What Do You Need To Make Whiskey

Can I Age Whiskey In Glass

All major distilleries age their whiskey in oak barrel but this doesnt mean you cant age your whiskey in glass. If youre aging whiskey in glass its important to leave it open to the atmosphere, this will allow oxidation and off gassing of higher volatiles. There are three methods to aging whiskey in glass mason jars:

• Coffee Filter Method Place a coffee filter over the top of the jar and screw on the mason jar ring over it.
• Cork Method Purchase a few wide mouth cork stoppers for your mason jars or if your aging in a carboy loosely place cork stopper in top.
• Oak mason jar lids You can make or buy a few oak mason jar lids and replace the standard steel lids.

Dont forget to add some toasted wood cubes or chips to your jars.

Research And Purchase Ingredients

Basic Moonshine Mash Recipe

• 5 gallons of malt grains
• 1 package of bread yeast
• 10 pounds sugar
• 5 gallons warm water

Because moonshine has often been made in secret, there are no standardized measurements for the different ingredients in moonshine – it can be a process of trial and error to find a recipe that you like and that works well in your moonshine still.

Most people have used 5-gallon grain buckets to measure grains over the years, and that is often still a typical measurement given, because stills are also measured in gallons

Some recipes call for yeast, while others call for sugar. Ours, however, requires a bit of both. After a few runs, you may find that one type of fermenter over the other is right for you.

Its best if you can use distilled water to make your moonshine mash, because you know that distilled water will not add any impurities that could throw off the fermentation process, or the flavor or alcohol content of your final product.

Salted Roasted Peanut Old Fashioned In A Bottle

Inspired by ballpark peanuts, this fancy Old Fashioned is made with peanut-infused rye and just a touch of salt. Dont be intimidated by the infusionit only takes about 24 hours. Packaging the cocktail in soda bottles doesnt really change the flavor, but youll look pretty cool showing up to a party with a six-pack of hand-bottled cocktails.

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Aging Your Rye Whiskey

Now at this stage in making your own rye whiskey, you have a choice to make. Whether to age your whiskey or not. If you do decide to simply skip the aging process and bottle up the distillate, you have technically made a moonshine or white whiskey. However, since the goal of this guide is to make a true golden rye/corn whiskey, were going to cover a bit on the aging process as well.

The aging process will drastically affect the overall flavor profile of your rye whiskey. By aging your whiskey in a charred oak barrel or using oak chips for a given period of time, it will give the whiskey its golden coloring and it will absorb the oaky flavors. A chemical process called adsorption also takes place during aging. This process is when the molecules that make a young whiskey harsher are drawn out to the barrels wall, and result in a smoother overall spirit. Many distillers will use barrels which have been used to age other spirits such as rum or brandy to give their whiskey a distinct flavor profile.

What Is The Whiskey Distilling Process

As a liquid is heated to create a vapor and then cooled to become liquid again, distillation is taking place. This concept is based on a natural phenomenon: when water in puddles turns into vapor when exposed to hot sun for a day. As a result, the grass blades become covered in water droplets in the cool evening air.

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Is Aging Someone Elses Whiskey Really Making Your Own Whiskey

The dirty secret in many of the whiskey bottles you find on the shelf today is that, for the majority of them, they are mass produced. The whiskey comes from a large commercial distilling operation, who provide it to other brands and companies who bottle it themselves and sell it on to you.

In some cases, that feels like a bait-and-switch operation. Companies like Templeton Rye have actually been sued for trying to market a mass produced whiskey as their own locally distilled craft spirit. And especially for larger companies like USDP, where they have a number of smaller brands with purposefully obscured provenance, it makes you question the quality of the spirit inside.

That said, historically speaking, whiskey has always been a product where the original distiller might not be as important as the aging process. Especially in the Scottish whisky tradition, blended scotch whisky was actually the accepted norm for centuries. Individual merchants would buy whiskey from multiple distilleries, blend it together to form a unique flavor profile, and often finish the whiskey themselves in different flavored casks to produce a new and unique product that was more than the sum of its parts. Thats how we got brands like Johnnie Walker, Famous Grouse, and Cutty Sark.

Fun Fact How Do You Spell Whisky

There is some confusion about how whiskey is spelled. In the United States and Ireland, whiskey is spelled with an e. In Scotland, Canada, and Japan, it is spelled whisky.

