Making Actual Whiskey (and Other Spirits) Guide - HB Malt Station

Making Actual Whiskey (and other spirits) Guide

DOWNLOAD THIS GUIDE HERE

Whiskey, or “whisky” if it’s Scotch, is a grain-based alcohol distilled in copper pot stills and aged in oak barrels, resulting in a brown spirit generally in the order of 40% alcohol. It can be drunk neat, with ice, with water, or combined with any number of mixers to provide alcohol and flavour. Ideally, it produces feelings of contentment, goodwill, and satisfaction.

But you already knew all that.

What you might not have known is that you can make proper, actual whiskey in more-or-less the same way that it’s been made commercially for centuries, but at a tiny fraction of the cost and in your own home. To whatever style you like. Certain other spirits like bourbon, gin, brandy and rum can also be made properly at home without the need for “flavouring bottles”, “smoothing syrups” and carbon filtering.

Which brings us to the real point: if you make a neutral industrial-style alcohol and add whiskey flavouring from a bottle, is it a real whiskey? If someone gave me a beer flavouring and said “add this to soda water and you’ll have beer”, I wouldn’t call that beer. I’d call that beer-flavoured fizzy water. So whiskey-flavoured neutral alcohol is just whiskey-flavoured neutral alcohol, and generally not very nice either.

Our goal is to bring proper spirit-making to the masses, so we’ve written this guide to show how it’s done. There are four key steps.

#1 The Mash

What is it?

At the most basic level, a mash takes crushed, malted grains (typically barley), steeps them in hot water at the right temperature, and lets the enzymes in the grain break the unfermentable starches down into fermentable sugars. It is a critical stage in producing alcohol from grain.

How is it done?

The enzymes that break starches down are most active at around 65 – 70°C and also require the right pH (acidity) to work effectively. The principles are very much the same as for making all-grain beer, but a bit more forgiving. We recommend that you start with John Palmer’s “How to Brew”, as this guide explains the process very well. Don’t worry if it seems too complicated…a whiskey mash is a lot simpler than a beer mash. This book is mainly about making beer, so it's a bit of overkill for whiskies, but great if you're also interested in brewing.

Mash tips:

• A ratio of roughly 1 part grain to 2.5 – 3 parts water is best
• A target temperature of about 67°C is good. Less than 65°C will have reduced activity, and over 70°C will kill off your enzymes quite fast.
• A mash of one hour held at the target temperature will be adequate. A longer mash (up to three hours max) may increase your yield, but isn’t always worth the extra effort.
• DO measure pH and be ready to adjust it into the optimum range (5.2 – 5.6). This not only reduces the likelihood of a failed mash, but also ensures the best extraction efficiency.
• DON’T allow bits of grain to transfer to the fermenter (use a grain bag to filter them out)

What effect does this have on the final spirit?

What you put into the mash can have a huge effect on the final spirit. Peated whiskies, for example, get their peaty taste from the malted grain that went into the mash, which was smoked using peat. Some of the effects that the different grains can have are:

·Dark Grains (Roasted Barley, Roasted Wheat, Black Malt, Chocolate Malts): Dark grains have a range of roasty flavours, like coffee and chocolate. Some of this comes through into the finished spirit as a clean, crisp roasted flavour and can round a whiskey off nicely. Dark grains also help to acidify the mash, making it easier to meet the target pH and get best extract efficiencies.

·Smoked Malts (Mild Peat, Manuka Smoked): Love them or hate them, smoked malts add that peculiar dank taste that characterises certain brands and styles of whiskey. Adding these flavours from the malts themselves is the proper way of doing it.

·Malty Malts: As any all-grain brewer knows, there are many different “base” malts which contain the enzymes necessary for a mash to work. They are malted and kilned in different ways to produce different flavours and intensities. From the home-distiller’s perspective, this is important for the malt character they will add to the finished spirit (sometimes referred to as “cereal notes”). A light, neutral malt like Gladfield Distillers Malt will add slightly sweet and malty but generally very mild cereal flavours to the spirit, whereas a more-heavily toasted base malt like Munich can add much stronger and more intense malty flavours. The choice is all down to personal preference and the target whiskey style.

