Rice Whiskey

[OFD142014]

I have recently had some time to experiment with some rice; I found out a way to clean the inside of my still. Though the rice polished the inside of our pot, the ferment and subsequent distillation yielded next to nothing. I cooked to 190F and held for an hour with high temp. alpha amylase, cooled to 155F and added gluco amylase and continued to cool to pitch temp (80F). SG read 1092 (2.5 lbs/gallon)- FG 1070 the next morning. It was almost as if I didn't get a conversion and got a false SG reading. It was pretty sweet to taste initially, though. Any ideas on what might have happened here? this is my very first attempt with rice and had high hopes but...

[Falling Rock]

Grind the rice. The finer you grind it, the less it needs cooked and the better the conversion. Unfortunately, the finer the grind, the harder to separate, if that is a factor.

I heat the rice flour to 200 F while stirring, turn off heat, coast down to 185 and add Sebstar HTL, minimal stir occasionally as it coasts down to 155 F and add gluco, minimal stir and coast down to pitching temp.

When I say minimal stir, I mean a few minutes every half hour.

Rice is like molasses, the Specific Gravity is very hard to read correctly. Doesn't mean it didn't convert.

[Hudson bay distillers]

did u test the gravity with a refractometer or hydrometer . bear in mind tasting sweet can be deceptive to determine conversion the same enzymes that convert starch in your mash is also in your mouth so are you tasting sweet because its converted or are u tasting sweet because it converting  in your mouth lol . 

tim 

[OFD142014]

Update: 

I ordered a pallet of rice and gave it another shot in our downtime. I had it ground next door to a flour/meal consistency, hauled it back and repeated cooking as per the norm. I dosed the ferment with DAP on day 2, for good measure. Much better results this time-I'm attributing this to grinding. The "interesting" distillate was transferred into a charred-reused TN bourbon barrel and is now stowed away in the R&D corner of the warehouse. 

Moral of the story, don't depend on a "flaked rice" designation when you order.

Thank you guys for your input, apologies for late response!  

[Elixir Distilling Company]

I have actually been playing (on try 2 now) with using "sweet" rice and the "chinese" yeast balls that are used for traditional rice wine. The wine made on the first test batch was rather high in alcohol for me (12%) and this one is still doing its thing. Its a very slow process this way at about a month.... But I would be trying it with some other types of yeast in the future.

In my case I cooked the rice as you would to eat it - crushed the rice balls and added them into the cooked rice. Then--- wait...  As time goes by the rice converts into a liquid as it breaks down and it does it pretty completely. Of course I am talking uber small batch testing. I have no idea what will happen if I expand that.

Thought you might be interested.

Scott

[Elixir Distilling Company]

Just an update -- I finally got around to running my "rice" wash. As I said above I did the beer traditionally. I only made a small test batch using 5 lbs of rice and two bags of chinese yeast balls. Ended up with a half gallon of rice wine/beer. it took weeks (i think it was about 6 and I still had a good bunch of rice left over in the wash) I ran it twice, a stripping run and again a separation run. I ended up with ALOT of methanol. My stripping run gave me about 24 ounces at about 60%abv.. I took out 6 ounces in heads and ended up with about 16 ounces of hearts in my second run and landed at about 82%abv via my mini pot test still - making roughly 32 ounces at 40%. It has an almost thick tongue feel and a slight taste of licorice. I have no idea where to go with it at this point but its really interesting in flavor. It may be worth expanding in the future. 

This was no grinding at all - cooked via a pressure cooker (but boiled would work just as well) and dumped into a sanatized bucket. Yeast balls were crushed and sprinkled over the top. Thats it.....

-Scott