Making Whiskey #1, Creating The Mash

okay this is going to be a little tutorial to show you how to create the mesh for any kind of whiskey um i'm just going to be doing a basic corn whiskey but it won't be 100 corn it will be partially corn wheat and rye it'll be mostly corn because i'm low on the wheat and rye but all i use is an 8 gallon brew pot stock pot would work just fine the only reason i went this route is because it already had the drain spout in the bottom and a built-in thermometer this one the drain spout uses a has a little filter that threads in there see if i can keep that in focus maybe maybe not so on the inside that filter goes connects to that and then this is pretty much like a jar rack that you would put in a stock pot if you're i don't know canning fruits or who knows what i'm not an expert on that stuff but this will create about a four inch gap on the bottom now even though that is perforated i still uh do everything in a brew bag a brew bag looks identical to a paint strainer bag that you would use to you know put in a five gallon bucket to strain paint through to take clumps out of it so basically what i do i have i put six gallons of water in here and then i use six pound or no sorry eight pounds of materials for the mesh so in this case that's two pounds that's one pound that's three i will have to come up with another two pounds of corn and all i'm going to use is cracked corn that you would get from bomb gars even though it's mostly cracked i still blast it through a food processor to break it up a little more because you want to get all of the starch out of whatever you're boiling because that starch is what gets converted to sugar and then yeast eats the sugar and turns it into alcohol so i thought i'd give a quick rundown of this you can see it's graduated there so you can tell how much water is in it but a person doesn't need to use a brewpot like i said you could use a stockpot most people do they just modify them and put a spout in the bottom and use a jar rack and as for the thermometer in there that's really not necessary you could just use a one of these kind of meat thermometers for a roast those work just fine you're not dealing with real high temperatures here uh you bring it up to about 180 to boil all your starch out of your mash materials and you'll notice you'll know when all the starches out because it will thicken up in there like paste you will hardly be able to get a spoon through it then you let it cool down to about 150 degrees and you add you could use malted barley or you can just buy amylase enzyme and that's what i do i mean yeah the the true way to do it is to use malted barley because that's its primary thing that it releases is amylase enzyme but it also releases starch as well so it'll bump up your sugar count even more i just like to keep it as stupid simple as possible so that's that for this part i'll be back in a few seconds when i start making up the mesh okay i'm back you can see i got about five and a half gallons of water in there i'm just leaving a little a little bit of head space because i don't know how much room all of the mash ingredients are going to raise that what i was referring to earlier about a brew bag that's all it is uh some people like to say that's cheesecloth but no it's actually a some type of a vinyl or polyester it has a drawstring on the the top so once that gets up to about 180 degrees we're slowly getting there um i'll drop the brew bag in there and add the ingredients for the mesh now what i was saying about uh using cracked corn that's basically all it is chicken feed you can make whiskey for chicken feed um it's pretty well ground up but if you have some large kernels in there the water is not going to be able to get into it and release the starch so it's always best to blast that through a food processor or blender to help powderize it not really powderize it but break it up a little more there's another thing that people do they actually use sweet feed to make whiskey sweet feet has got all kinds of grains in it that you would normally find in whiskey it also has corn in there but it also has molasses which is what rum is made out of so if you make a sweet feed mash you'll get something that tastes like a cross between whiskey and rum very light on the rum side because there isn't a whole lot of molasses in there but it's a common thing people do i mean they've been doing it for ages moonshiners down in the south they would use anything that had starch in it that could be converted to fermentable sugars so i just thought i'd show that where are we at here slightly below 160. so we'll let that get a little ways further and i'll drop the brew bag in there and start boiling up the mesh okay we're back we're further down the road here going to turn my heat down to about my second notch it's at 180 degrees oops keep my finger up from in front of the lens get rid of that lid really quick so the first thing we're going to add here is the the cracked corn i quickly ran that through food processor and it broke it up for the most part but my measurements or my weights were a little off i thought i had three pounds of this flight corn here that's actually two and a half so this is a good example of why i left the headspace in the top of that the brew pot because these are both two and a half pounds look how much more space that takes up because of all the air in between the kernels so good thing i left head space on there so the first thing we're gonna do is just we're just gonna dump this in uh contrary to what some people might tell you uh never try to use cornmeal it's not like it won't work it's just that cornmeal will create such a huge huge mess and you'll have a of a time straining it later because the way i like to do things is the way that they do it in an actual um distillery some people like to make their mash and then convert it with the enzyme and then strain it off you know pull that bag out let it hang for a while well the problem is you never get all of the sugar out of it you'll still have sugar trapped in that mesh so if you ever go to a distillery you'll see that they actually ferment everything all together they don't strain the mash off before they add the yeast let's see if i can grab this other bag and drive this one-handed this could be a little complicated seeing that i'm just using a cell phone get all of this in here [Applause] so that's five pounds of corn that'll be the first thing that we boil up to release