·Crystal Malts: Crystal malts have a very sweet, caramelly flavour, some of which can come through very subtly into the finished spirit. The darker crystal types are better suited to this as they have stronger flavours, such as the nutty, burnt-toffee taste of Dark Crystal malt.

·Rye: Rye is the main malt used in certain styles of whiskey, contributing certain spicy or fruity notes to the finished spirit.

·Wheat: While not very common in whiskies, wheat is known for adding sweet and mellow flavours.

These different grain ingredients generally don’t add much to the cost of the whiskey, but they can have a very important effect on the final result.

Darker (e.g. roasted) grains can easily over-acidify a mash and overpower the whiskey's flavour (generally not in a good way) if overused. We'd advise a maximum rate of about 1/8 for roasted malts / dark grains (i.e. 1 kg of these per 8 kg of total grain), with less often being better, and more being an option if you want to play around with them. For crystal malts, a maximum rate of about 1/4 should be OK. For the rest (wheat, rye, smoked, and any base malts), there's no limit — they can be up to 100% of the total grain bill.

Can I cheat?

Yep, but not too much. It's not unreasonable to include dextrose as up to half the fermentables (by ABV %) in a batch. Dextrose is a very clean-fermenting sugar that you can add straight to the fermenter along with the sugary runnings from your mash. This avoids much of the difficulty associated with big mashes with lots of grain, while still providing you with a high yield of alcohol ready to distil. You can make up for any possible shortfall in malty flavours by just using different malts that have more flavour. Don’t ever use regular cane sugar like you get from the supermarket…it’s not much cheaper than dextrose but will add unpleasant fruity off-flavours to the spirit and doesn’t ferment as thoroughly.

Using a proportion (or even up to 100%) liquid malt extract also makes life easier, as it will still offer good fermentability and malty character, but not require a mash. Great for beginners.

#2 Fermentation

This is another area where making proper whiskey differs greatly from the way most people make their spirits. Never, ever use a “fuel yeast” like the ones used to ferment cane sugar into high-strength washes for distillation into neutral spirits. These yeasts produce some really awful flavours and require both a reflux still and carbon-filtering to make the spirit drinkable. Both of these things will also remove all malt and smoke flavours, leaving you with at best an “oaked neutral spirit” but certainly not a whiskey.

So what yeast should I use?

There are numerous good yeast options when fermenting a whiskey wash. You could also use a generic yeast like baker’s yeast, but you’re selling your whiskey short and really not saving much money (especially if you re-use your good yeast from the last batch). All good yeast options are listed in the WhiskeyYeast section of our website, including many beer yeasts that live a double-life.

It’s important to choose a yeast with an alcohol tolerance high enough for the wash you want to ferment. Our basic whiskey malt packs target a wash at 14% ABV, which can be a bit too high for some yeasts. For beginners, it’s best to start with a Whiskey Distiller’s Yeast*.

*Note 1: If the yeast doesn’t come in a pack with nutrient and glucoamylase enzyme, it’s important to add these separately.

*Note 2: Our own Bourbon / American Whiskey yeast pack contains nutrient and glucoamylase, but it has a slightly lower alcohol tolerance and may struggle with 14% ABV. This is best matched to our American Whiskey malt packs.

Other fermentation tips

·The mash liquid is hot. Make sure you’ve cooled it to <30°C before moving it to the fermenter and adding your yeast.

·A healthy yeast population and fast, complete fermentation requires oxygenation. A good amount of splashing of the cooled mash liquid, or better yet an aeration system, should dissolve enough oxygen in.

·18 – 20°C is a good target temperature for fermentation. Much higher may produce excessive aromas, though these can be desirable in some cases. Much lower and fermentation will be very slow or even stall.

·Sanitation! This isn’t nearly as critical as for making beer, but keep your fermenter and equipment clean and sanitised to prevent infection. This is especially important if you’re saving and re-using your yeast for the next batch.

·If you’ve chosen a yeast that doesn’t include glucoamylase, and don’t add any separately, you’ll have a lower alcohol yield and may have more problems with foam-up during distillation.

#3 Distillation

To some, the ideal still is a reflux model made of stainless steel. It’s true that stainless is tough and easy to maintain, and reflux stills are great at producing high-alcohol neutral spirits, but you actually want neither of these things for making whiskey.