Spelled whisky in Canada and Scotland, the word whiskey stems from Gaelic uisge beatha, or usquebaugh, meaning water of life, and is made from fermented grain and typically aged in wooden casks. It might help to remember that in countries with an e in the name, the correct spelling is whiskey, with an e. In countries without an e in the name, the correct spelling is whisky, without an e.

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Distilling : How Whiskey Is Actually Made

Unless you’ve been living without the internet, you surely know that Star Wars season is upon us. If you are lucky enough to live in Manchester, England, check out the replica of Chalmun’s Spaceport Cantina, the “no-droids allowed” drinking hole located in the pirate city of Mos Eisley on the barren planet of Tatooine. In the film, a bevy of copper pipes run along the ceiling and more pipes run along the wall. Because Tatooine is a dry planet, my best guess is that distilled spirits would have been the most popular libation there: They could have thrown any old sugary, starchy substance into a pot with water and yeast to ferment and later distill. Distillation would have spread across the Star Wars universe like it spread throughout the continents on Earth, either for health reasons, sanitary reasons, or pure enjoyment. On Earth, we can pinpoint the arrival of distillation somewhere between the years 1 AD and 3 AD, but no one can be sure. But what exactly is distillation?

How Do You Make Jack Daniels At Home

Mix the flour and malt as follows: 80% corn flour, 8% rye flour, and 12% barley groats ground to a fine powder. 2. Pour this mixture over the 1. The water is heated five times. The resulting mass should be mixed thoroughly and left at 55°C for a short time. Pour the wort into a container and stir gently for an hour. Cool the wort down to 25 ° C.

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Getting Started: Picking Your Whiskey Mash Ingredients

Like we mentioned above, whiskey is a spirit which has many different varieties and styles. The biggest variations between different whiskeys lie in their mash ingredients. A whiskey mash can be made with corn, rye, wheat, oats, maize or barley. By mixing percentages of these ingredients you can create a range of different tastes and flavors. Bourbon, for example, must contain at least 51% corn in order to be called a bourbon whiskey, while Rye Whiskey must have 51% rye included in its mash to be classified as a Rye Whiskey.

For this distilling guide, and keeping with an American tradition, well be using the same mash bill that George Washingtons distillery used to create his Rye Whiskey at Mount Vernon. It consists of 60% rye, 35% corn, and 5% barley. Rye gives the whiskey a range of spicy notes including pepper, nutmeg, clove, caraway, and cinnamon. These flavors are all intensified during the aging process, which gives the whiskey its bite. Corn is responsible for the sweeter tones in the whiskeys flavor. The barley is added to the mix as a way to help convert starches to sugar for the fermentation process and also provides an underlying malty and chocolate flavor.

What Is Rye Whiskey

Rye Whiskey is a popular American whiskey made from rye. Rye whiskey tastes a bit spicy and is somewhat drier than bourbon whiskey. It is a popular ingredient for numerous cocktails, shots, and other alcoholic mixes. This gluten-free whiskey must be distilled from at least 51 percent rye, and can be drunk neat straight on the rocks! It has a total of 104 calories of energy .

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How To Make Scotch Whiskey

What you need:

• 4 or 5 large metal pots
• 3 or 4 metal cooking trays
• Copper pot still Fermentation vessel
• One cup of brewer’s yeast
• Stirring utensil
• 10-gallon oak barrel

Steps:

Getting Your Fermentation Just Right

“At first, it will go from the sweetest oatmeal you’ve ever had, to something that is fairly sour. That’s the first sign that you are converting your sugar into alcohol. The absence of sugar means the yeast has done its job,” Katz said, describing the fermentation process. On a larger scale, this should only take a few days. But at home, on a smaller scale without precise temperature management, it could take a little bit longer. Unfortunately, when you’re working from home, it’s an inexact science. Again, a home brewing kit might be able to help you keep things consistent and a little more precise. You probably shouldn’t ferment for more than a week, and you can certainly taste test your product along the way as much as you’d like. Katz even recommends heading to your local distillery to figure out how your mash should taste before you start the distilling process.

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The Big Final Piece Of Advice

“If you are even thinking about doing this for real, I cannot stress how much I recommend you visit your local distillery first,” Katz confirmed. And while you now should have a general idea of how you can make whiskey in the comfort of your own home, it certainly doesn’t mean you should. It takes a lot of risk, trial and error, and overall effort to do it right. Be careful! Use this new knowledge to impress your friends over a glass of the good stuff, instead of trying your hand at making it at home.

