Hello everyone, firstly apologies for the delay in posting. Two problems conspired to keep me offline, namely the weather and work. When I had time to distill it was -30 degrees Celsius, not exactly conducive to sitting in a cold garage for any time.
That being said, it was still -20 degrees Celsius last night when I (finally) ran some whiskey through the still. It had been sitting in the primary fermenter for the past 2 months waiting for me to get it together enough to run it. It is a corn, rye, and barley mash that I had attempted in the fall with partial grain, partial dry malt extract and corn syrup. I'll write more on the recipe and process later, with pictures.
For now let me pass along two learnings:
1. -20 degrees Celsius is still a difficult temperature to distill at since it's a challenge to maintain proper still temperature. Constantly adjusting last night to keep the stream a nice steady pencil-lead sized stream.
2. More importantly, my nose doesn't work well at that temperature either. For technical reasons I wasn't able to use my outlet thermometer to measure the temperature as a guideline for starting and stopping collection. Since I was relying solely on my nose, and it wasn't working well due to the cold, I missed the end of the hearts and collected well into the tails. Missed that wet dog/cardboard smell entirely. Final ABV was in the range 100 proof (50%), and I've got a very flavourful whiskey.
I've put the majority on light American oak, and some right into a bottle to enjoy now. Next challenge will be to leave the stuff on oak for an appreciable time (willpower is another difficulty in this kind of cold weather).
Talk soon!
That being said, it was still -20 degrees Celsius last night when I (finally) ran some whiskey through the still. It had been sitting in the primary fermenter for the past 2 months waiting for me to get it together enough to run it. It is a corn, rye, and barley mash that I had attempted in the fall with partial grain, partial dry malt extract and corn syrup. I'll write more on the recipe and process later, with pictures.
For now let me pass along two learnings:
1. -20 degrees Celsius is still a difficult temperature to distill at since it's a challenge to maintain proper still temperature. Constantly adjusting last night to keep the stream a nice steady pencil-lead sized stream.
2. More importantly, my nose doesn't work well at that temperature either. For technical reasons I wasn't able to use my outlet thermometer to measure the temperature as a guideline for starting and stopping collection. Since I was relying solely on my nose, and it wasn't working well due to the cold, I missed the end of the hearts and collected well into the tails. Missed that wet dog/cardboard smell entirely. Final ABV was in the range 100 proof (50%), and I've got a very flavourful whiskey.
I've put the majority on light American oak, and some right into a bottle to enjoy now. Next challenge will be to leave the stuff on oak for an appreciable time (willpower is another difficulty in this kind of cold weather).
Talk soon!
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