Whiskeys are traditionally distilled over two stages, with the first distillation producing a low spirit with enriched alcohol content and some undesirable aromas, and the second distillation producing a high-strength spirit where the undesirable aromas have been transformed into key flavours that help to characterise the whiskey. The critical component for this is the copper pot still.

Pot stills are preferable as they are not very effective at removing flavours and aromas, which is a disadvantage if you’re producing rubbish-quality alcohol from a sugar wash and a fuel yeast, but great for keeping the malty, grainy or smoky flavours from your mash. Copper is the superior material because it actually catalyses reactions in the spirit condensing on it, which turns bad congener flavours into important and desirable new whiskey flavours on the second distillation pass.

What options are there?

If you don’t already have a still, you have a couple of excellent choices for making whiskies with. These are the Copperhead Pot Still and the Still Spirits Alembic Pot Still. Both of these have copper heads and can produce excellent whiskey distillations. They also both have interchangeable heads, so you can buy a separate reflux head for producing neutral spirits (for example, vodka, or as a base for flavoured liqueurs).

I already have a reflux still. Can I really not use it?

It will steal the malty soul from your whiskey. But there are a couple of ways around this;

1.Turn the cooling off to the reflux column and remove any packing in it. This will get more flavour from the wash and give a lower-strength spirit, but won’t perform anywhere near as well as a pot still. If it’s stainless steel, it also won’t convert the yeast congeners into desirable flavours, so it might be best to stick with a neutral-flavoured yeast like CL23.

2.Most still brands have a boiler unit that can be used with multiple still heads. If you already have a reflux still, chances are you can buy a copper pot-still head for it for quite cheap.

The distillation process

This website is an absolute goldmine of information on the production of whiskies, so have a thorough read through for inspiration on how you’d like to do your whiskey distillation: https://www.whisky.com/information/knowledge/production.html

One of the trickiest parts of distilling is knowing when in the process to switch the still off and stop taking distillate. You can continue to the very end, taking increasingly watery and low-quality spirit but maximising yield. Or you can quit early, taking the highest-quality alcohol at the expense of a lower yield. Some yeasts will also allow a more complete distillation than others before the spirit becomes nasty, making it even harder to gauge when trying different options.

My approach is to stop when the spirit coming off just starts to smell too nasty, which happens much sooner for a Scotch Whisky yeast than for a Champagne yeast or American Whiskey yeast. This is personal preference though, and sometimes these later aromas are an important part of the final flavour. You can keep collecting beyond this point on both passes, but collect the remaining distillate separately as “tails” (for as long as you think it’s worth the extra power cost of running the still). These tails can be added back to the wash during your first distillation pass on your next batch, so they’re not wasted. But keeping these out of your main collected spirit will greatly enhance its quality.

On the first distillation pass, take the first 100 ml or so of collected spirit (per 25 litres of wash) and discard it. If you’ve done a good, high-quality mash and fermentation, this may not be strictly necessary, but a lot of the nasty stuff will be in this initial distillate so it’s best to be safe.

You can also keep track of how strong your spirit coming out of the condenser is by collecting some in a glass test jar and measuring the strength using the spirit hydrometer. You can use this to decide when you’re done collecting prime spirit and when it’s no longer worth collecting tails.

When should I carbon-filter it?

Never, ever. Carbon filtration removes flavours and aromas from the spirit, which you need to do if you’ve produced a sugar wash with a fuel yeast (bad alcohol in = bad alcohol out), but this is not just unnecessary but even detrimental in a whiskey wash. If you have to carbon-filter a whiskey to make it taste better, you’ve done something horribly wrong and might as well throw it out. There is a very slight exception to this rule (charred oak), which is outlined in the next section under “Oak Treatment”.

#4 Oaking & Maturation

Contact with oak is what gives whiskey its colour and most of its flavour, and the type of oak and aging time are what separate a cheap whiskey from a fine whiskey. The aging process not only adds oakiness to the spirit though…it also mellows the funky flavours that are present in fresh whiskey distillate.

