This Is Why Distilling Rye Whiskey Is A Pain In The But

rye is notoriously difficult to work with on a home distilling scale so i decided to make some and find out is it really a gooey slimy icky absolute pain in the ass or not how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week i'm jesse and this is still it today we're making a rye whiskey so for those of you that don't know rye has a tendency to put a whole lot of beta-glucans into the mesh and if you're doing that let's say five percent like some beers will use or some bourbons will use you're probably not going to notice it that much but if you start pushing that percentage higher maybe 15 20 plus percent you're going to start to notice things getting thick and slimy and gummy it's a hard texture to describe but it's almost like a sauce that's been thickened with cornstarch kind of like a sweet and sour sauce or a teriyaki sauce something like that so all of that gumminess can cause problems with the brewing process if you're using a false bottom it can cause stuck sparges not fun if you're using a brew in a bag set up it can just be kind of inefficient not to mention that the whole process the logistics of transferring and handling the stuff is just more a pain in the ass it's harder to deal with gel than it is with liquid that's kind of what we're dealing with now there are ways to combat this gumminess but today i decided to just do a standard mash to see exactly how bad it is now spoiler alert at the end of this video you will be seeing me taste this whiskey that i've made and with the help of the tastiest coffee liqueur i have ever tasted and today's sponsor mr black thank you mr black we'll also be finding out if the rye whiskey i make can stand up to a coffee old-fashioned cocktail more from mr black cold brew coffee liqueur and tasting notes at the end of the video but for now let's get stuck in to the grist our grainy ingredients today we're going to use 25 kilograms of grain no sugar so it's going to be all grain uh in roughly 75 liters of water to make our mesh total volume i'm going to let it fall where it may if i need a little bit more water so be it i'm not too stressed about it i have a big enough fermenter to fit plenty into so first up rye the star of the show the reason we're making this video 60 of the grist is going to be rye which is going to come to 15 kilograms freedom units guys it's going to be up here the rye we're using today is in fact all malted why am i using malted rye because that's what i can get my hands on at a reasonable price without having to pay exorbitant hippie health food store prices yes most malted rye does in fact have some diastatic power the stuff that i am using has roughly enough to convert itself but not a whole lot more next up we have the corn and actually funnily enough the corn that i'm using today is malted as well simply because i have it i wanted to use it it's not going to make a huge difference in a recipe like this heads up guys malted corn has a dp of zip zero nada nothing or very very close to it so you can't rely on it to even convert itself this recipe is calling for 24 corn or six kilos and lastly we have malted barley at 16 or 4 kilos and obviously the dp the diastatic power on this stuff is huge off the charts compared to everything else it's going to do the heavy lifting in terms of converting the corn and also maybe help the right a little bit if it's a touch subpar on its diastatic power like i say in all of these videos you need to make sure the grain is crushed or milled before we go mashing it because otherwise you're going to have a absolute horrible efficiency in your mash now you can do this at home with some relatively cheap equipment like my little malt muncher here just be aware guys standard corn whole corn is not going to go through something like this crushed corn you can kind of get away with malted corn you can kind of get away with or of course you can pay the home brew store to do it for you by the way shout out to brewshop.com who when i ordered this stuff noticed that my order was obviously wrong they called me we figured it out i was here the next day you're awesome thanks guys anyway now it's time to mesh in and like i said earlier on one of the big problems with rye is stuck sparges uh i'll be real we're just going to completely ignore it and skip that step so today i'm going to be mashing in the fermenter and to do that you're going to need 75 liters of water at strike temperature i've worked it out for me in my situation to be 70 degrees celsius obviously for you that may be different use a strike water calculator to make sure start adding in your milled grain a little bit at a time add some in give it a good stir add some more in until you're all done the thermal mass of the grain sitting at ambient room temperature is going to pull the temperature of your wash down and today we're aiming for 65 degrees celsius now if you're somewhere between 64 and 66 do absolutely nothing if you're somewhere between 63 and 67 it's your call you can leave it if you want i'd probably suggest starting to adjust it a little bit at that point in time and if you're outside of that range definitely adjust it in this situation the easiest way to do that is with some extra very cold water or some extra boiling water give it one last really good stir cover it up and forget about it for an hour pop the top give it another good stir cover it up again and leave it for another 45 minutes and then it's time to start getting this thing to cool down ready to pitch our yeast okay actually guys let's just hold up for a second and talk about why you would want to put rye in whiskey in the first place does it actually give a different flavor than you know like just a bourbon for example and the answer is hell yes it does definitely but the thing is the standard explanation of what it does is just it's uh spicy which i find lame maybe sometimes you'll get earthy and spicy also kinda lame so i have pulled on my memory of every ride i've ever tasted and of course i thought it would be smart to um do some homework and i've put together a little list of what i think uh rye might contribute to a whiskey on any given day first of all an earthiness somewhere between dusty grain and like potting mix like sweet potting mix two spicy i'll give it to you but a little bit more detail it for me it's a lot more cooking spice it's not habanero it's not chilli it's not pepper it's more cooking spice specifically cloves and there's a mouthfeel that comes along with it you know that slightly numbing anesthetic sort of property that you