JimmySutton
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Basic cracked corn and malted barley mash recipe.
Can you give us some more info:
What is the recipe?
What is the starting gravity of the mash?
How are you fermenting (open, closed fermenter- what are you using as your fermenter)
What temperature are you fermenting?
What yeast are you using?
What is the gravity of the mash when it stalls?Q) How can I tell if my mash is ready to run?
A) The best way to tell is by taking a starting gravity reading with a hydrometer and then taking a final gravity reading to see if it done. This article explains it pretty well: https://www.clawhammersupply.com/blogs/moonshine-still-blog/11938081-making-moonshine-how-to-know-when-fermentation-is-finished-part-2Q) and how can I tell if my mash has gone bad?
A) As long as you use good cleaning and sanitization methods you should have no issues- Also I recommend fermenting the mash in a food grade fermenter with an airlock. If you see anything “funky” of if the smell is terrible those are two easy ways to spot a bad mash.Q) How long can I keep the mash before I run it?
A) As long as you have an airlock on your fermenter you can keep it for a while. If you plan on leaving the mash for over a month I would recommend racking the mash to a secondary fermenter to get it off the yeast cake.Recipe is for a 5 gallon mash:
7-8 lbs white or brown sugar
1 pound can of applesauce with no preservatives
Good water to fill a 5 gallon fermenter
yeast of choiceHow much sugar did you end up adding?
What is the starting gravity of the mash?
What temperature are you fermenting at?
What yeast are you using?
How much yeast are you using?Yeah- I run my still low into the tails- I just toss everything left in the parrot as it is a pain to empty as you have found out.
What was your process from start to finish?
How much volume does your parrot hold? What size run are you doing?
My guess is the parrot is not holding a lot of volume- I just toss whatever is left in my parrot at the end of my run.
Do you know what the starting gravity of the apples and sugar was before you added the yeast?
You had the following correct?
65 pounds of sugar
65 pounds of apples- did you press them or just cut the up ?
do you know how much water you added to each bucket?I don’t do any wild or spontaneous fermentation- I always use a a known yeast strain.
Some corn may have yeast on it some not- but you won’t know what kind of yeast you are getting– you can easily pickup a bad yeast or mold. In my opinion malted corn is not a replacement for yeast.
There are proponents of using wild yeast- I am not. I don’t want to gamble all of my hard work to luck when I can easily buy a good known yeast. With a known yeast I know how the yeast will perform — and I will have a consistency across all of my mashes which can easily be repeated.
d fermented great at 88-95 degree until my heat lamp timer goofed up and left the lamp on then it got to about 120 degrees
That is way hotter than I would ever ferment anything. I ferment between 65-70/ Heat will kill the yeast. If the mash. got up to 120 that will kill the yeast. You can try and save it—but you are most likely going to have some serious off-flavors from the heat. Cool the temp of the mash down between 65-70- and re-pitch a pack of bread yeast. I can usually ferment down below 1.010 with only bread yeast. Wine yeast will drop it below 1.000 normally.
If fermentation does not kick back off you can always do a stripping run with this and then re-distill it- as a 4% starting wash is not going to give you much product.
I would ferment a lot cooler- 65-70 as this have proven to work well for me.
It is very hard to regulate heat on a charcoal grill. I would use a small electric hot plate- 1500 watts would be more than enough. The BroilKing 1500 watt works great. The thumper is too big for the still- the thumper should be 30-40% the size of your main boiler. I would use a smaller thumper and use an electric heat source— you want to be able to easily adjust the heat.
I am new to the world of fermenting is it possible to put to much yeast in a mash does it do anything harmful if there is extra yeast?
You can over-pitch yeast… it is more noticeable in brewing beer or wine making – distilling will remove a lot of “off” flavors from over-pitching yeast and even under-pitching…but I always tend to shoot for a good pitch rate on my mashes.
A low pitch rate can lead to:
Excess levels of diacetyl
Increase in higher/fusel alcohol formation
Increase in ester formation
Increase in volatile sulfur compounds
High terminal gravities
Stuck fermentations
Increased risk of infectionHigh pitch rates can lead to:
Very low ester production
Very fast fermentations
Thin or lacking body/mouthfeel
Autolysis (Yeasty flavors due to lysing of cells)I just made a run today and thought I had everything perfect, but 3 hours later….not even one drop. The thumper stRted bubbkinv so idk where I really went wrong, I’m about 90% sure I had no leaks..
What are you using as a heat source? How hot were you running the still? Did you see any vapor coming out of the boiler/thumper? Usually when it is not producing it is from not enough heat our a leak where the vapor is escaping from-
How big or a thumper are you using with the 1 gallon boiler?
You can… did the bread yeast stall out?