Storage

Always avoid storage of spirits in plastic, and avoid even brief contact with plastics wherever possible. Strong alcohol leaches plasticisers and other chemicals out of plastics, which not only put bad flavours into the spirit but can also be very, very bad for you. Glass is the usual and best material for storing and aging spirits in. A wide-mouth jar will give the best flexibility for adding and removing oak during the maturation process, just make sure it has a silicone rather than rubber seal. These are available in a range of sizes for pretty cheap from certain department stores. We also sell 5 L glass spirit bottles that are perfect for this task.

Oak origin

Despite what many people think, whiskey maturation actually doesn’t often take place in virgin oak. So aging on solely virgin oak isn’t necessary, though it may be desirable depending on personal preference. Scots being Scots, whiskey maturation normally takes place in whatever oak barrels can be sourced for cheap…this can be on used bourbon barrels from the USA, used sherry barrels, or used wine barrels. The previous use of these barrels has a significant effect on the final whiskey that is produced in them, so this is again down to personal preference. Most types of used oak are also available to the home-distiller in the form of chips, sticks or stave chunks from these barrels. Check out our oaksection for what’s currently available.

Oak species

There are two main species of oak that are relevant in making alcohol: American Oak (Quercus alba), and French Oak (Quercus robur or sometimes Quercus petraea). Hungarian Oak (Quercus frainetto) can also be used, though it has a very aggressive flavour so virgin wood is not recommended for whiskies under any circumstances, and used wood should only be considered in small proportions.

American Oak is the only virgin oak that should be used in making whiskies. French Oak has very harsh tannin flavours from virgin wood in spirits, but can be tamed down to a good product if it has already been used to age wine or sherry. Used American Oak is also very common in maturing whiskies due to the availability of cheap ex-bourbon barrels from the USA.

Manuka wood can also be used by the home-distiller to age whiskies if it has been properly processed. It has a very different flavour profile from oak, so isn’t for everyone.

Oak treatment

Oak doesn’t just come off a tree and go straight into a whiskey. A good oak product intended for alcohol production should first be open-air seasoned (for several years in some cases), then toasted at a high temperature for an extended period of time before being converting into the final product (barrels, chips, etc.). If you are buying a used oak product like bourbon chips or wine-barrel staves, you can be fairly confident that they were originally seasoned and toasted correctly before they were used to produce these other alcohols, so they should be good to go. With any virgin oak, there is no guarantee that it was processed for alcohol production, so be sure to check.

Charred oak has a similar effect to carbon-filtering in that it has a surface of activated carbon if charred and quenched correctly. This isn’t necessary for a well-made whiskey, but surface charring is part of some barrel-preparation procedures in the spirit industry and may contribute to a particular flavour profile. Don’t go overboard when using charred oak products, and follow the instructions on the pack.

Oak source

As mentioned, used oak is quite a reliable wood for use in the production of whiskies as long as it’s from a reputable source and has been processed and stored correctly. With virgin oak, there are plenty of available sources and most of them will have disastrous effects on your whiskey. If it has not been professionally produced for making alcohol, it’s no good. This includes oak chips sold for smoking, someone chopping down an oak tree and selling the wood or sawdust, and that broken leg from your old oak table. Always be sure what species of oak it is too, since virgin French or Hungarian oak will result in a whiskey that’s a bit like an over-brewed cup of tea. I have even seen “oak” chips for sale without stating what type of oak it was….when I asked, they confessed that it was actually from a tawa tree!

Spirit strength

The strength of the spirit when it is in contact with oak will affect the flavour profile it extracts. Some commercial products are initially barrelled at up 70% ABV, but this is not a good starting point and is instead something that can be experimented with further down the track. Higher ABVs for the home distiller, say in the low 50%s, may extract more vanillins and other flavour components, whereas in the 40%s you will get a higher extraction of caramelised oak sugars. There is no reason why you can’t start high and then dilute later, but for the beginner it’s probably safest and easiest to mature in the low 40%s until you get the hang of it.

If you’re doing it the hard (but admittedly proper) way of aging in oak casks, you also need to account for the loss of liquid (namely alcohol) during the aging process, known as the “Angel’s Share”. This isn’t an issue if you’re using oak pieces in a glass vessel.

