How to make single malt whiskey at home: what grain to take and the whole process with costs

Every moonshiner-distiller sooner or later comes to the conclusion that distillate or rectified sugar is boring, and the season of fruits and berries is not endless. That’s how I got the desire to try my hand at the production of grain distillates.

Separately from the grains, I singled out single malt whiskey. As the name suggests, it is made exclusively from barley malt.

It should be noted that for the production of whiskey at home, you do not need a super-duper heaped column or distiller, but an oak barrel is a prerequisite.

It is a barrel, no wood chips, no sticks, no cubes. As soon as I purchased my barrel from a local craftsman, I immediately began preparing for the process.

This story was sent in by my subscriber Arthur C.

The main question is the choice of malt

You can buy malt, you can germinate yourself. But since I usually do not have free time, I decided to buy it in a specialized store. To be honest, I was a bit surprised that malt could cost that much!

In fact, this is the same ordinary germinated grain. However, I was lucky – an adequate seller worked in the store, who explained that expensive varieties are mostly intended for beer, and budget ones can also be used to make whiskey.

Instead of German grain worth 300 rubles per kg, I purchased domestic Kursk Pilsner malt, which, according to the seller, will be the best option for making homemade whiskey. I do not remember exactly what the price of this malt was, but for 30 kg I paid less than 1000 rubles.

The second stage – grinding and saccharification

Further, instead of grinding the malt in the same store and leaving another 500 rubles, I simply skipped it at home through a grain mill. The result was the same. I decided to prepare the mash for fermentation according to the red scheme, since, in principle, I have all the necessary equipment.

The red scheme is the fermentation of unfiltered saccharified wort together with spent grains. So, here is my algorithm of actions:

• I took the malt (already ground) and poured it into a saccharification tank.
• Filled with water.
• I installed a thermostat and set the temperature to 62 ° C.

According to instructions from the Internet, it is worth keeping the malt in this mode for no more than two hours, but for family reasons, I had to leave the house and leave the pan with a thermostat for 8 hours.

Nothing terrible happened. At first, the congestion was very thick, but after a while it became much less frequent.

Fermentation and distillation

After saccharification, I poured the wort into the fermentation tank along with the grains. I do it according to the red scheme, which means without filtering and adhering to the hydromodulus 1:4. Next, you need to cool the wort sharply so that the mash does not turn sour.

Fashionable moonshiners use a special chiller for this purpose, but I just throw ice bottles in and after a few minutes I change them for new ones. It takes 8 bottles to cool 20 liters of mash to 30 ° C in 15 minutes.

After cooling, I added turbo yeast, but you can use any other, in this case, it does not matter.

Braga won back from me in three days, I immediately drove the distillate out of it according to my classic scheme.

I drive up to 4 times to prevent tails from getting into the body of the product. I didn’t use any special tricks.

Next, I poured the product (94 °) into an oak barrel and took it out to the garage to infuse, so as not to get in the way.

What did I get out of it

The product was infused for three weeks. After that, it was diluted with distillate to a strength of 42 °. I was surprised how densely the drink dyed the barrel, filled it with a transparent, in fact – a dark brown hue.

But the aroma was such as I have never seen in any of the drinks.

As for taste, I did an experiment. For my wife’s birthday, I bought a bottle of Jameson (Jameson) on the table for the guests, and presented my product.

The trick is that I poured it into the same bottle. And all the guests gave their preference to this home-made drink, so I can safely say that my experiment was a success.

Have you ever had a homemade product that was more in demand than expensive alcohol?