get if you have something with heaps of clove in it mint ah or actually more specifically kind of halfway between mint and eucalyptus bubble gum straight up classic old school bubble gum dill kind of like uh the leftover brine from dill pickles black licorice and to a lesser degree aniseed not all rye's will have all of those tasting notes and obviously those tasting notes can show up in whiskies that don't have rye but it kind of gives you a general idea in my opinion of what rye can do to a whiskey if you like those sort of things you might just dig some rye so now we need to get this thing back down to 25 degrees celsius which me is going to be pitching temperature for my yeast i am going to be using a half angel whiskey yeast and half angel uh english ale yeast i've been finding that combination it's quite tasty the easiest way to get this down to temperature is just to let it sit but when i finally got this down to pitching temperature there was already some action happening in it some of the wild yeast fungi something in the grain i'm assuming uh had started to grow and take off it wasn't horrible it was subtle but it was definitely a slight smell of blue cheese to it all if you want to avoid that situation you can use something like this this is a word chiller essentially just hang it over the side into your fermenter uh plug a garden hose into one end with an exhaust on the other it cycles cold water through and it's a great little heat transfer but anyway it wasn't a huge deal i got a big double pitch of yeast into the fermenter asap which managed to take off and out compete at least while the yeast was actively fermenting pretty easily still it fermented for five days and then i let it settle out for one day i did however make sure to get this thing into the still asap because whatever was going in there beforehand uh was probably going to carry on growing after the yeast tapered off fermentation is over it is time for distillation now if you have a still backhand distill on the grain you're gonna find this to be uh redundant for you for example i have the genio i could distill in a junior but that would make it too easy and it's not exactly representative of what most home distillers are going to be able to do we didn't separate the grain from the liquid during the mashing process which means it is now time to pay the freaking piper i'm aiming for two stripping runs and to be fair the first one is actually going to be pretty easy because we can just skim all the liquid off the top of the ferment i would suggest using some kind of sieve or you know brew in a bag bag or something just to make sure that you're getting all of those grains and they're not you know going into your still but nevertheless it's pretty easy but but but uh this stuff's super freaking thick right is that going to mean it's more likely to puke for those of you who don't know puking is simply where it just foams up and up and up and the foam makes it all the way through the still not ideal i decided to do a wii test before i put this in the still itself so i grabbed the little air still out put a couple of liters in and heated it up until the point where it was boiling and nothing really happened it hurt hot break yeah hot break and um yeah i think we're good so a little bit of butter in the stool just to make sure a couple of sight glasses on top just to see if something does start puking and away we go first stripping run easy second stripping run here's the problem guys rye is exactly like everyone says it is it is super freaking gummy and super freaking sticky it is hard to show on camera uh this is about the best way that i decided i could show it and especially looking at these images about all i can say is it's the consistency of ky jelly why does that make things hard simply because the liquid itself wants to stick to itself into the grain a whole lot more than a normal liquid would so when you're trying to squeeze it out it doesn't want to just be squeezed out of the bag it's just going to stay there the most successful way i have found with my equipment to deal with this is to put it all into basically a giant sieve put a couple of kilos of grain and liquid in there let it drain for a little bit and then press it out this did work except that normally i can get that pretty much bone dry with the freaking lube in there not so much what i did find worked well was to squeeze out as much as i could and then tip in a small amount maybe you know a liter of water let it sit for 15 minutes let it drain and then squeeze it again that worked a whole lot better and i was able to get the grain mostly dry now if you don't have a sieve like this other ways of doing that going through the same process would be to use a fruit press with a biab bag use a buy a bag or a brew in a bag a bag and just twist it like keep twisting it until it puts tension on it and then squeeze it or you can use a brew in a bag bag with one of those mop squeezy buckets you know that squeezes the mop out for you on to the spirit run uh and for this because we had a relatively small amount of low wines it was only two stripping runs i decided to switch over to the t500 a standard spirit run with a pot still running relatively low started at about 45 power got up to maybe 55 60 power on the t500 uh but but this tasted weird pretty much from the get-go about halfway through the heads it started tasting like straight up tails not quite but similar like a funky super grain earthy flavor that was almost tails but not quite it was bizarre i literally almost just ran through it full power collected low ones again and triple distilled the thing like that's what i thought i was going to have to do and then right at the point of cutting over to hearts it cleared up significantly so i just decided to run with it after spirit run and cuts were finished i proofed it back down to 57 abv and i took a wii sample of that to force age so a small amount went into a jar along with some oak that had been toasted at 220 degrees celsius in the oven and some tin foil and then given a sort of medium to heavy char on one side in a light to medium char on the other two sides leaving one just toasted the sample was then held at 60 degrees celsius for three days over those three days it got about an hour and a half of ultrasonic on each day all right team it is time to make a cocktail see how we've done so let's make the coffee old fashioned shall we now you can find this recipe along with a bunch of other kick-ass recipes on the mr black's youtube page but for this one it is one part or 30mls of mr black's cold brew