Aging time

It’s possible to make something resembling a whiskey in as little as two weeks of contact time between oak and spirit, but it requires much more oak and won’t be very fine. This is the procedure normally recommended on packets of commercial oak chips sourced from used bourbon barrels (which usually assume you’re starting with a carbon-filtered flavourless spirit and also recommend that you add a flavouring bottle).

If you are trying to rush a whiskey, like in the two-week example mentioned, you are not only selling yourself short in terms of oak extraction and flavour complexity, you’re also going to have a lot of weird and funky flavours left over from the distillation process. These mellow hugely over time and are one of the most important reasons for the maturation process. Try tasting the spirit when oak is first added, then again after two weeks, then again after a month, two months and then four months. You will notice a huge improvement at each stage.

At two months, your whiskey may be drinkable but not fantastic. At four months it is likely to be pretty good, and from then on it will continuously improve if you have done everything right. Once you get into the swing of things and have a continuously cycling lot of whiskeys maturing, you’ll be able to supply yourself with finely aged whiskeys as long as you keep adding new ones in.

Longer maturation may change the ideal amount of oak to add, or it may not (helpful, I know), depending on the type of oak and the desired flavour strength. Virgin oaks in particular may continue to extract tannins until they become too much, whereas used oaks (especially from bourbon barrels) tend to just keep adding flavour and complexity over time without really going overboard on tannin colour and harshness. Balancing this is up to you…but there’s no harm in starting with a small amount of oak then adding more later.

Which brings us to the final point: multiple oaking stages. Some of the finest, most complex and most mature whiskies use multiple stages of oak to achieve the final result. On a commercial scale, this is done by transferring from one cask to another type of cask, or by resting and blending in a larger oak vat. This means that any combination of virgin oak(s), ex-bourbon oak, ex-wine/sherry oak(s) or other oak types can be used during the maturation process. For the home distiller using oak chips/sticks/blocks, it’s even easier…just add a bit of each oak type at the same time. But you may find the best results from doing it in multiple stages like the commercial distillers do, e.g. a bit of time on each oak type before removing it and adding something different.

If all else fails...

If you’ve done your best and the whiskey still doesn’t turn out to your satisfaction, don’t worry, you have options.

If it’s a bit weak or the flavours you were looking for just aren’t there, you may be able to save it with some new oak.

If the whiskey instead tastes too strong (tannins), you might have a Goldilocks problem which can be fixed through the age-old whiskey trick of blending. Take your overly strong whiskey and blend it with weaker whiskies until you get one that’s “just right”.

If it just tastes outright bad (probably a shonky fermentation or distillation), it’s unlikely to be recoverable, but it will be recyclable! That’s the great thing about home distilling…just chuck your bad whiskey back in the still for another go during the second distillation pass of your next batch. You’ve just pressed the big “reset” button, recovered the alcohol, and it’ll be ready for another attempt.

Other Grain or Oaked Spirits

So we’ve outlined the basics on making whiskey, but what if that’s not your drop of choice? Well, many of the same principles apply to making other genuine spirits.

Bourbon

Bourbon whiskey is very similar to regular whiskey apart from a few little twists, most of which are written into United States law. The ones that really affect the character and differentiate it from regular whiskey are;

·Ingredients: Bourbon must be made with at least 51% corn in the mash. This isn’t particularly tricky, but does require the corn to be crushed and boiled to gelatinise it before it’s added to the rest of the grains in the mash. The other malt grains provide the enzymes, so make sure there are enough of them percentage-wise (or add separate enzymes).

·Oak: To legally be a bourbon, it must be aged in charred virgin American Oak casks. You’re obviously not bound by this law, but to be authentic it’s a good idea to use only virgin American Oak.

Bourbons and other American Whiskies are a whole other world on their own, so we have a separate guide to help you with these. It’s called Sour Mashing and American Whiskeys and can be found on our website.

Gin

Despite appearances and taste, gin and whiskey have a lot in common. In fact, a traditional gin is just a whiskey distillate (from a grain wash) that has been re-distilled with a selection of botanicals (herbs and spices) and not aged on oak. But that’s only one of the two approaches to making a proper gin, and not necessarily the one that suits everybody’s tastes.

