First all grain mash.

[Jolly John]

Today I completed my first all grain mash, using 3120g. flaked maize, 1300g. malted wheat and 780g. malted barley. I used the method that Aidan posted:

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The only thing I did differently, was to use my beer mash tun, a picnic cool box with a perforated copper pipe filter in the bottom, instead of a bag. It worked perfectly, the flaked maize got slowly "gloopier" over the hour, but was still easily stirable.

At this point I must mention that the animal feed flaked maize which I bought from Countrywide for £12.99 a 25 kilo sack, has a fair amount of cob, and other bits in it, so not pure corn seed based. Brewers flaked maize from Charles Faram is £22.00, and probably much better quality.

Anyway, I added the malts and left to mash for 90 minutes, stirring once after an hour. The mash had thinned out and was nice and sweet, as expected, so I drained and sparged. I now have 25 litres of mash which I have pitched with 42 grammes of Alinson's yeast.

My disappointment is that I only got an OG of 1040, potentially 5.1% ABV. This isn't really a problem, I'll just up the grains next time to get nearer to 7% ABV. I can use this mash to give some "neutralish" spirit, and some feints for my next run, also some backset. I have to put the lower extraction down to the quality of the maize, as I'm sure the conversion went well. Unfortunately, I don't have any iodine, or I would have done a test for starch.

I will update.

[Jolly John]

Damn!! I forgot to add a spoonful of gypsum, I always added it to beer mashes.

[Icefever]

Could you not add a can of LME??? without the hops in. That would bring up the OG...I've got a 5kgs drum of Bavarian with no hops in, and I keep getting this daft idea about using this as a first go just to try a beer wash.

Best of luck...will look forward to what you finish up with.

[Jolly John]

Hi Icefever. TBH, I want to keep it all grain, and maintain a highish corn content. So, assuming its the poorer quality of corn that I'm using, I'll just add extra. I'm looking to get nearer to 7% ABV, shouldn't need too much more. I'm going to mash again tomorrow, will take some pics, and update later.

[Icefever]

Ahh pics... we love pics... can't wait.

[Jolly John]

Just checked the gravity, its down to 0.990., which relates to 6.7% ABV, so not too bad after all. I did a second mash, with a bit more grain, came out at 1050, if that gets down to 0.990, it will represent 8% ABV, happy days.

I know this is controversial, but I'm going to stick to Smiley's method, with the Boka, and the spirit run spread sheets that I knocked up, based on his spirit runs. If nothing else, it will be a good guide, and later on will probably do my cuts by smell and taste. Might end up making the pot still head for my keg. I'll run the first mash tomorrow, should give me 1 litre of 93%, and 450 ml. of feints. The feints will go into the second mash, which I'll distil on Tuesday.

If I new how to attach zip files, I'd post the spread sheets.

I will update.