coupon code you're going to get 40 plus my discount on top of that so they constantly have new designs coming up all the time and so I recommend that when you get to the website you check the new section and look through to see what the new offerings are because they're always is cool if you guys want to get some again the link is down in the video description and use this coupon code to get an extra discount agave syrup fermenting can be kind of problematic there are several factors that you need to keep in mind one the pH is going to crash it's just going to happen you need to either put in some buffering like oyster shells or something or monitor the pH often enough so that you can add something like calcium carbonate or sodium carbonate and get that pH to balance between four and five the other thing is temperature you really want to make sure that you're fermenting between 85 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit because if you're not then you can really stall out this fermentation another thing that you want to do is make sure that your hydrometer range is between 1.060 and 1.070 mainly because you can't really treat this like a sugar wash the higher you raise that sugar content of your wash when you're using agave syrup the more you risk stalling the fermentation because agave syrup is not just sugar it's got a lot of fructose in it so overloading it with something that the yeast has a harder time digesting is really not a good idea so don't set yourself up for failure by going you know crazy and aiming for like a 11 or 12 or something percent ABV wash just go for 1.070 as your your ceiling another thing you can do is to make sure that you stage your nutrient levels your yeast nutrients that you're going to put in at the beginning of the wash you can kind of cut that in half and then add the remaining nutrients after you drop down about 30 percent in your your sugar content or you could just wait about 24 to 48 hours what that does is it keeps the yeast energized it keeps it going it gives it more energy to be able to process all those remaining sugars there's a lot of different yeast that you can use there are some that are specifically made for Agave there's safe Tech blue and there's distillomax for tequila I couldn't get those in time and I am ready to start this wash so I'm just going to use some distillers active dry yeast some good old daddy and that's what I used last time and it just chewed right through it if you use the stuff that's specifically designed for tequila you're going to get an even better Ester profile that's going to give you a better flavor on the on the final end the last thing you really really need to do is make sure that you oxygenate your wash definitely oxygenated if you don't have an aquarium pump where you can pump oxygen into your wash before it starts fermenting and get two buckets and pour that wash back and forth between your buckets three or four times in order to froth it and get it nice and foamy and full of oxygen because that's going to help the yeast a whole lot a couple of other things that we can do aside from the sweet potatoes and the Agave leaves stuff that I did last time in my previous video I made a boshe out of some agave syrup and a boshe just means that you're cooking it you're going to heat your agave syrup to make it darker to make it richer to give it almost a little bit of a smoky taste you don't want to do that with all of your agave syrup because if you do you run the risk of creating too many unfermentable sugars that no matter what you do they're not going to ferment and that can also stall your wash if it doesn't stall the wash it can really affect your yield so if you thought you were going to get eight percent alcohol you might end up getting six so I wouldn't do more than about 20 percent of your agave syrup as a boshe I've got this big bottle I got over at Walmart it's 46 ounces so I'm going to go ahead and bow shade this basically I'm just going to pour it in a pot simmer it nice and slow and then take samples every five minutes or so as it's cooking until it gets nice and dark as you can see from my super scientific observations I took measurements about every five minutes right over here 25 minutes and then 27 because the color started changing quite significantly and I ended up stopping at about 35 minutes and you can see how dark it is so my recommendation is to do it on about medium and then as soon as you start seeing the color really start to darken drop your heat down and just kind of really keep an eye on it it's going to do nothing for about 20 to 25 minutes and then all of a sudden it's really quick keep an eye on it set a timer check it every five minutes probably keep the vent hood on and the last thing you can do is to add in some yogurt it's got several live cultures of bacteria in here and as that bacteria starts eating up the sugar it's going to turn it into acids acids do some fantastic chemistry inside the still and turn into Esters and the Esters are flavor compounds that will make their way all the way through the still and add to your overall flavor add the yogurt and then let it sit for at least 24 hours without throwing the yeast in there because if you pitch the yeast the yeast is going to be so aggressive and so active that it will just kind of annihilate all the bacteria and you won't get any benefit from it so give it 24 hours with the bacteria in it first all right so I'm going to pop the top on my instant pot let that steam out outside and then we'll see what we have [Music] thank you [Music] after four hours in the pressure cooker this stuff is still like boot leather so