StillSmart

Took a trip to my local Indian supermarket today to buy another load of Jaggery.
While there I noticed this 5kg bag of coarse cornmeal for around £4...so I thought all these USA guys swear by it, lets have a go.

That's a very good price, are you going to use malts or enzymes to pull the good stuff out of it?

I used both Rye & Barley with the cracked corn that I used last.

Have looked at enzymes but they seem to be expensive... but would like to try them just to find out for myself

Pintoshines enzymes do look the business but the postage from the US bumps the cost up, I've seen some on Amazon that aren't too expensive but with no reviews on there I'm a little reluctant to risk it. All the videos I've seen of people using enzymes make it look so easy, no real steps & rests like with malt. Just get it good & hot to get the starch out then chuck em in & away you go!
I'm sure reality will be different, I know enzymes denature if they get too hot

You've hit the nail on the head there about the cost....maybe a group buy would cut the cost??

If I remember rightly, he will only post upto a certain size outside of the US anyway so I'm not sure a group buy would solve it. The other problem is customs, a small parcel doesn't seem to raise too many eyebrows but a big box of the stuff might just raise big brothers interest in you?!

flaked maize, corn meal, polenta are all basically the same product with some variation for white corn etc. The only different one is cornflour which is a refined corn starch - probably not a good idea to try that!!

Not sure how much taste difference there is between them. I was just going to use polenta as it is a medium grind but just use whatever is cheapest.

My plan was to use a sourmash method with a 24 hour acid steep, and then mix with malt for the starch conversion. No use of purified enzymes. They do work but are a bit expensive.

Icefever wrote:Took a trip to my local Indian supermarket today to buy another load of Jaggery.
While there I noticed this 5kg bag of coarse cornmeal for around £4...so I thought all these USA guys swear by it, lets have a go.

i thought of using jaggery whats the aim if used ? i guess it would lead to a rum or cleaner neat spirit??

Hi.
The reason I found out about Jaggery was it's "supposedly" raw cane sugar....or as close to it as we can buy here.

Some guys say that it's more likely to be palm sugar??? the one I bought look like crystalised brown sugar.

I've done a couple of washes using jaggery and then run a pothead on it, my taste buds say light white rum...think Barcardi. Add a vanilla pod to a litre bottle and leave for a week then taste.

I've still got about 5/6 block in a kitchen cupboard that Mrs Ice found t'other day...so I'm putting my head around maybe a couple of kilo blocks added to maybe 3 lts of golden syrup??? see what comes from that.

Icefever wrote:Hi.
The reason I found out about Jaggery was it's "supposedly" raw cane sugar....or as close to it as we can buy here.

Some guys say that it's more likely to be palm sugar??? the one I bought look like crystalised brown sugar.

I've done a couple of washes using jaggery and then run a pothead on it, my taste buds say light white rum...think Barcardi. Add a vanilla pod to a litre bottle and leave for a week then taste.

I've still got about 5/6 block in a kitchen cupboard that Mrs Ice found t'other day...so I'm putting my head around maybe a couple of kilo blocks added to maybe 3 lts of golden syrup??? see what comes from that.

yeah the jagg we get near me is the real deal cane sugar and not palm sugar.. so its interesting to know of your results thanks so much mate ill give that a go and its also really cheap per kilo around 59-69p at the asian shops the kibbled variety of the same product is slightly more expensive ...
thanks again for your interesting reply