"Ok, i fell victim to the moonshiner's episode where they talk of makin GW's rye whiskey. I looked for rye locally and omg its high as a cats back. Over $25 for a 50 lb bag. Has anyone used wheat in their grain bill? Can you use rye flour instead of rye grain? Was the original recipe for GW's 60% rye, 35% corn, and 5% malted barley? Any tried and true recipes out there w/ rye or wheat ?
Thanks

Farmin"

I've been looking into gypsum.

Apparently it is NOT used here for water profiling but to add a bit of smoothness and a flavor bloom so to speak on the palette. Common with rye beers. At least that is what I am gathering from the brewer I spoke to yesterday. I bought a 2 gram packet for 1.79. Worth a shot if you are going for authentic. I used 1tsp for a 20 gal mash.

I was going to do a GW batch of beer but our feed store ran out of Rye for some reason. Made me think how many other people had the same idea.

I found some at the local food coop for about 1.00 a pound so I ended up using this recipe for my beer until I can get a big bag of Rye.


20 gallon batch
28 lbs flaked corn
03 lbs flaked rye
04 lbs flaked wheat
08 lbs malted barley
20 gal water
1tsp gypsum

Rye seems like it is the spicy ingredient. At least thats what I got when I stirred it into the mash.

Mixed up the mash and pre-mashed with a cup of malted barley and boiling water to a watery outmeal like thickness.
When temp was 155 throughout I added the malted barley. Let it convert for a few hours.
Stirred it multiple times over a few hour period. Topped off first thing in the morning and pitched 1 packet of wheat yeast just to help a little.
By afternoon there was a decent cap.

I ended up using yeast just as a precaution.

Today is day 2 and a nice big cap that seems a bit angry. So conversion seemed like it worked.

THey do 2 runs for the finished product, seperating the hearts from the first run for their special "directors cut" at 102proof. This is what we would be keeping on a small scale yet you would be looking at around 150-160 proof done right.

If you do your first run slow there is no need to do 2 runs and you'd have a true GW whiskEy.

Here's a blog
http://makinggeorgewashi...onswhiskey.blogspot.com/

BTW haven't tried it. yet

I just got a 50 lb bag of rye grain today for $20, tax included.

What I bought was not flaked. It was whole grain.

Since I'm going to do a sugarhead with the grain for flavor, I think I don't specifically need the malted barley. But the question is, do I still need some barley for flavor? Would I be able to use the Gerber Barley cereal in its place? I could knock out two requirements right there, barley flavor and all the nutrients needed for the yeast. And it's available at my local Wally World!

Now I need to figure out how to grind or crush my rye.

Yes, I'm experimenting, but trying to stay within the 60%/35%/5% ratio. I think that the guys on the "Moonshiners" show wouldn't have done an all-grain/no sugar in this day and age with "all the orders pilin' up". They would've been doing a sugarhead with flavoring like I'm trying to do.

Plus the recipe that Boxholland posted wasn't fully true to the ratio and used other grains, so I'm left to my own imagination as to what to put together.

I wasn't trying to disrespect you, but just pointing out that the recipe wasn't true to the George Washington recipe.

Gee-Dubya New Rye Whiskey (flavored sugarhead)

5 Gallon Batch (but your fermenter will need to be larger than 5 gallons):

• 3 lbs Rye (cooked 135°F-147°F for 30 minutes in 2 gallons water)
  
• 1.75 lbs Corn (cooked 180°F for 1 hour in 2 gallons water)
  
• 1/2 of an 8oz box of Gerber barley cereal
  
• 91/2 lbs of sugar
  
• 2 gallons boiling water (w/ goodly squirt of lemon juice to invert sugar)
  
• 3 Beanno tabs (dissolved in warm water and poured into fermenter at 100°F... roughly body temperature)
  
• Yeast nutrients (or not... the Gerber cereal has some nutrients)
  
• 2 tbs nutritional yeast (dead yeast that provide material for live yeast to use to multiply, plus some vitamins)
  
• 1 tsp of Epsom Salt
  
• 2 tbs Distillers yeast (or whatever you want to use)
  

Get the grains cooked and in buckets with lids.

Boil the water with lemon juice and dump it on the sugar in the fermenter. Mix to dissolve and re-incorporate oxygen.

Add the grain slurries from the buckets and the Gerber Barley cereal to the fermenter. Mix some more.

Add the yeast nutrients and the Epsom salt. Mix some more.

Check temperature and SG. Adjust SG reading for temperature. We're looking for 1.080.

If too low, add more sugar. If too high, add cool water. Re-check temperature & SG.

Put the dissolved Beanno in when the fermenter is at 100°F. Mix some more.

Get the temperature down to pitching temp (I'm thinking about 90°F for distillers yeast, check your yeast specifications).

Pitch the (room temperature) yeast on top of the mixture and leave it for 15 minutes.

Then lightly stir and aerate for 1 hour with aquarium air pump. At the end, you should have a decent cap forming.

Cap and airlock.

After fermentation ends, rack off & pot-still and see what you get.

You'll note that the liquids and solids added up to more than 5 gallons. When you separate out the grain solids from the wash, you should be left with ~5 gallons of fermented liquid.

I basically combined the Gerber babyfood recipe from Heeler with a grain wash. Uncle Jesse from HD stated there was no need to crack the rye grain since there wasn't a "real" hull on rye, but then he stated that "it wasn't a _bad_ thing to crack it". I chose not to crack it.

You don't have to use the nutritional yeast or the Beanno. I have them and think they can't do any harm to the wash, only help it along. I'm getting ready to start this and will report back on my results following.

I have edited my original recipe to cut the grain volume in half. While the grain volume I used originally made me feel good about the wash, I have since reconsidered. For a flavored sugarhead, I would bet that we only need about 5 lbs total grain for a 5 gallon wash. The rest of the recipe should stay the same, since I copied it directly from Heeler's Gerber recipe.

I hope no one has started this recipe yet.

The corn was relatively easy to cook, no problem. The rye was difficult to stir. It bent my stirring utensil all get-out.