To make a gin using this traditional approach, you basically follow the steps for making a whiskey until you get to the oaking stage. Instead, re-distill the liquor again, using a basket containing botanicals within the still, and collect the resulting spirit. Ta-da! Old-school gin. Not everyone will appreciate the heavier, malty background flavour from the whiskey wash, but that’s life.

The other approach, which is probably what most people are familiar with, starts with a strong neutral spirit from basically any source (even a sugar wash with fuel yeast, as long as it’s been carbon-filtered to remove the terrible tastes!). This spirit is then re-distilled in the same way as the other type of gin, i.e. through a basket full of botanicals, then you have a typical dry gin.

The botanicals in a gin are what give each brand its flavour characters (see our botanicals section for what we have available). There is no strictly right or wrong combination except that juniper berries must be the main flavour component. Typically, though, the adjunct botanicals include coriander seed, both the root and seed of the angelica plant, anise, citrus peel, liquorice, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, orris root and/or cinnamon. Personal taste is the only thing limiting the selection of ingredients though…one of my own favourites is Vietnamese mint J

Gin can actually be made using a reflux still, but as usual, a pot still will capture the most flavour from your botanicals. Most commercially made stills have some form of basket attachment that sits at the base of the still column, inside the body of the still but generally above the level of boiling liquid, in which to put the botanicals for making gin. If you have a Copperhead still, there is a large mesh basket which can be purchased separately for this task and can hold a lot of whatever you want to load in there. From the Still Spirits range of stills, there is a canister that can be purchased, which screws into the base of the column and forces the alcohol vapour to pass through it and the botanicals it contains.

As with all spirits, what was fermented has a big effect on the flavour of the spirit. The key to a typical dry gin is that this needs to come from a totally neutral spirit (no residual flavours) — exactly what you’ve tried to avoid when making most other spirits! It’s easy to achieve with a reflux still and carbon-filtering system, but is also possible with a pot still and the right approach. See our Still Spirits Pure Turbo Yeast page for more details on this.

Bitters

Bitters are very closely related to gin, with a few key differences;

1. The botanicals are steeped/macerated in the neutral spirit, but aren’t re-distilled afterward. This means that a far greater range of goodies from the botanicals stay in the spirit, such as colours and bitterness.
2. There is typically greater focus on spices and bittering herbs (like roots) in bitters, so there is a wider range of these used.
3. They are normally only added to other drinks in very low proportions.

Many of the botanicals in our botanicalssection have cross-over between gins and bitters, whereas some are mainly only used for bitters. In general, anything that can be used in a gin can also be used in bitters.

Brandy

A true brandy is distilled from wine, then aged on oak in much the same way that other oaked spirits are. However, this is generally quite an expensive proposition for the home-brewer due to the high cost of making or buying the wine base.

The other type of spirit also known as brandy is fruit brandy, which is a much more realistic economic option for home-brewers. This is made from any sort of fermented fruit wash, just like a fruit wine, and can be both delicious and pretty cheap to make if you have access to any sort of cheap fruit. Feijoas in particular are usually given away by the bucket-load when that time of year comes around, and make a delicious wine or spirit. It is possible to produce an oaked fruit brandy, but give some thought beforehand to whether that particular fruit flavour will be enhanced or contaminated by the oak flavours and sugars.

Fruit brandies can also be crossed with gin to make a particularly flavoursome, fruity natural spirit. In this case, take the fruit wash, distil it, then (without carbon-filtering) distil it again through a basket with your selected botanicals.

Rum

Rum is not made from grains or fruit the way most other spirits are, but is instead fermented from a wash of molasses. We will soon be stocking rum yeasts and molasses. Please feel free to contact us for an ETA if you are interested in making rum.

After the fermentation and distillation, rum is aged on a variety of oaks in much the same way that other dark spirits are.

Vodka

While vodka can famously be made from potatoes, it requires a mash and a source of enzymes in the form of malted grain, and most vodkas actually don’t bother with potatoes at all and just use all grain. As a home distiller, the choice will depend on personal taste and whether you can get really cheap potatoes (their regular price may seem attractive, but they will produce much less alcohol per kilo than grain).

Vodka is a relatively simple spirit to make, but much less rewarding than oaked types. The yeasts used for vodkas are intended to make a fairly neutral spirit, but not completely.

DOWNLOAD THIS GUIDE HERE