Jack Daniels Mash

[Distillingchris]

Hi, am looking at doing a Jack Daniels mash, but just looking for some guidance on the base recipe, ITs 80% corn, 12%rye, 8% malted barley. I know they use certain types but am thinking, just use normal sweetcorn, Organic Whole Rye Grain or Organic Cracked Rye? and theres Malted Barley Flour or Crisp Crushed Pale Barley Malt ? which would work or should i try to use, any ideas? am also going to be contructing some sort of column to house some sugar maple charcoal, in which i can filter the whiskey through after double distilling it.

I may have to make my own charcoal as it seems quite hard to get hold of, would anybody else be intrested in buying some if i was to make some i could bag it and send it on ?.

[Almanac]

... but am thinking, just use normal sweetcorn, Organic Whole Rye Grain or Organic Cracked Rye? and theres Malted Barley Flour or Crisp Crushed Pale Barley Malt ? which would work or should i try to use, any ideas? am also going to be contructing some sort of column to house some sugar maple charcoal, in which i can filter the whiskey through after double distilling it.

Have you done much all grain brewing? I only ask because if not, I wouldn't recommend starting with the above.

Sweet Corn is not suitable for brewing and whole grain of any sort is also unsuitable as you won't get the starch from the whole grain.

I'd love to get my hands on some Malted Barley Flour and I'd appreciate a link for that one.

If you really want to make Corn Mash you'll need to use dry cracked or flaked Corn (or Maize' depending on where you hail from), crushed Rye and Malted Barley.

I've decided to give Corn Mash a miss until I can get a grain mill made to just crack the kernels into just 2-3 pieces. Ground or Flaked Maize are both too messy to be used realistically except in very small quantities and given the low yield small washes just don't cut it.

Keep us posted on your progress as one of us has to find a way to crack this nut.

AM

[Distillingchris]

Nope I haven't done any grain brewing just sugar and water but wanted to get into it and jump in at the deep end, have got a contact for sugar maple charcoal awaiting there response or will have to do it myself, however it's in America and will have to be shipped, depends where your from but the one I have seen is in eBay in England but I'm sure you could just google the name, here's the link anyway http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bobs-Red-Mill ... 1c28b1ff4c

Would this be suitable for corn http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GARVO-5141-Mi ... 232075d62c

And the malted barley would I be using the flour, malted barley extract, have got quite a detailed report of how to do the process I'm happy to dry with the different cooking times for different ingridients. Would I be using bakers yeast do you know.

[optic]

Hi, am looking at doing a Jack Daniels mash, but just looking for some guidance on the base recipe, ITs 80% corn, 12%rye, 8% malted barley. I know they use certain types but am thinking, just use normal sweetcorn, Organic Whole Rye Grain or Organic Cracked Rye? and theres Malted Barley Flour or Crisp Crushed Pale Barley Malt ? which would work or should i try to use, any ideas? am also going to be contructing some sort of column to house some sugar maple charcoal, in which i can filter the whiskey through after double distilling it.

I may have to make my own charcoal as it seems quite hard to get hold of, would anybody else be intrested in buying some if i was to make some i could bag it and send it on ?.

Using that recipe you will need for a 23Ltr wash
19.8Ltrs mash Liquor + water for sparging
Flaked Maize 6320grms
Rye Malt 948grms
Pale Malt 632grms
to give an OG about 1.080 FG 1.018 and ABV8.2% presuming 75% mash efficiency

[Capt-Cudellez]

Do you have a really big cooking pot? To get really good conversion from the corn you need to cook it for a long time at over 80oC.
But when it gets up to about 60oC it starts to turn to something resembling wallpaper paste, and becomes very difficult to work with and most likely will burn to the bottom of the pot

If you are hell bound on doing it, add about a quarter of the malts with the corn to the pot filled with tepid water, then heat it. The pre malting should help liquify it (a little)
I still have to use a paint stirrer on a drill to mix it, and its still hard work for little return.
All grain mashing (non corn) is much easier, and much more forgiving.

I recently built a steam wand (called nessie) to let me steam mash corn in a big 100L cooler because I found it so difficult to work with.


Also have you ever ran a UJSSM sugar wash, after several generations the corn flavour is really quite good, you could add the rye and barley to that as well. Using unrefined sugar also makes it taste less like a sugar wash.

[optic]

Do you have a really big cooking pot? To get really good conversion from the corn you need to cook it for a long time at over 80oC.
But when it gets up to about 60oC it starts to turn to something resembling wallpaper paste, and becomes very difficult to work with and most likely will burn to the bottom of the pot

If you are hell bound on doing it, add about a quarter of the malts with the corn to the pot filled with tepid water, then heat it. The pre malting should help liquify it (a little)
I still have to use a paint stirrer on a drill to mix it, and its still hard work for little return.
All grain mashing (non corn) is much easier, and much more forgiving.

I recently built a steam wand (called nessie) to let me steam mash corn in a big 100L cooler because I found it so difficult to work with.