I'm gonna let it go for probably 24 hours the cool thing is that the aroma is not like objectionable so when I popped it open there was a slight sweet Aroma cooked sugar burned sugar it's got almost a Savory a little bit salty character to it but nothing weird nothing like broccoli or you know vegetal I'm cautiously optimistic that these are gonna work out in the in the mash and it's not going to screw with anything all right so now we've got our boshe syrup done and we're gonna start building this wash the Agave leaves are still cooking in the instant pot but in the meantime we can go ahead and throw everything together and get everything else working first things first let's get the boshay syrup into our bucket [Music] um all right so one thing I've got to do before I start throwing everything into my bucket is get my sweet potatoes mashed and by that I mean get the starches in them converted you may be wondering why did I roast them in the first place well it was all about Flavor getting that kind of Sweet caramely Sticky flavor that comes out of really good roasted sweet potatoes now that that's happened I still need to convert those starches into sugars not really for the sugar itself because I'm not too worried about that I've got plenty from the agave syrup it's more about making the sediment that's going to come out of these guys a little bit less of a problem I don't want any residual starch floating around in the boiler that could end up causing us problems during the distillation let's get these guys into a pot and we're going to bring the temperature up to 145 and mash them with some liquid enzymes for about an hour [Music] these leaves they look completely burned and messed up and and you know gross but they're not this is just the color that they turn from being in the pressure cooker for about 20 cumulative hours here's the cool thing they smell like Smoky raisins I don't know how else to describe it chard smoky raisins maybe a little fig so I am really looking forward to this now here's another thing I did I wasn't sure if the leaves were going to affect the viability of the fermentation I didn't know if some compound in the leaves was going to stop the yeast or stall it or something like that so what I did is about six hours ago I took one of these chunks of leaves and a couple of tablespoons of sugar and some of the agave syrup I ground it up in the blender and I threw some yeast in just to see what would happen and here's what's happening this stuff is churning like crazy so I think we're gonna be fine all right so now I've got to grind these leaves up in my blender and add them to the wash foreign [Music] I've still got all this the steaming liquid and this was just every time I opened it up I put in about a cup of water just to make sure there was about an inch of water in the bottom at all times I'm not going to add that my concern is that that whatever's in that water is going to be too concentrated and maybe too bitter too strong whatever and it's not going to contribute it's going to detract I think there's plenty of flavor in the fiber in that pulp that I just put in there and I think that's going to do enough so I'm not going to push it this is the first experiment using these Agave leaves and I don't want to ruin it now we're going to get this topped up with water and check our gravity reading [Music] [Music] Bingo I've got seven and a half to eight gallons of uh total volume here because my sugar content was 1.085 or eight seven I had to add a gallon and a half two gallons of water in order to bring it down to 1.070 and it is spot on and that's right where I want it I don't want it any higher than that because it would just challenge the ease too much all right so I'm going to go ahead and add my yeast nutrient pitch my yeast and aerate this just like I mentioned before we want this to be super healthy [Music] I put a paint strainer bag on top of the bucket because I'm going to ferment this one completely open to the air and I'm just doing this little mesh to keep the bugs out this is very common for uh for tequila washes and also for whiskey washes I usually just don't do it because I'm a little paranoid about bugs I've got a old busted refrigerator out in the garage I'm going to put this in with a couple of heating blankets to raise the temperature up so that it ferments nice and vigorously because again you want this between 85 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit while it's fermenting all right so it's been two days take a look so you can see the sweet potato skins and the pulp from the Agave leaves is all sitting on top just like a fruit wash where you get a cap on top with a fruit wash you got to knock it down to allow the CO2 to escape and just let the wash breathe and also to prevent mold from forming because this will start to dry out and if it gets moldy that's not good since we've been two days it's now time to add some more yeast nutrient to help keep this going keep stirring it every 12 hours or so to keep that cap knocked down and keep it healthy and I'll see when it's done the wash is almost done it's down to 1.006 I'm just gonna run with it because it's the difference between 8.4 percent ABV and uh whatever this number is right here to me this is definitely going to ferment all the way to dryness if I if I gave it the amount of time that it needs you can still hear the Rice Krispies it means it is still a very active fermentation at 1.006 so I think given one more day which I just don't have in my schedule I think there's no question that this would ferment all the way out to dryness the most important thing is this stuff smells