I am looking for an easy recipe using generic oatmeal. If anyone can help, i would apreciate it.
Thanks

While the above recipe is good for eating I doubt that you would want to drink it. I use oats just like unmalted barley or rye. You have to either add enzymes or malted barley to convert the starch. 10% to 20% malted barley seems to work. The only problem with oats is the sticky mess they make. Even using a grain bag stuff always gets into the wort! However even if you ferment on the grain and distill with this stuff in the pot it doesn't seem to affect the flavor. It will burn onto an electric heating element so be careful. Use a pot still or a short column.

Age the oat whisky on oak. I add some port to it while it is aging. When serving I don't tell friends what it is. They all say it is different but have yet to turn it down.

John:

I have used flaked oats in beer making but never in making hooch, so anything I say here take with a grain of salt. I went to Pro Mash, which is a computer program used to design beer recipes and put in flaked oats. I am assuming you are going to do a single infusion mash, where you take the oats and mash them in water 148-150degrees for 90 minutes then cool and pitch yeast. if you have another method in mind let me know.

Anyway, according to Pro Mash, to get a OG of 1.1 or so you would need 27 lbs of flaked oats in 6.5 gallons of water. However you won't be able to get 6.5 gallons out, so lets refigure with 8 gallons of water you would need 32.5 lbs.

There are other variations you might try as well. Do you want to start with a lower OG? If so let me know what it is and I will punch it into the program. Do you want to do say an OG of 1.07 and add sugar to bring it up? With that much oat and water you are going to have a problem with a stuck sparge. Think oatmeal. You might think about mixing in some other grain with a husk like 2 row barley. Say for example you used 10 lbs of 2 row, you could reduce your oats to 24 lbs. Again this is for a OG of 1.1 and 8 gallons of pre-sparge water.

So let me know what your variables are and I will do what I can to help you.

Cheers

John:

Okay according to Pro Mash, 15 lbs of oats and 6 lbs of cain sugar in 8 gallons of water should give you an OG of 1.081. Another combo would be 10 pounds of oats and 8.5lbs of sugar. That combo hits 1.080 on the head, so it will depends on how much oat you want to use. Of course Pro Mash is designed to assume you are putting everything into your mash ton. You may want to mash the oats in the mash ton, drain the wash out and then add sugar to bring it up to whatever OG you desire. That's probably what I woud do because sugar doesn't have to mash.

Again I am saying 8 gallons of water to get 6.5 gallons of wash because the oats themselves will soak up quite a bit that you will never see again. This is just a guestimate. For every half gallon of water you add beyond the 8 the OG drops by .050. Conversely if you use less water the OG goes up by .050 per half gallon. This all is based on a 75% efficiency in your mash ton. Say you were to use the first example with 15 lbs of oats and you needed 9 gallons of water then you would need to increase your sugar to 7.5 lbs to hit the 1.080. Why would you need to increase the water? Because 15 lbs of oats in 8 gallons of water may be fine, or it may look like a bucket of plaster of paris. You my friend are on the cutting edge here. It's going to be trial and error. I wish I were there to do this project with you. It's going to be fun.

The last factor you have to consider is mash temp. In a normal mash I woud bring my strike water up to 170 degrees F which would mash out at between 148 to 150 degrees F which is where you want to be. However with it being all oats, you may have to adjust the temp up a bit. There isn't any way to tell until you attempt it. Again you can make adjustments with sugar when you get to the wash faze.

As far as a stuck sparge, good luck. It would help if you could find some tasteless husks to toss in, but I don't know of any off hand.

I hope I didn't bore 'yall' ,getting ready for FL,to death with all this, it's just the things that have to be considered when you're a trail blazer like John.

Keep us all apprised on how this works out.

I'll take you up on that bottle.

Cheers

John:

Sure, all oat run, 8 gallons of water, OG 1.08 = 26 pounds of oats. Let me know how close Pro Mash comes to reality. It's pretty good with grain, so we'll see with oats.

66 degrees, now you're just braggin! We are in for an ice rain tonight. You mentioned sunshine, what's that? I haven't seen that in weeks.

Cheers

Elricko,

You've been a fantastic help to me as well as to a lot of others.

And since, you will be tied up with all that's going on in your move etc. I thought I'd share my next venture, after the oats, hopeing you will participate vicariously, and enjoy some of the rewards, if it turns out, when we both get to FL.

Ian Smiley, 'Making Pure Corn Whiskey', says 'Millet is a cereal grainthat is very commonly used in home whiskey making and is contended by many distillers to make the best whiskey of all the grains'. So I just got to try it. He gives pretty good instructions, but to check I went to all the forums, asked for advice, and searched all the archives. Nothing and nada! Being the rebelious idiot I am, I will do this if it kills me ,but I'd die happy,. The local feed and seed store will have untreated seed in early April. , the guy always says Yummmy, when he rings up the bill-meybe I could arrange a discount?,. I also have a 50# bag of barly seed i just got from him, so now am shopping for a grinder- roller. The 2 i am thinking about are the crankenstein, or the grain mill that will work with my kitchenaid mixer. Any suggestions? I will need this for the millet as well, and will probably grow some corn at the farm this year also.

Enjoy the snow, you won't see that in Fl. though I did once, fireing our grove to save it in the early 60's. Had to quit, when the trees started exploding like dynamite. In July and Au. you will wish it would. Shame you can't store it up and moderate it like we do here. HE HE!

Thank you Bill. I was trying to think of rice hulls and had a brain fart.

John: I use the Valley Mill but they don't make them any more unfortunately. You just hook up an old variable speed electric drill to it and it goes forever. That may be why they went out of business. I think the Crankandstein is based off the CGM-2D rollers the same as the Valley Mill so if you can find one I can recommend it, although the key part of the name is 'crank'. With the amounts of grain you plan to mill you may want to go ahead and invest in the Crandandstein. It uses the CGM 3E which has three rollers and is designed to take an electric drill like the Valley Mill. Trust me in the long run it will be worth it.

Yeah, I'm gonna miss this snow and ice. Kind of like a broken toe. I mean it's beautiful, no doubt, but a real pain to deal with for as long as you have to deal with it here. I can't even imagine upstate NY with 6 feet of the stuff! I think in July and August I should just head up to the NC mountains and make some shine.

Cheers

John:

Check out this site:
http://byo.com/departments/1123.html

Darwin:

You got me buddy, how can ProMash, a beer making program be used against you?