Bourbon

Here's a recipe for a bourbon that you can make in 2 styles.  Makers Mark, Van Winkle and others use Wheat in the recipe to warm up the bourbon.  To make a bourbon in the style of Wild Turkey, Basil Haydens or Jim Beam substitute Rye for the Wheat in the recipe below.   Wheat will warm up a bourbon,  add some sweetness and fruit.  Rye adds a spicyness thats nice if thats your game.  To be officially called bourbon it must be at least 51% corn, and must be aged on new charred American White Oak.

Again  this recipe is geared for a 15.5 gallon keggle cooker (keg with the top cut out), and a 15.5 gallon still.  Scale to suit.

A note on pH and 'sour mash'.   The enzymes in malt that convert starches to sugars need a relatively low pH to work optimally, in the 5.2 - 5.6 pH range.  Water is 7 pH, but malted barely will lower the pH some by itself,  so adjustments are usually not necessary when doing all malt recipes, like the 100% Malt recipe in the recipe list at right.  Bourbons however are mostly unmalted corn with just enough malt to convert it,  ~20% minimum.   Corn doesnt help get the pH down.  So some tricks are needed.   The big distilleries do bourbons as sour mash.  What this means is they recycle some of the fermented mash,  which drops in pH during the fermentation process (to around 4 pH), into the next fresh mash to sour it up (lower the pH) and help the enzymes out.   This can be achieved at the hobby level by added some 'backset'.   Backset is the stuff left over in the still after the run.  Its very sour, low pH.  I freeze 1/2 gallon blocks in gallon ziplock bags.   For your very first run, you wont have any, dont sweat it too much,  just give your mash an extra hour to convert and get on with it.

Ingredients:

• 11 gallons water.
• 1 gallon backset (see above)
• 4 tsp gypsum
• 16.7 lbs cracked corn (1/3 bag) from the feed store
• 5 lbs milled Wheat Malt or Rye Malt (see above)
• 3.3 lbs  milled 6 Row Barley Malt (or 2 Row if your brewshop doesnt carry 6 Row)
• Yeast.  I prefer US-05 ale yeast.  1 packet per 5 gallons (3 for this recipe). 

Process:

• Bring the water, gypsum and backset to 205F (almost a boil).
• Turn off the heat and stir in the corn.
• Cover and wrap the cooker in a heavy blanket for 3 hours.   This cooks and gelatinizes the corn starches so the enzymes from the malt later can get access to it.
• After 3+ hours,  transfer the goo to a 18+ gallon fermenter.   Point a fan at it and stir often, monitoring the temperature closely.   When the temp hits 149F  stir in the milled barley and wheat malts.  Stir thoroughly for 5 minutes.  Temp should settle at 146F.  You are now mashing.  Holding this temperature for 2 hours is critical, so wrap your fermenter back up in the blanket you used above.   The temp must stay in the 140's for 2+ hours.   I sometimes just leave it till morning, that fine too.
• When the mashing is done you will have a bucket full sweet maltose sugars, husks of the grain and some protein (corn is about 10% protein).  Point a fan at the fermenter and stir until the temp drops to 80F or below.
• Pitch the yeast,  seal up the fermenter and put a bubbler on it.  Ferment at 68-72F.  Ale yeasts prefer this temp for the best fermentation.  You can also use distillers yeast or bakers yeast, in this case ferment at 80F.
• The fermentation will take about a week, give or take.  When its done, you gotta run it.  Dont let it sit around or the bacteria on the malt will take over and youll have a stinky mess.  Nowhere, from the mashing process forward are you near pasteurization temperatures.  So any wild things on the malt will still be alive in your fermenter.  When the yeast is done, you gotta run. 

Distillation and Aging:

• After the fermentation is done squeeze out the liquid from the grain mass with a large nylon strainer bag, available at your local brewshop.  This is now called 'wash',  that you will 'charge' your still with.  Let it settle out for a day before running it.  The yeast are small and slip through the mesh bag, and you really dont want to boil them in the still.
• Grain type whiskeys, like this bourbon, turn out best with 2 runs.  A 'stripping run'  to pull all the alcohol out of the wash.  And a 'spirit run' to clean it up some more and raise the proof.  Be sure your stripping run is below 40% alcohol before boiling it again.   You can run the stripping run fairly fast,  but the spirit run should be slower.
• Make cuts to taste and age on charred American White oak for as long as you can keep your mitts off it.

Yield:  In general,  50 lbs of grain will make a case of fifths at 80 proof,  after cuts, more or less depending on how you make your cuts.   Keep the feints (everything you dont keep to drink,  'the cut')  and add them to the next run.  They are still full of alcohol and flavor and will increase your yield next time.

Very Important:

If you're new to distilling,  please read and study the fundamentals until you understand well whats going on at http://homedistiller.org/forum/ or  http://forum.moderndistiller.com/index.php

This blog is intended for personal interest and hobby only,  In NO WAY is this blog intended to provide recipe's for people to brew and sell without proper licensing.   Please visit the links just above for  friendly group of hobbyists who promote safe hobby level legislation, as has been done for homebrewing of beer. 

Enjoy, and cheers!