Jim's Recipes

Bonfire Whiskey

Here's a recipe for a smokey whiskey similar to single malt, but with some sweetness from corn, spice from rye malt and smoothness from oats. 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.

Ingredients:

10 gallons water.
2 gallon backset (or 2 gallons water if you dont have backset saved)
4 tsp gypsum
25 lbs Producers Pride All Grain (corn, barley, oats) from the feed store
4 lbs milled Rye Malt
5 lbs milled Peat Smoked Barley Malt
1 lb milled Cherry Wood Smoked Barley Malt
2 lbs milled 6 Row Barley Malt (or 2 Row if your brewshop doesnt carry 6 Row)
Also, macerate an additional 1/2 lb peated malt and 1./4 lb cherry smoked malt in the low wines for 2 days before doing the spirit run.
Yeast. Any good ale yeast. 1 packet per 5 gallons (2-3 for this recipe).

Process:

Bring 10 gallons of the water, gypsum and backset to 200F+. (reserve 2 gallons aside for later)
Turn off heat and stir in the Producers Pride
Cover and wrap the cooker in a heavy blanket for 3+ hours. This cooks and gelatinizes the starches in the raw grains so the enzymes from the malt later can get access to it.
After 3+ hours, transfer the goo to a 18+ gallon fermenter. Use the extra 2 gallons reservedeither cold or heated to help adjust the tempertature to 148-150F. When the temp hits 148-150F stir in the various milled malts. Stir thoroughly for 5 minutes. Temp should settle around 145F. 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 (grain is about 10% protein).
Split this thick mash in half and add 2 gallons more water per fermenter. Now you have a mash gravity thats ideal for the yeast and later in the process will give you 12 gallons to run in the still. Point a fan at the fermenters and stir until the temp drops to 80F or below.
Pitch the yeast, seal up the fermenters 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.
It is my experience that grain type whiskeys 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 stripped 'low wines' are below 40% alcohol before boiling it again in teh spirit run, water down if necessary. You can run the stripping run fairly fast, but the spirit run should be slower.
Also, note toward end of ingredient list, macerate additional smoked malt in the low wines before running the spirit run. It will bring over additional smokeyness into the final drink.
Make cuts to taste and age on charred 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. So this 37 lb recipe should make around 9 bottles of drinking whiskey. In practice yiield is a little low, 7.5 bottles, due I believe to a lotof whole oats in teh sweet feed. 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!

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:

Enjoy, and cheers!

Rum

This is a recipe for Panela based Rum. Panela is pure sugar cane juice, boiled down and poured into molds. You can find it at any latinos grocery. Panela is Columbian, the Mexican version is called Pilloncillo, and is a bit lighter. I've made it with both and think the darker Panela makes a better tasting rum.

Here's an interesting article and video showing how its made.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/colombia/090701/panela-do-not-publish-without-video

If you cant find it or want to just order a flat rate box packed lid to lid with it, 'sugardaddy' is an excellent source. Go to either of the forums listed at the bottom and send a PM to sugardaddy. He has family farms in Columbia and ships it up by the container full to sell to groceries across the country. He sells it here for $1.10 a pound plus the charge for the USPS flat rate shipping. Here's his story... http://forum.moderndistiller.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=1073&hilit=panela&start=40#p14428

And here is a picture of the stack he'll fit in a large size flat rate, 32+ lbs in a box.

The recipe is straight forward.

30 lbs Panela
22 gallons water
Bakers yeast. Fleishmans or equivalent. 1 packet per 5 gallons.
Dunder (optional) Dunder is whats left in the still after you run Rum. Replace 25% of the water with dunder and it will add a nice additional rum character.

Process:

Heat up the water to hot, something that gives you 160F+ after you add the dunder will give you peace of mind that nothign wild will grow in your ferment.
Dissolve the panela in the water. Crushing it up first helps.
Cool to 80's F
Aerate well, yeast need oxygen. Get a big serving spoon or similar and whip the sugary water into a froth until your arm wants to fall off.
Pitch the yeast. 1-2 packets per 5 gallon, or if you get the big ass lb block for $4.66 at Sams club, a tablespoon per 5 gallons or so.
Ferment at 80F or so. Bakers yeast likes it warmer than typical beer yeasts and will stall out if you let the temp drop into the low 70's
Distillation is simple. Just run it slow. Rum turns out nice with a single slow run. If you like it cleaner, water it down to 40% or less and run it a second 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 a friendly group of hobbyists who promote safe hobby level legislation, as has been done for homebrewing of beer.

Cheers, stay safe!

Apple Brandy

This is a technique and recipe Ive been tweaking since the first batch I ran in '95. Cant really say recipe tho, I dont think, since I add nothing (but yeast), and mother nature done did all the hard work.