coffee liqueur and one part rye whiskey plenty of ice good little stir and i am going to be using an orange slice today instead of peel just to piss some people off so bullet ride version on this side my right vision on this side let's give them a nudge and see how they're doing that is really freaking good yum better overall rye flavor on this one it's been aged properly it's not freaking surprising but the higher proof on this side gives a better overall flavor and balance to the cocktail in my opinion this is uh 55ish this is 45. do we want a dash of bitters let's see how that plays yeah i like it with the bitters right now if you put another half part of this in it so if it was a ratio of 1.5 to 1 i think that would come out on top but man both of these are absolutely freaking delicious um yeah that rough like grainy earthy thing is coming through a little bit heavy on this but it does match well with the coffee flavors you you know what guys have you ever had that situation where you think that hot coffee and whiskey is going to work really well together and then you try it and more often than not those combinations just don't quite work this completely fixes it cold brew liqueur and whiskey is freaking amazing there's a whole host of kind of symbiotic and complementary flavors that go on together it's it's really freaking good so thank you to mr black for sponsoring this episode uh this is actually cold brewed coffee liqueur not like fake flavorings and it is damn delicious guys it's just vodka 100 arabica specialty coffee and a little bit of sugar to balance things out the best thing is that you can buy directly from mr black's website in like 14 countries which is pretty awesome including usa uk and australia so head on over to mr black dot co that's dot co not dot com and use the code still at 10 to get 10 off your purchase super quick tasting notes on this before we talk about the practicality of making oh my word rye at home i'll be real with you guys the thing that still shows up the most right up front is that pungent earthy rye grain-like flavor and it is it is similar to just actually smelling rye although this has kind of a um almost like a sunflower seed quality to it that this flavor doesn't but but if i smell it next to this which is the version that you know didn't go in the ultrasonic it is vanishing quickly so i have i have high hopes that it is just a rough malted rye influence flavor that is going to take a little bit of time to age out did i make the right call exactly on the cuts i don't know man ask me in years time but what i did think would be fun would be to pull up that list of rye flavours that i've gotten in rye whiskies before and see if i can find them in here the earthy thing a hundred percent there's too freaking much of it right now i hope some of it goes away cloves and the kind of anaesthetic mouth feel yes definitely mint and eucalyptus i feel like there could be almost the eucalyptus but i don't know i might be making that up i also think that that could be something that will come out more potentially with a little bit of age uh i don't know we'll see bubble gum no nada i don't miss that honestly he can take it i don't i don't need it dill yes out of everything with exception to the earthiness that is the strongest flavour i'm getting so far uh and antecedent licorice no not really i think i'd be making it up if i said that so yes i think i'm on the right track uh yes there are rye flavors coming through i'm happy with that so just so you know guys these are the other two jars that are gonna age long term i'm gonna keep this in here for another couple of months and see what happens i made the mistake of shaking this one up and i guess there was some um ashy stuff sitting on the bottom a second ago it looked pretty similar to this now it just looks jet black i guess that needs to settle out again anyway uh let's get on to talking about the practicalities of doing this at home but first i need to say a huge huge thank you to the patreons thank you so much patreons uh i really and truly appreciate all the support you guys give me i um i mean i struggle to come up with ways to say thank you every week but i really do mean that team thank you all right so let me get some of this stuff out of the way my word what am i actually gonna drink here let's because i'm disgusting and this is just for me put that back in there uh put all of that in there and we can get to know this while we talk so if you are one of the few lucky people that can distill on grain at home i wouldn't stress about this too much it's not a big deal for you you ferment on the grain maybe you strain some of the liquid and grain out you put most the grain and grain into the the still and it's really not a big issue what about everyone else though uh i'll be real with you guys it is a bit of a pain in the ass it is hard to work with it is annoying is it a deal breaker no totally not it's not even i don't know if i'd even call it an extra step it is just a pain in the ass it really is and it's kind of icky and messy so if you're not into icky and messy i mean to be fair you're probably in the wrong hobby and i i would i would suggest that unless you are really passionate about rye whiskey if you like if rye whiskey is the reason you want to start distilling then i can't really in good faith say no don't do an all-grain rye as your first door grain if you're happy to try a bunch of different things out and you're happy to sort of work your way up to something like this i would suggest your first all-grain recipe number one make it a single mole and the reason for that is it can all be malt everything has got a diastatic power you don't have to stress about that everything is already gelatinized so you don't have to worry about that either it's just a whole lot easier to deal with do a single bot first then potentially go to a a bourbon or a corn based you know whiskey and then lastly go to rye so team uh this is probably quite a long video but i would love to hear from you have you distilled dry how much pain in the ass was it for you was it worth the extra effort let us know in the comments down below and if you enjoyed this video hit the thumbs up that helps me out a bunch subscribe down below if you want more content like this popping up in your feed and i'll catch you next time guys keep on chasing the craft see ya

Channel: Still It

Views: 58,220

Keywords: rye, rye whiskey, home distilling, jesse, still it, chase the craft, ctc, Mr Black, cocktail, sticky, gummy

Id: KXiGlx3W1Bs

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022