Experimentation

[PieOPah]

When I bought my Airstill, I was surprised at the ease of making my own spirits and the number of flavours that you could add to give the impression of the real thing. I did always wonder how easy it would be to make myself a whiskey without having to add the essences.

I have only just come across this forum and can now see it should be fairly straight forward. In the past, I used to brew my own beer (from grain) and looking at a lot of the recipes, it is an almost identical process.

Thinking about this, I have been thinking about what I could do. When making beer, I always preferred to experiment and try something different (adding Mars Bars was more disappointing than I expected!). With this in mind, being that my favourite ale is Stout, I thought I could brew a batch (without the Hops) and distil that.

Has anybody had any experience with a dark brew and distilling it? What was it like?

[alan]

Hi PieOPah
I make my whisky wash using cracked corn, rolled crushed oats, rolled crushed barley, and molasses and sugar. I followed the sweet feed recipe from the home distillers web site
Alan

[Easydrinker]

Hi there,
Having tried the essences to try and flavour a neutral spirit I was massively dissapointed with the whiskys.
Some of the other spirits were better.

I am loving the Mars bars in the brew,
My favorite bought on beer at the moment is Whitechapel Porter,definite chocolate in there.

I have found that a relatively weak barley brew from whole grain can produce a decent whisky,given time and some aging on wood.I am currently working on an easier verion,using LME,If I ever get it to taste like Ambrosia,I will share.
Robert