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Homemade Whiskey Recipe And Technology

The following recipe will let you make homemade whiskey according to a classic technology, which is used in Ireland and Scotland. It resembles usual moonshining quite a bit, but also includes one additional stageâoak infusion, which lasts 6 months or more. This time is necessary to make a good alcoholic drink.

To make homemade whiskey which is very similar to Scottish or Irish original drinks, youâll have to travel a long way, but the result will be worth the effort.

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Aging Spirits With Glycerine

Proper aging of a whiskey or bourbon can take years, the quality whiskeys you buy in stores are aged for 10 + years before being consumed. Its possible to get a similar taste and quality of sprite by artificially aging your spirit to smooth it out. Glycerine is used to accomplish this and can be purchased at your local Home brew store. Try adding a 1/2 oz to 40 oz of homemade whiskey before drinking. I wont go into detail on how this all works as Ive already done this in this article : How Glycerine Is Used To Age Homemade Moonshine

So How Can Your Age Your Own Liquor At Home

Using a wooden barrel to age liquor is easy. Our Red Head Barrels Liquor Flavoring Kit is a convenient set containing a wooden barrel and the flavor essences you need to make your own homemade whiskey. Each set comes with complete instructions on how to age and flavor your own liquor for a premium finished product producing ample enjoyment. Or, just follow the steps below.

• Step One Cure your wooden barrel. Curing is necessary to get rid of any bacteria and eliminate any leaks.
• Step Two Fill the barrel about halfway with a neutral-flavored spirit such as vodka or grain alcohol for bourbon, scotch, whiskey, brandy, or vodka essences. Taaka vodka is an excellent choice and costs only about $10 for a 1.75-liter bottle. If you want to use a rum essence, start with a clear, flavorless rum.
• Step Three Pour your flavor essence into the spirit barrel. Use one bottle of flavor essence for each liter of alcohol.
• Step Four Fill the barrel the rest of the way and place the bung in the hole on top.
• Step Five Avoid the temptation to open the barrel for two weeks.
• Step Six The fun part: taste your liquor. If you like the savor, its time to start drinking. If you dont want the flavor to change, pour the liquor into a bottle. If you would like to age it further, leave it in the barrel for another week, then taste again. Once you have consumed all your alcohol, pay us another visit to order more essences for next time.

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Fermentation Mash To Make Whiskey

After youve cooked the grain and its transformed into mash, its time to get yeasting! Add some yeast to your cooked corn mash, and fire up the fermentation process in any type of sealed container or repurpose the home brewing beer kit to ease the process.

It is indeed better to ferment in a home brewing beer kit, as you can regulate the temperature, which helps because you dont want the yeast to get too hot or else it will die. It may take several days for the fermentation process, so you just have to be patient.

Fermented home whiskey will start of as tasting fairly sweet to a fairly sour taste, which simply means that its working, and your sugar is being converted into alcohol.

Once the home made whiskey is fermented, you will need to strain the mash into a still, and since you dont have an industrial grade appliance, a small scale home whiskey making still should do the trick.

Fire up the mash until its a piping hot 80 degrees Celsius, and let the mash convert into vapor. The vapor that rises from the still is basically converted back into liquid, which is voila your homemade whiskey.

Word of caution: You should probably not use the first 100 milliliters or so from the batch of homemade whiskey, as it might not taste great, and can be potentially dangerous to drink. To transform your raw whiskey into a finished product, you will have to let it age in a barrel.

How Long Does Oak Aging Take

Fantastic results can be achieved in a relatively short amount of time with home aging. This is because the surface to liquid ratio of DIY aging kits is much higher than that of barrels. The commercial whiskey industry ages their product in 53 gallon barrels to achieve a better economy of scale. In small batch aging using oak sticks in a small container there is more wooden surface area in contact with the whiskey. It’s less efficient from a materials standpoint but much more efficient from a time and aging standpoint. All of that extra surface area rapidly accelerates aging of the spirits. Aged perfection that takes years to achieve in 53 gallon barrels can be accomplished in a matter of days/weeks with charred oak sticks.

The benefits of aging can be negated if too much of the wood flavor is imparted to the whiskey. “Over oaking” your spirit is a definite possibility. Every few days or weeks, a small sample should be drawn from the vessel to ascertain quality of aging. Once the whiskey has achieved the color and smoothness of your liking, transfer it to a glass bottle or jar for long term storage.

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