the starch this will take a little longer than the other items so i'm going to do this first let it probably let this one steep for about an hour and then i'll add the rye and the wheat i always use flake dry flaked wheat things like that because it allows them to release faster and yes you can also use quaker oats or chestnut hill oats whatever dollar store oats anything that has starch in it that's the key is starch gets converted to fermentable sugars and it really doesn't matter what you use to get your starch from you could use potatoes granted that's what people think vodka is made out of but most vodkas made out of corn or wheat these days but yeah anything that has starch you can convert it to sugar and ferment it and hell there's people that even use bulk frosted flakes or regular corn flakes to make corn whiskey still works just fine all of that starch is still there so there's that part as you can see cracked corn does tend to have some other odd things in it like pieces of stems and corn husks and things like that but nothing to worry about uh it all gets fermented anyway so we're gonna let this go for a while and i'll add the other items later and see if there's anything else that i forgot to mention along the way but i'm going to let this steep at 180 degrees for an hour and that should be enough to get all the starch out of the corn okay back in a few okay we're an hour into it and most of the starch has come out of there i forgot to mention that aside from having one of these big spoons like this it's very helpful to have a long-handled whisk because if you're using flaked corn and especially if you do get brave and try to use cornmeal you'll get these dough balls that you have to break up because the water just won't get through there and um release all that the starch that's holding that dry ball of you know cornmeal together so that's a helpful thing to have around but you'll see those little dark spots those you know those are just bad kernels that were on the ears but not a problem i think i saw a dough ball there i think i got most of them out so i can safely add my wheat and rye and even though i said this is five pounds of corn then there's what two pounds yeah two pounds of wheat and three pounds of rye um technically i'm a little heavy on the corn so this would qualify as bourbon because uh the kentucky rules for bourbon say that it has to be at least 51 percent corn in all those companies like jim beam and wild turkey they have their own different recipes but you can guarantee that what they produce is made with no less than 51 corn so let's put the weed in here i'm sure that's gonna make some healthy dough balls too that flaked wheat has got a lot of free starch mmm buddy and you know after this cooks for a while it it actually smells like breakfast food like breakfast grits especially if you use uh rolled oats it tastes like uh or smells like oatmeal cooking so there's that that was the wheat now we'll get the rye in here looks looks very similar to the flaked wheat i always buy flaked everything uh it just makes it easier to turn it into a mesh now you see how thick that's getting buddy and by the time this gets done cooking down for another half hour to an hour this will be thick like porridge i mean just you you'll hardly be able to get this spoon through it because it'll be so thick from all the starch but that's not a problem because at that point you reduce your temperature let it get down to about 150 since i was a little short on the water i can add some cold water to this or actually throw a tray of ice ice cubes in there to help cool it down but you get it down to about 150 and you add the amylase enzyme and that will thin it out again it'll turn all of that starch into sugar and i like to if possible if i can maintain the temperature i will just let it sit and steep at about 150 all night long and the next morning i'll turn the heat off and let it drop down oh about 120 degrees is safe then you add yeast nutrient i'll show you that later and the yeast there's different types of yeast that you can use i like to squeeze as much alcohol out of it as possible to get myself a mesh that ferments out about 16 percent abv and then you you distill that but i like to use both the oh they call it red star daddy the d-a-d-y is distillers active dry yeast i like to use a tablespoon of that and one packet of champagne yeast because champagne yeast tolerates extremely high alcohol levels and will just chew up every bit of sugar that's left in there so here we are another five minute segment so i'm going to cut this off and i'll be back when i'm ready to add the enzyme to it okay here we are again we're back after cooking this down as i mentioned um once that starch gets released this stuff gets really thick see and you're probably wondering how in the hell does that thick bunch of goop become whiskey let me now here's another thing [Music] as i mentioned earlier in the video the traditional way is to use malted barley to provide the analyse enzyme to that now the barley is also going to add starch which is you know going to thicken up thicken it up even more can you imagine how hard it will be to get the spoon through this after you've added another dry material full of starch so that's why i use these uh [Applause] it's the same chemical and it's still naturally derived and all that but it's a lot easier just to throw a few tablespoons of this in there instead of a couple pounds of dry malted barley and let me take a peek down here i turned off the heat we're getting you know a little bit below 180. oops i have to keep in mind all of this mash is a big insulator so that temp or that thermometer down on the bottom is going to be reading a much higher temperature than up top because it you know the heat down there can't escape so it looks like we're at 155 degrees right now yep 155 you know what i said earlier about the 150 degree mark that's you know an approximation i don't know i think this thermometer down here is calibrated yeah as you can see where it says starch conversion in there that's right between 150 and 160. so it's actually safe for me to add the amylase enzyme to this right now boy good luck keeping that camera focused get it closer that's it that's the trick you know this is a whole lot easier to do when you're not holding the camera in one hand yeah half blind guy with serious parallax error trying to reach a spoon into a bag looking at a screen as his guide now a lot of this you