Hi All,

I'm a long time home beer brewer with a 15 gallon all-grain system. I'm comfortable doing yeast starters, using O2 in the wort, complex mashing, and I have both 6.5 gallon carboys as well as access to a Blichmann 14 gallon Fermenator.

I got the urge to try and make some scotch as well as making sure I have all the tools and skills that will get us invited to someone's compound when the SHTF!


My first run will prob. be a batch of of Sake that I made last fall that is not aging well. I think may try a big sugar wash before going for a whiskey.

This looks to be great community and I'm looking forward to learning and sharing with all of you.

I do both bottle conditioning for "slow" beers as well as keg carbonate "fast", non-competition beers . For a beer such as a Belgium Tripel and I almost always bottle condition those with sugar and extra yeast. For quick beers, I use corny kegs and just let them sit in the kegerator (old school milk refrig) on pressure.

It mainly has to to due with time an effort for me. Washing, sanitizing, filling, and capping bottles is time consuming and messy. I only do it for beers that benefit flavor wise from bottle conditioning and natural carbonation or that I need bottles to enter for competition. For the everyday drinking beers, they just go into a 5-gallon corny keg, get force carbonated in a few days, and are then drinkable.

If your grains and hops are two years old, I would suggest that you get fresh supplies. Hops rapidly oxidize and only have a half life of about 6-months. You should use the grains for the still if they are that old, they get stale as well.

"

I will help you with the beer if you help me with the hooch! "