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I’m using some old crystal malt I’ve had around for years (like 20 years). It’s been stored in a plastic pail with a tight lid, but not an air tight lid. When I tried to mill it, (corona mill), it gummed up the plates, like there was too much moisture. The grain does not feel moist. Could there...

That’s a quick response, thanks. My wash was from stripping runs, so about 40% ABV, or about 3.2 L of alcohol. At an average of 60% ABV in my spirit run, I should get 5.3 L if I get it all. Of course I don’t get it all. I normally run the stripping run down to 20%. This sprit run ran from 75%...

Update. I had three barley/rye mashes ready that have been stripped. A total of 8L of 40% low wines. Ran the sprit run today and got 2L running about 70% or greater and then another litre which ran between 60 and 40%. I stopped at 40%. Was that too early? Seemed to have a bit of wet cardboard...

Never mind, not how you use backset. I’ve saved a couple of gallons but don’t want to ferment right now. Will it keep?

So I have a couple of stripping runs done on all grain mash, a blend of barley and rye. Both puked, learning how to manage heat. I have about 5 litres of low wines for a spirit run. I’ve saved some of the leftover of the latest run to use as backset. How much do I use?

My beer was ok, not crystal clear, but if I was making beer I would have bottled it. Really malty without the hops. Regular all grain beer, sparged and boiled for an hour. I blew a fuse in my voltage controller so I had no heat control. After cleaning the puke out I used the on/off switch to...

Apparently I can add marbles or butter. I‘ve never made beer without hops. This beer does not smell all that great. Don’t think it’s infected, ferment went well.

Trying to make whisky. Brewed a nice ale, SG ~ 1.045, finished 1.012, no hops. Ran a stripping run today and it puked at about 60 C. Cleaned and restarted and distillate came out brown with lots of floating ‘trub’. Like a colloidal suspension. Don’t know the ABV of initial distillate, too much...

Mashing in a cooler would different than the Anvil system. We have a grain basket inside the mash tun/boiler. We have to fill all the annular space with water, so we need quite a bit more. We would need 1.3 qts/lb plus the annular space. Posters above had some good suggestions.

Yeah, served up quite a softball there.

The rye was milled separately. Much finer than the barley.

How do you get all of that wet? I’ll have to look up what fly sparge is

Thanks for the responses. FYI brewing for a rye whisky. Batch size was 5 gallons. I purchased the grain milled and, by eye, looked good. Almost stuck with all that rye malt. Good volume after sparge. Strike rate of 1.3 qt/lb is a little stiff isn’t it? I felt like more sparge was needed too...

I’m all grain brewing using an Anvil brewing system. I’m getting poor conversion. I’m following instructions from Anvil, which is add grain to strike water, recirculate during mash, sparge with one gallon, and boil for one hour. My most recent attempt is 4 kg pale malt, 3 kg rye, half kg rice...

So I finished this run and blended It for a total of 1.75 litres after dilution to 40%. It is delicious. Lots of plum flavour, very smooth. Probably could have used a bit more of heads and tails, but really nice tipple. I left half clear and added some toasted oak chips to the other half. How...

Did my first spirit run today. Nine litres plum wine plus 2.8 L of plum wine stripping run. Used a variac to control electrical output and it worked great. Made great splits, I think. Theortical alcohol was about 1.31 litres of alcohol. I collected small quantities in my hydrometer test...

I use a standard hydrometer. I expected my plum wine to finish around 1.000 but it finished at 1.012. Which apparently is normal for plum wine. What confused me, and I have since deduced, is that you can’t measure ABV in wine or beer. The scale must be calibrated to a mixture of ethanol and...

I have a plum wine that is finished fermenting and it has loads of suspended solids on it, slow to settle out. I added some nectarine juice to it, probably why it has all those suspended solids. The suspended solids is so high it is screwing up my gravity and ABV readings. Can I run this with...

I ran 54 litres of 4% plum wine and got about three litres of alcohol from a stripping run. Some of it smells just like Slivović. Not too bad. I’ve got another 12 litres of of plum wine just finishing the ferment. Should I combine the stripping run alcohol with the new plum wine and strip it...

So I’ve been reading about slowing down a still during spirit run. I read one opinion that you need to slow it down if you condenser can’t keep up with the steam. In my case I don’t see any lost steam from the condenser, so do I even need to slow it down?