First challenge, Find apples: I have a few trees of my own, but the majority of my apples come from other tree's I've located in the area. Some are in open land, others in yards and gardens, most are untended, which is fine, a few worms hurt nothing when you crush, ferment them and distill their asses. If anything they might add some yeast nutrient. ;-) Keep track of where you see unappreciated apple trees and dont be bashful. Homeowners are generally delighted to have you pick them before they fall and make a stinkin buggy mess of their yard. There are 31 trees I have identified within 30 mile radius of my house, mixed varieties from hard crab to sour to golden delicious sweet apples.

Next challenge, grind and press: This is really the trickiest part. Also, its best to let the apples sit for 2-3 weeks first, they change a bit for the better, for our purposes. My first attempt was with a new stainless steel garbage disposer I bought for this, and mounted in an old sink. It kept overheating and shutting off, pain in the ass. A heavy duty juicer (I have a Champion) works good but takes a long damn time. Long story short, out of desperation and necessity I built Fiona. Rather than try to describe how she works I think pictures tell 1000 words. Holler if you have any questions.

The business end. Stainless steel screws in a rotating drum.

4 ton hydraulic press does a nice squash job.

Fermentation: This year (2012) we had a hot dry summer, the cider measured avg 17 brix, 1.068 on the hydrometer, or about 10% alcohol potential, crazy, they're typically 13ish brx, 1.052, 8%. I add no yeast nutrients. Never had a problem ever and the cider always goes plenty dry. I use Safale US-05 ale yeast or K1-1118 wine yeast. Both work great. Bakers yeast would work fine too. Personally Im partial to the esters left by ale yeast more than the wine yeasts. Just my preference. Use 1 packet per 5 gallons. It finishes in about a week, but I leave it for a month to settle out before I run it.

Distillation and aging: Apple brandy is nice in that you get a real nice product with a single run, just go a little larger on the foreshots since fruit based fermentations have more lighter alcohols and other stuff you dont want to drink given the choice (its why you can get a bangin headache from too much wine). As always, cuts are by personal preference, but I think youll find you can go quite wide on the cuts into both the heads and tails and have a really tasty product loaded with apple flavor. Apple brandy and toasted oak are a match made in heaven. Ive used oak chips, oak cubes and 5 gal oak barrels over the years. All turn out a great product, if you can keep your mitts of it long enough to age up nice. At 6 months its really tasty, longer is even better.

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 a friendly group of hobbyists who promote safe hobby level legislation, as has been done for homebrewing of beer.

Cheers Friends. Stay safe.

Apple Brandy: 28 lbs of mixed variety apples per bottle.
Single distillation to preserve the apple flavors, French Oak aged.
She's smooth, sweet and intense.

Absinthe

First off, here's a couple great resources on all things absinthe. Interesting reading on the history of this drink and the myths, with some historical recipes too http://www.feeverte.net/ http://www.wormwoodsociety.org/

First challenge was making some neutral. Since Im a potstiller who makes whiskies and brandies this wasnt easy without a reflux type still. Basically I re-distilled some fruit based spirits I have 3 times total which I then cut very heavy, discarding 1.5 quarts fores/heads and more tails, and ended up with 6 quarts of hearts. There was still a touch of fruit, but it was subtle and certainly didnt overtake the strong herb character of this drink. The herbs were ordered offline from starwest botanicals, except the mint for coloring was fresh from the fresh produce/herb section at the grocers. I tasted all herbs raw, to get an idea of the flavor and character. The wormwood is REALLY bitter. But the bitterness doesnt come through in the hearts of the distillation run.

Recipe:

6 Quarts Neutral 70% (140 proof)
75 gr Wormwood
58 gr Green Anise
28 gr Star Anise
28 gr Fennel Seed
5 gr Coriander Seed
6 Whole Cloves
6 Black Peppercorns.

Coloring:14 gr fresh mint from the grocery.

Process:I put all the herbs and seeds through the coffee grinder to chop em into smaller bits and open up the flavors, and mashed them together in a large bowl with a quart of water into a paste. The paste was then added to the carboy with the neutral to macerate for 55 hours. The distillation run was at a slow trickle, leaving the head off at first and stirring with a long stick for the first several minutes to avoid the herbs settling and scorching. The first half pint brought over a lot of bitterness from the wormwood. Then it mellowed out quick and was really nice. Surprisingly there were tails, even tho I started with very clean neutral the last couple partial quarts at 56% and 42% were funky so I left them out. Coloring was done with 1/2 oz fresh green mint soaked overnight in a pint of this. Gave it a bright green color.

Yield was 3.75 quarts at 76%. I watered it down very little to bottle at 136 proof. The louche comes out beautiful. The flavor is just as I would have hoped for, strong on the anise, a very subtle bitterness, and lots of other flavors swirling around. Fun recipe, and damn delicious!