absolutely amazing it's never developed any sort of a vegetal note uh that was my biggest concern with those green leaves was that it was going to smell chemically or vegetal and it never has charring them over the fire and then putting them in the steamer for 20 hours you could even go further than that it's not going to hurt I'm giving it all that time helped it to really develop the the my yard reaction in those leaves everything turned brown everything turned roasty and to me that pulp looked exactly the same as when you you watch videos of them roasting the Pinas that combined with the delicious smell that was coming off of them was really impressive to me and kind of drove home the fact that I'm at least going in the right direction I'll see you when the liquor fairy gets done all right so I got everything back from the liquor fairy but before we do a tasting let me think these folks right down here all of my patreon supporters thank you guys so much I could not have done this one without you your encouragement to try the crazy was uh all I needed so thank you very much I really appreciate it and I thank you for keeping my lights on all right so we got everything back from the liquor fairy I have a big bowl of about two quarts of delicious Mezcal and uh it's at 62 percent there were some interesting things down in the Tails um I didn't really pull anything from the heads but I did take a little smidgy smidgy uh you know like a half an ounce here and a half an ounce there from a couple of the jars in the Tails there was some a little bit of grunge that I decided to go ahead and pull from so I've got a little sample here and this is proofed down to 40 percent I'm Gonna Keep the batch at 62 because I'm pretty sure we're gonna age it so this is Far and Away a very different product from the previous Mezcal we'll be right back and this is why you keep a distillers Library if you don't know a distillers library is where you just keep samples of everything that you've ever made if you make a new version of something or you try to repeat something you can say well let me check with the original and see how it came out yeah so the original is so subtle it's almost just like pure ethanol with a little hint of agave and a little hint of fruit compared to this new stuff the new stuff is full of grunge it's a very very heavy mixture it's definitely got some of the some of the tequila grunge so I think by using those leaves and using the sweet potatoes we were able to pull some flavors some terpenes out of those products could you get a better product with like straight terpenes I have no idea I've never tried them but I did get a good product out of this a lot of implied sweetness I'm getting burnt dark sugar I'm getting kind of an earthy roasted something but it is so much more complex than the original wait a second do I have any limes we got to do the real test really good okay now it tastes like tequila I'm not used to drinking white tequila like that just straight so it took me a second I had to I had to do the triggering mechanism so yeah I am ridiculously pleased with this one I think we're about 90 to 95 there I haven't tried the Agave terpenes that you can buy online so I think I'm gonna have to try that next just to see if we can get even closer but using all natural ingredients that I was able to Source at various grocery stores I am incredibly excited about this should you try it yeah yeah with a little bit of lime and some salt makes a damn fine shooter but I think it's really going to shine when we age it so I've got to figure out what I'm going to age it on you know what do me a favor and post some suggestions on what I should age this on I know used White Oak is is traditional I'm not 100 sure if that's the only Direction I want to go so give me your thoughts down below I think we're going to keep tinkering with this one but honestly if this is as far as I ever go I'm going to be happy with this my suspicion is that I'm really going to be happy with it once it's aged yay this was a tricky one this was there was a lot going on in this one it was tricky but I'm really glad we did it if you enjoyed this video do me a favor and hit the like button because it really helps out the channel I am not kidding if you want to see what I'm going to get up to next time do yourself a favor do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button with the little bell icon right next to it so that you get notified when I post new content if you have a tried and true tequila recipe or agave Spirit recipe post it down in the comments section down below if you're willing to share if not send me an email I'm always down to Tinker with this one because as a community we have whiskey kind of sorted out and we have rum sorted out but when it comes to stuff with difficult to find ingredients not so much there's still a lot of room to play around and Tinker all right I think that is it for now thanks for watching talk at you later the Pinas from Agave are really really hard to get did you think I said penis [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Bearded & Bored

Views: 30,715

Keywords: Bearded and Bored, how to make tequila with agave syrup, agave nectar, agave syrup, agave spirit, mezcal, tequila, como hacer tequila en casa, como hacer tequila de agave, como hacer mezcal en casa, agave fermentation, agave mead recipe, agave bochet, how to distill tequila, how to make tequila, distilling tequila, distilling tequila at home, How to Make Tequila w/ REAL AGAVE LEAVES!, maguey leaves for cooking, maguey leaves barbacoa

Id: w9XKg6g2QKI

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023