Also have you ever ran a UJSSM sugar wash, after several generations the corn flavour is really quite good, you could add the rye and barley to that as well. Using unrefined sugar also makes it taste less like a sugar wash.

Cant see the need to heat to that temp I would mash at 65c for 90mins in the Tun,the flavour of flaked maize really comes through when I have only used 5% of it in the grain bill brewing Lager,the flavour in the finished beer is easily detectable.

[Distillingchris]

The process I was going for is something along the lines of this but on a smaller scale

The grain is cooked using a process lasting six days. The corn is fine milled and mixed with spring water. This is heated to 100°C (212°F) and then left to cool to 77°C (170°F) at which point the rye is added and then the barley at 64°C (148°F). The three grains are cooked at different temperatures based on what is optimal just to solubilise the starches and so allow the yeast to covert this to alcohol during fermentation. The mash is then allowed to cool to 24°C (75°F) before being pumped into 40,000 gallon (151,416 litre) fermentation vats

Thanks for that recipe, and I'm looking to get hold of a temperature controlled slow cooker or something which I can leave, am open to suggestions though

[Capt-Cudellez]

Ah, sorry I missed it was flaked you were on about. I've been using whole corn ground up with a corona mill.
I think the flaked stuffs already been cooked?

[Almanac]

Chaslam07: If you mash corn/maize and bring it to a boil it will stick to the pot unless you have a very small quantity of grain in a relatively large volume of water and a mash stirrer keeping the mash moving all the time.

Before you start out on this journey I recommend you should try a small experiment. Heat 4 litres of water in a large pot to 35oC then add 1 kg of ground corn/maize and heat to 65oC. Stir regularly and do not leave unattended. This mash will thicken (gelatinise) very quickly and will become extremely dense and difficult to work with. This should give you an idea of what will happen if you try to cook corn/maize at temps up to 100oC.

As CC suggested you could also introduce a small amount of malted grain to the pot before raising the temp and this will help liquefy the gelatinised starches.

In any case I wouldn't heat the mash any higher than 67oC until sacriffication is complete or you will kill off the enzymes from the malted grains that convert the maize starches to fermentable sugars.

CC: You're right, the flaked maize is already cooked and so only needs soaking in water no hotter than about 40oC to gelatinise all the starches. The problem I had with flaked maize is that, while the starches are easy to release, the kernels have been rolled, crushed and broken into too many pieces which, despite many attempted solutions, simply clogged the manifold in my mash tun and left me scooping out the wort by hand - messy, to say the least.

An engineering friend and I are working on a mill that will just crack the maize kernels into 2-3 pieces and this should be more manageable.

AM

[Distillingchris]

so i would be better going for the flaked maize ? would it be easier, will it still give the same outcome ? what do you mean by blocked manifold, my plans is to cook the flaked maize, rye, barley with the methods people have given and the methods i have researched, put them all into a bucket with some yeast, then after fermentation, syphon off into 2nd bucket and let it clear, then double distill, run through charcoal and put into 5 litre white oak charred barrel and wait till its ready, does this sounds about right or is it not realistic as ive not used anythin bar sugar and water before, but it all seems quite straightforward.

[chill]

In my opinion, you are setting yourself up for a lot of expense and effort that is not warranted. I've made a number of bourbons in the AirStill, everything from Aidan's neutral and JD chips to all grain (PITA!!!). You are not going to replicate JD in the AirStill, your product will have a sweetish taste that is unavoidable. You at least need a better pot still.

That said I MUCH prefer most of my bourbon to JD. Most experienced distillers do not like to drink the commercial stuff as much of it is horrid crap. JD falls into this category in my mind, though Wild Turkey (my former drink) is worse. My expectation is that their much lauded charcoal filtering is simply to accommodate their poor cuts and the inclusion of things in JD that we can greatly reduce in our product. We are not chasing the bottom line.

Start with something more practical like UJSSM or a partial grain batch, age in glass with some toasted and charred oak sticks. You will be amazed. Then decide where you want to go with this.

Chuck

[Runningman]

I agree totally Chill. I had a JD and coke last night and I had actually forgot just how bad this stuff was. Full of heads and tails (RUBBISH) i'd bet my bourbon take off against that muck anyday. Thats my opinion anyway.
Regards
RM

[scarecrow]

This is a basic JD mash.

Jack Daniels:
Corn......75%
Rye.......15%
Barley....10% (6-Row)

Double distill to 75% (150proof)
Run through charcoal filter column (see note)
Reduce with spring water to 60% (120proof)
Soak on 1:3 charred/uncharred american oak 2 months
(1 ta/sp per litre)
Reduce again with spring water to 43% (86proof) and filter.

note:
Use a long column, at least 2 metres tall. Fill
with freshly made maple wood charcoal.

Be aware that what you make will never resemble JD. It will get you a whiskey similar. If it was that easy everyone would be doing it.

I would strongly suggest you make something you like, rather than try and copy something from the big boys.

You picked a tough one to start with. Most new AG'ers start with a single malt scotch. Sooooo much easier.

Thanks to Harry at Yahoo for the above recipe.

scarecrow