"Brown coloured liquid?" Gimme a break!

I was reading this website about how Irish whiskey is made:

http://www.classicwhiskey.com/making/mashing.htm

and I found a part that really cracked me up. Apparently Irish whiskey is made from water, barley and yeast. So... it's basically beer, less the hops, which is then distilled. So I get to this passage here where they say this:

"The wort containing the dissolved sugars from the barleycorn is now pumped into a set of vessels commonly known as "washbacks" into the wort is added yeast. This causes the a reaction with the sugars to produce a brown coloured liquid (my emphasis). When the fermentation process has run its course the liquid ceases to foam and bubble at which point it is ready to be pumped to the stills for distillation."

Brown coloured liquid!? Gimme a break. Are they embarrassed that their product starts out as beer?

Frankly, if that site is accurate about Irish whiskey, I'm impressed at the simplicity of the stuff. No wonder it's so expensive (and that I like it as much as I do).

That reminds me, the other day, there was a PBS program on Ireland, and some shots of the original Jameson whiskey factory -now a showroom.
One room had big vats and a big sign "Mash Tun", which surprised me..!
(and also shows what I know about whiskey.. zero!)

Yeast? Who knew!

I'm curious as to how you guys thought whiskey was produced without a mash and ferment?

Just for gits and shiggles

McCall St. Brewer said:

I was reading this website about how Irish whiskey is made:

http://www.classicwhiskey.com/making/mashing.htm

and I found a part that really cracked me up. Apparently Irish whiskey is made from water, barley and yeast. So... it's basically beer, less the hops, which is then distilled. So I get to this passage here where they say this:

"The wort containing the dissolved sugars from the barleycorn is now pumped into a set of vessels commonly known as "washbacks" into the wort is added yeast. This causes the a reaction with the sugars to produce a brown coloured liquid (my emphasis). When the fermentation process has run its course the liquid ceases to foam and bubble at which point it is ready to be pumped to the stills for distillation."

Brown coloured liquid!? Gimme a break. Are they embarrassed that their product starts out as beer?

Frankly, if that site is accurate about Irish whiskey, I'm impressed at the simplicity of the stuff. No wonder it's so expensive (and that I like it as much as I do).

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Except it's not beer. There's no bittering agent, like hops, and beer is fermented wort. Irish whiskey is fermented wort, not fermented from beer.

You think we're particular about our malt and yeast strains?

THe single malt distillers of Scotland guard their floor malting techinques closely. They are also keenly aware of the slight differences between yeast strains and the end product results.

Distillers are basically brewers, who take what we call a finished product and further refine it.

Of course...thank goodness they have no use for hops.

Unless I'm missing something...it doesn't have to be bitter to be beer...

In case you didn't know it, ethanol plants ferment a 10% beer from corn then distill it before it's mixed with gas. Another legal still...

Technically unbittered beer was known as "Ale". The introduction of hops into Ale caused quite a stir in England many moons ago. The King at the time tried to outlaw them even.

whiskey is made from malted, mashed, and fermented barley but there are no hop additions and it is not sparged. A sparge is unnecessary because tannins will not distill like ethanol and other flavor components so the grain is mashed, cooled, and fermented then distilled with the grains and all. I think the mash is a little different as well since complex carbs that give beer body add nothing to the whiskey I assume the mash is designed for max fermentables. The cost of good whiskey comes from the aging, a good scotch whiskey (made with peat smoked malt) can be aged for 40 years!

no hops...meh. it's still beer.

"Beer" or not, I believe for whiskey production in the UK and Ireland, it is referred to as "the wash".

They ferment with the grains in right?

McCall St. Brewer said:

"The wort containing the dissolved sugars from the barleycorn is now pumped into a set of vessels commonly known as "washbacks" into the wort is added yeast. This causes the a reaction with the sugars to produce a brown coloured liquid (my emphasis).

Click to expand...

Well, the folks at Maker's Mark and Jack Daniels call this "brown colored liquid" Distillers Beer. It's about 9% abv when finished.

Denny's Evil Concoctions said:

They ferment with the grains in right?

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Indeed they do. They also distill with the grains in there as well, so as not to lose a single drop of liquor out of it.

Maker's Mark mmmmmmmmmmm

If anyone has a recipie for this distillers beer i am all ears.

Beer - barley, water, hops, yeast.

For me leave one out and it aint beer.

distillers beer is the precursor to whiskey, since there are a lot of types of whiskey you can make it from any malted grain with adequate diastatic (enzymes) power, barley, corn, rye... the yeast strain and fermentation temperature are important to produce the right esters that will boil near the same temp as ethanol and carry over into the distillate. One more really important thing is the water source (this is the reason you see whiskey distilleries built on rivers in specific areas, like in Tennessee or Kentucky). I seem to remember seeing whiskey yeast in a distilling section of a homebrew website I just cant remember which one.

Distilling without proper licenses and stuff is illegal in the states. but the knowledge to do so isn't, so I recommend the following reads:
http://www.homedistiller.org/
The Compleat Distiller [Isbn 0-473-08135-0] can be found online at http://www.amphora-society.com/
"The Alaskan Bootlegger's Bible" is another great book, it has some good still designs that you can build with household stuff.
"Making Pure Corn Whiskey" Is another really good one, It tells you everything you need to make corn whiskey which doesnt require aging in charred oak barrels.

I hope this post isnt inappropriate for this forum. I couldnt find the rules about discussing distilling.

menschmaschine said:

"Beer" or not, I believe for whiskey production in the UK and Ireland, it is referred to as "the wash".

Click to expand...

That's correct.

EvilTOJ said:

Indeed they do. They also distill with the grains in there as well, so as not to lose a single drop of liquor out of it.

Click to expand...

Thus the occasional exploding pressure vessals by moonshiners with don't add a safety valve. Grains can clog a hole better than just liquid.