know it it's not going to happen instantly some of it will happen instantly but uh the main you know the actual full conversion of this will take hours which is why i said that i like to let this steep all night oops with that but i'll start working this in and you'll probably see it starting to thin out in very short order so it's 155 degrees on top oh yeah look at that see that we instantly have water showing up or liquid showing up that's how fast it works but but to do the the full conversion you really need to let this stuff steep all night long or at least you know a decent number of hours yeah see how much standard that automatically got just that fast but if you let it run and like like i said i like to let it run all night i'll set my temperature control down here on the stove to like the first notch and i won't put a lid on it because the lid will raise the temperature and if it gets too hot in there then that that enzyme just it'll die off but yeah i'm already getting see that liquid around the edge it thinned out that you know well it bend out that much that fast but the longer it sits with that enzyme in there and i'll probably add more that was three tablespoons there's five gallons i should add at least two more tablespoons and then check it in an hour if it's not thinning out like i want it to maybe toss two or three more tablespoons in there i know a lot of people will say that is entire overkill but i mean this stuff isn't that expensive what that little one pound bag right there there's 15 something like that it lasts a long time and then before we put the yeast in there we put this in uh granted back in the old days yeast would do pretty much a good job on its own without any help but yeast could die off quickly with the only nutrient left in there being dead yeast cells for the live yeast to feed on some people used to mash up raisins because of the chemicals that are in raisins and that makes a great yeast nutrient but here we have another case this stuff's like ten dollars for a one pound bag it'll last forever oh there goes an angry beagle that's it for this part of this video i'll come back again once this has dropped down to 150 degrees and thinned out even more and then i will start a new video uh tomorrow showing how to pitch the yeast start the fermentation and show how the fermentation progresses just over the course of a few hours it'll be violent it's crazy and even though this thing may have dropped to about 70 degrees you know by that time it'll be 70 degrees down here but the more you move your hand up towards the top that fermentation creates heat up here and this will be about 80 or 90 degrees so one more segment and i'm going to publish this video to you youtube in the morning moving on okay i believe we are ready for the last uh segment slash installment on this video that i'm going to upload the mash has been sitting here the stove is on its low setting the temperature if this damn thing will focus right above 150 degrees we're gonna let this stay there all night but notice the difference it's much thinner now it's all watery on top that's because of that that amylase enzyme converting all of that starch to sugar now it's kind of hard to tell the difference between starchy water and sugary water because they're both going to be extremely thick but if i take a spoon of that out and see how it loosely falls out of the spoon now that is an indication that the sugar is or the starch is turning into sugar now and if i let this stew all night long simmer steep whatever it'll be even thinner in the morning but i'm doing pretty good right now that that's really good as far as results those are really good results if you can take a scoop of that mash out start tipping it and it falls away loosely that means the starch has gone away it's turned into sugar it'll never be perfectly thin because sugar water is well obviously thicker than clear water but if a person is bored you just pretty much sit here and stir this and if you do find any dough balls you know i'm not finding any now i've taken care of them but if you do find any you just kind of dump it quickly over to the side and take your spoon and just go you know smash it against the side that'll break up your dough balls and you want to get those dough balls broken up because the enzyme that's in here has to get to the starch within those little dough balls to convert them to sugar but i think that's all there is for this video i think i saw a corn dough ball go by maybe maybe not um tomorrow i will start working on a new video oh there was a corn dough ball right there oh where'd he go there he is we'll get rid of you a little bastard doesn't really help to get super greedy about things you know you're gonna have dough balls that are gonna slip through but you get most of them and you're still going to be doing good but tomorrow's video i'll show you how to pitch the yeast and read the sugar level that's in there by default with the existing mesh materials and it's still a given that you know in small production operations like this you still have to add sugar to things to bring it up too if you're talking about gravity points it's 1.090 or if you're talking about bricks points it's going to be 22 but you want to get it up as close to 22 as possible because once you pitch the yeast at that level you'll end up with a 16 percent abv maybe higher mash after it ferments out and at that point you will after you distill it you'll end up with a gallon of actual alcohol i know it seems kind of strange there's five gallons of stuff in here well actually six five and a half six but the actual alcohol content you know if you're talking about 16 or slightly above that you know you're going to end up with about a gallon after five and a half six gallons of material in in your brew pot i know it seems strange it seems kind of wasteful and you're thinking oh my god that's just a lot of work for a little bit of alcohol but no actually you end up diluting that alcohol with distilled water and you will end up with four quarts of premium premium whiskey more on that later but here we are at this point looks like we've got a good conversion going we got a really good conversion going so we'll move on to the next step on the next video later this is larry signing off

Channel: Panhandle Ponics

Views: 69,995

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Id: EfFBpoI4UBM

Length: 29min 37sec (1777 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020