We drive whiskey on corn and wheat flour through a distiller: I tell how the wort was prepared and what happened in the end

All my adult life I have been drinking mainly cognac, and I have my own preferences. I usually drink Courvoisier or Hennessy. Last year I bought the appropriate distillation equipment and some oak barrels for cognac aging.

For a whole year I insisted on cognac and even got a few of my friends hooked on this hobby. They started using my equipment and now brew their own drinks in oak barrels. One of them, my partner, is a whiskey lover, not cognac.

Whiskey insists on corn and wheat, so I’m not interested in it – a lot of fuss. But a colleague decided to insist on it himself, and I only have to drive it through a distiller.

The story was shared by blog subscriber Vladimir.

Why I decided to make alcohol myself

And then one day we got the first whiskey, the distillate for which I distilled at home. He brought a barrel in which the whiskey had been standing for six months and we began to blend it.

Infusion of corn for whiskey.

We usually fill the barrel with distillate of 65 degrees of alcohol content. After the distillate is infused, it must be diluted to the desired degree. This is part of the blending process.

You can dilute only with distilled water, in no case take water from the tap or from other sources, even after filtering. Otherwise, the taste of the drink will be irretrievably lost.

We started blending the whiskey and as we crossed the 47 degree mark, the drink suddenly became hazy. Therefore, we decided to leave the whiskey at 50 degrees, at which it still remains light. However, we still received two bottles of half a liter with sediment. I kept these two bottles.

The whiskey bottle cleared itself.

After 2 weeks of storage of this whiskey, he suddenly brightened himself. I decided to try it and was surprised by the very rich taste. I’m not a whiskey drinker, but this one was amazing.

I decided to buy another oak barrel and insist on whiskey in addition to cognac.

What ingredients are required

To make whiskey I used:

Making mash from corn or other ingredients other than regular sugar requires special yeast with additives that break down the complex sugars in the grain. The yeast itself is not able to break down such sugars, so you have to grind and boil the grain.

In Koji, the manufacturer adds special enzymes. These same enzymes can also be added to cooked grains prior to yeast application. Of course, I prefer a simpler option – I filled up the bag and that’s it, but I decided to play it safe.

The cooking process

Unlike sugar mash, for which it is enough to simply dissolve sugar in water and add yeast, the preparation of whiskey requires complex manipulations:

1. First, I ground the corn grain in a large meat grinder to increase the area of ​​reaction of the grain with yeast and enzymes.
2. He heated the corn to a boil and boiled for several minutes. Then he cooled it down.
3. I added hot water to the container for mixing the mash, poured cold boiled corn into it and added special enzymes that destroy complex sugars.
4. I insisted corn on enzymes for 2 days. Enzymes destroy the grain, making it even more ulcerated, further increasing the interaction surface.
5. Added Koji, which also have enzymes.
6. He insisted for 2 weeks.
7. In the last week, I mixed the mash daily and added a little sugar to activate the yeast.
8. He drained the braga from the grain.

   Barrel of whiskey infused

9. Distilled twice.
10. During the second distillation, heads and tails were cut off.
11. The distillate turned out to be 70 degrees, I diluted it with distilled water to 65 degrees and poured it into a barrel.

What result did I get

Today, the barrel of whiskey is still infused. Definitely the taste of whiskey will be the same as the one that we distilled with my partner.

Every week we check the contents for taste, because excessive saturation of the drink with tannins can occur and then you get a “skirting” – whiskey with very strong tannins, which is impossible to drink.

In the meantime, I’m pouring the whiskey I got from my partner. I add ice cubes to it and try to decompose the taste into chords. I must say that before the first sample of homemade whiskey, we celebrated the birthday of one of my friends and there was very expensive whiskey on the table. I was lucky to try my experiment the very next day, and I can say with authority that mine definitely turned out tastier.

This means that in a couple of months you can start blending whiskey from my barrel, because it is still “young” and it is impossible to keep the drink in it for more than 3 months. Have you tried homemade barrel-aged whiskey?

*Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your health!