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/

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 link just above for a friendly group of hobbyists who promote safe hobby level legislation, as has been done for homebrewing of beer.

Cheers!

Its crazy how green 1/2 an ounce of fresh mint made it.

Cheers!! Really nice louche with an ice cube and some water added. Need to
get me an absinthe spoon and do this up proper with a sugar cube :)

Absinthe: le fee verte - the green fairy
A muse, a metaphorical symbol of artistic enlightenment.
She's the real deal, made to historical recipes.
Let the ritual of 'la louche' fuel your bohemian dreams

100% Malt Whiskey

This recipe as written is optimized for a 15.5gallon half barrel keggle (keg kettle) cooker and 2 18+ gallon fermenters. To scale to your equipment see notes at bottom.

I do this recipe 40 lbs (18kg) of malt at a time, for a couple reasons. 1) 15 gallons (57l) of strike water for mashing fit perfect in a half barrel (15.5g) keggle. 2) It gives 2 10 gallon runs, perfect for a 15.5g half barrel still.

Barley malt and Wheat malt both make a delicious whiskey. Irish whiskey is traditionally all barley (but not all malted) and distilled 3 times. Scotch is all barley malt, peat smoked. You can use peated barley from your local homebrew shop to experiment with smokey scotch styles. My favorite spin on this is with 100% Red Wheat malt. Wheat malt makes a warm sweet earthy/fruity whiskey, just plain delicious with the warm sweet vanilla notes from oak aging.

Ingredients:

15 gallons (53l) water (plus 8 gallons (30l) water at yeast pitch time) 23g total.
4 tsp gypsum
40 lbs (18 kg) milled Barley Malt or Wheat Malt

Mashing and Fermenting:

Bring the water (15g) and gypsum to 160 degrees F (71C) (strike temp).
Put 20 lbs (9kg) milled malt in each of 2 18+ gallon (75l) fermenters, or all 40 lbs in a bigger barrel if you have a 30+ gallon (113l) barrel.
Stir in half the water into each fermenter (7.5g, 33l) Temp should settle at 148F (64C). Stir well and make sure the malt doesnt clump.
Put the lids loosely on, and wrap the barrels up tight in blankets to hold the mash temp in teh mid 140's. Stir every 30 minutes.
After a couple hours remove the blankets and point a fan at the barrels, it helps cool them much faster to pitch temp.
When the temp is below 80F (27C), add 4 more gallons (15l) water per barrel, and take a large spoon or mash paddle and whip the mash up to a froth to aerate it well (important for the yeast).
Pitch your favorite yeast. (Ferment on the grain) I use US-05 ale yeast (1 packet per 5 (gallons), its high attenuation (ferments out dry) and tastes great. Distillers yeast like a Crosby and Baker or even a Bakers yeast sold in blocks in grocery also work well. Keep the fermentation temp at the low end of the yeasts range for a clean ferment, 68F for Ale yeasts, 80F for bakers yeast.

Distilling:

It will ferment for 1-2 weeks, depending on temp. A hydrometer read should be in the 0.998 - 1.002 range.
Pull 5 gallons (19l) of the clear liquid off the top of each barrel, for a 10 gallon stripping run in your still.
Squeeze 5 more gallons each from the goo in each barrel and let it sit and clear overnight to run another 10 gallon wash the next day. I use large nylon grain bag for staining/squeezing the liquid fromt he grain.
Combine the 2 stripping runs and do a slower spirit run.
Make your cuts to taste and age on oak as long as you can keep your mitts off it. in 3 months it starts getting really delicious and hard to leave alone.

Scaling:

If you don’t use a 15.5g keggle and still, scale this recipe by doing your mash at 2 lbs malt per gallon of water. That’s a typical mash gravity, and you dont need to seperate the 2 water additions like above. I did that to fit a 15 gal cooker and 40 lb malt bill, convenient for those of us using kegs for cookers and stills. Also the mash water addition calculation is very easy at 2lbs malt/gallon...if your grain is 70F, then the strike water needs to be 156F to hit a mash temp of 148F for 2lbs/gal mash. Doesnt matter if you do 5 lbs, 20 or 200. If your grain is not 70F or you want to go higher or lower on the malt/water ratio use this calculator http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/

Yield:

40 lbs (18kg) malt gives about 2.6 gallons (10l) 60% (avg) before cuts. Do your cuts to your taste preference. I get about 1.4 gallons (5.3l) 67%, after cuts. For $48 (US) 50 lb bag of wheat malt this works out conveniently to about 12 fifths of 80 proof at $3.34 per bottle.

Very Important:

Enjoy, and cheers!

Wheat Whiskey: Double distilled from 100% malted Wisconsin
Red Wheat. Aged on toasted French Limousin oak.
Warm you up like a little slice of heaven.